Dear Co-conspirators,
On Wednesday night co-conspirators, friends, politicians and the best of the Westminster media pack gathered in Pall Mall for Guido’s twentieth anniversary dinner celebration.
As you would expect from a Guido party the booze flowed freely – for once however I was stone cold sober because I was going to deliver a speech (see below) which I did not want to stumble over. After six general elections, three referendums, eight Prime Ministers and having now even seen off my fourth Spectator editor, I am finally logging off the blog. If a week is a long time in politics, 20 years is an eternity.
Counting my mis-spent youth in student politics, apart from a foray in the City, politics has been my life for four decades. It remains to be seen how easy it will be to detox after being at the centre of things in SW1 for so long. This exit has been planned for some time and I am happy to say that unlike the original Guido Fawkes, I got to choose the time and manner of my ending. I leave the Guido Fawkes Organisation in the good hands of Ross Kempsell, one of the smartest operators in the game and a former Guido reporter from way back in 2017. The team is strong with now seasoned news editor Max Young and Eleanor Wheatley as our senior reporter. There is as ever another who shall remain nameless for now – because we always like to have someone who can do undercover work at Guido. My greatest pride and joy over the years has been to see young people who cut their teeth in the Guido newsroom go on to have even more success in the media. It gives me a sense of avuncular pride to see them all prosper. The time is right for me to stand down not least because as I have got older the newest intake of MPs has got younger and the SpAds even younger still, drinking in Westminster bars with them has become tougher and the recovery time much longer.
On a personal level twenty years of 24/7 focus on SW1 politics has been all consuming. There are hundreds of books that have gone unread because I have been too busy scrolling through tweets – an addiction I plan to beat.
Dear readers I want to thank you co-conspirators for everything, the tips, the fun, the exchanges, no doubt you’ll make your views known, as ever, in the comments. You made Guido Fawkes, I can not thank you all enough.
Thanks to GB News here are all the speeches from the night. First up was Harry Cole, the first ever employee of the Guido Fawkes Organisation and now the political editor of The Sun:
Next was my friend and former blogging rival James Cleverly:
Thanks to a few hours of coaching from the legendary speech crafter Peter Botting I think my speech went well:
My successor Ross Kempsell said some nice things:
You are in the good hands of Publisher Ross Kempsell…
Paul Staines
