A few weeks ago(June 6th 2005), Owen Gibson wrote this in the Guardian…

In the UK, there was a feeling that the general election would provide domestic blogs with a similar spark to Rathergate. There was no shortage of primary material, such as the attorney-general’s advice on the war in Iraq, but there was little sense that the internet impinged on the mainstream media.

While Belle de Jour got the mainstream media speculating on her (or his) identity, and the likes of Scary Duck greatly amuse, there is a sense that the Americans take their blogging more seriously than we do. With the odd exception (Guido Fawkes’ Order-Order.com and Mick Fealty’s Slugger O’Toole blog on Northern Ireland for example), there is little heavyweight comment and it is rare to see a blog break a story or substantially move it on.

…while bemoaning the failure of the British blogosphere to spawn a Rathergate of its very own, before going on to note -

For all that, Neil McIntosh, the assistant editor of Guardian Unlimited (responsible for introducing a series of blogs allied to this newspaper), says that a breakthrough Rathergate moment is inevitable sooner or later. “You’d be daft to say never. All that it takes is someone to see that a properly produced Private Eye-style blog would work brilliantly on the web. You’ll get something like that in Britain.” Cornfield also points to evidence of bloggers mobilising the “No” vote in the French referendum on the EU constitution as proof that it just takes the right kind of issue to spark interest.

How ironic is it then for the Guardian to find itself on the wrong end of this story following a bit of detective work by Scott Burgess of The Daily Ablution…

… a blogger.