Grant Shapps: my part in his rise and failure to fall

The political news of the week seems to be Two Kitchens Bad, Three Names Good.

In short, Grant Shapps MP is in trouble again. As I helped with the original story, I thought I'd summarise what happened and explain why I think it's important.

Grant had a business called HowToCorp. Essentially, it was an online version of snake oil, selling 'business secrets' and the like to rubes: titles such as 'How To Make You Own Money Making Mint', How To Bounce Back From Recession' (a volume his colleagues in the Treasure evidently didn't read) and The Meaning of Dreams, a $29.97 reprint of an 'extremely rare' book which could actually be found on the internet for free, or for pennies if you wanted the dead-tree version. Shapps also promoted a classy pamphlet called 'Stinking Rich'. You can read my original piece on these magnificent economic treatises here.

Using the names Michael Green and Sebastian Fox, Grant flounced round shady business seminars and the web flogging these products simultaneously trading on his status as an MP while all three identities denied any links. The other side of the business was TrafficPaymaster, a nasty little bit of software that helped you plagiarise or 'scrape' other people's websites and promised to beat Google's algorithm, which generally took a dim view of this kind of behaviour (hilariously, one of 'Michael Green's booklets is How To STOP Digital Product Theft which suggests buying his crappy software!). He also operated sock-puppet accounts for political dirty tricks and frequently sanitises his Wikipedia page.

All this was exposed thanks to the sterling work of various bloggers and journalists, but it wasn't really going anywhere. However, I was young and angry in those days. And bored. Very, very bored. So I had a look round 'Michael's' websites (now sadly deleted) and smelled a rat when I read the testimonials from satisfied customers. So I spent a good few hours trying to track them down. Nothing. One had the same name as a minor PG Wodehouse character but the rest appeared to have no web presence (despite being enthusiastic web marketers) and some of their locations appeared not to exist. So I reported the sites to the Advertising Standards Authority and chronicled events here and here.

That got quite a lot of attention, including this classic piece of Shapps and Michael Crick charging round a conference venue like Benny Hill.



But he got away with it. He withdrew the adverts rather than go through an investigation, which allowed him to claim – without evidence – that his testimonials were all genuine. He dismissed me as 'politically motivated', a criticism that still sounds a little odd coming from a Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Conservative Party. A police report concluded that while Shapps' company's activities 'may constitute an offence of fraud', an investigation was dropped. Why? Who knows? No satisfactory explanation was given.

So that seemed to be that, until this weekend. Grant's had a glorious career as the Tory Party's bullshitter in chief, turning up to defend the indefensible whenever no more senior politicians could be bothered to turn up. But some journalists have stuck to the story, and this is why it's still alive. Shapps recorded an interview on LBC radio three weeks ago denying that he'd carried on the business while an MP (this was during the Double Jobbing Scandal), but someone unearthed a video of him saying that he did:



And all this having used legal threats to force a constituent to remove a Facebook post detailing his activities as libellous…despite it turning out to be true. I've been pretty (justifiably) rude over the years about my disgusting MP Paul Uppal, but he hasn't set his briefs on me.

So why is this story still alive? It's pretty simple. Shapps/Green/Fox's business was a spivvy, seedy little operation, but the real story is that last bit: using the law to cover up a lie. He isn't just some dodgy businessman, he holds public office and should answer to a higher standard. He's a powerful man who deliberately silenced justified criticism using the law.

The wider story is the debasement of public life. Politicians have always associated themselves with shady businessmen, but rarely so blatantly. I can't imagine Douglas-Home, Macmillan or Balfour promoting someone like Shapps, author of Stinking Rich. While the PM and Chancellor go round talking about The Rise of the Makers and fiscal prudence, their closest colleagues flog rip-off pamphlets promising that you can 'Make $20,000 in 20 Days Or Your Money Back'.

This morning the Tory spin machine is in full swing. There are two lines of attack. Alongside others, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (who has also made millions in a pretty dubious web-marketing line which didn't treat its employees very well after several other businesses failed: funny that he's happy to slag off welfare dependency while his own business depended on contracts with the state) claims that this proves Labour and the Guardian are 'anti-business',

while Nadine Dorries (who when called out about her lies claimed that her blog was actually 70% fiction and presumably be viewed as art) reckons that Shapps is identical to JK Rowling, who used a pen-name.

Except of course that JK Rowling is an author, didn't set lawyers on a Facebook poster and didn't lie to a radio station. Nor, of course, does she hold public office.

Nadine also reckons that:

Yes, all the best business withdraw their advertising and get banned by Google for being copyright thieves, plagiarists and cheats.

What we have here is the progressive loss of a moral compass, in the political class in general and in the Conservative Party in particular. Shapps is the latest in a long line of cheats and bullies at the heart of government. Andy Coulson's in prison. Rebekah Brooks miraculously escaped it. Hunt and Shapps are spins, while Shapps is demonstrably a liar, though his defence is that he 'screwed up dates' while 'over-firmly' denying allegations. Clarkson apparently punches people while drunkenly abusing them for being Irish, while Hamilton, Archer, Asil Nadir and Aitken rattle their bones in the background. There's a pattern of shady behaviour which the classic old Tory party wouldn't have condoned: these types would have been despatched to the library with a bottle of whisky and revolver. But now politics is about the sales pitch, they come to the fore, and as long as they ride out the news cycles, they're OK – principles are so old hat.

What does this mean for the world of social media? Having played some small part in this saga, I think it demonstrates the symbiotic nature of social media and journalism. I heard the original story via the newspapers. I followed it by doing some digging of my own, which was picked up by TV and newspapers. Then the story went dead until a radio station asked Shapps the question and The Guardian unearthed the video that proves he was double-jobbing. I think we need each other. Bloggers don't have editors demanding instant results. We have the freedom to get obsessed with small details that may turn out to be important, and we have the ability to harp on about things to semi-interested audiences. Professional journalists though have time, training and resources, plus the credibility that comes with a cover price and masthead.

Will Shapps go? I doubt it. There's an election coming and resignations tend to overshadow photo-ops. People tell us that we should be more engaged in politics. Then they select and promote specimens like this and wonder why we aren't.

Student Grant

I knew last night's edition of Question Time would be a humdinger. Left-leaning Medhi Hasan versus the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts days after that paper called Miliband Sr. 'evil' promised fireworks, and we got them.



So that was fun. But for me, the presence of Grant Shapps, MP, Conservative Party Chairman and possible money-launderer, was equally attractive. You see, Grant and I have history. It was me who complained to the Advertising Standards about his shady company's practice of putting together crappy little money-making documents, selling them under the names of 'Michael Green MP' and other pseudonyms, and proclaiming endorsements from large numbers of people who don't exist. As a result, Shapps agreed to withdraw the adverts rather than face an ASA ruling. His companies were also banned from Google's rankings for 'scraping': stealing other sites' copy to attract clicks.

The most amusing bit was when Shapps was asked by the media about my complaint: he dismissed it as 'politically motivated', which seems a bit strange coming from a man who has devoted at least one of his personalities to being an MP and Chairman of Britain's oldest political parties.

So as you can imagine, I look forward to Grant's appearances on shows like QT with considerable relish. For me, the English language developed solely to provide the word 'glib' for application to Mr Shapps. Last night's episode was a true vintage. Smug, sneering, evasive, patronising, facetious and mendacious, good old Grant gave a master-class in modern Conservative manners.

But amongst all the other fun, one sentence Grant uttered caught my attention. While evading any discussion of the economy in favour of another unfounded attack on Keynesianism, he said to Yvette Cooper of the Labour Party 'You can't just magic money from nowhere' (around the 50 minute mark). 'That's funny', I thought. I have a dim memory of Grant Shapps' alter ego Michael Green insisting (for money) that you really can. In fact, isn't that his entire business model?

Two minutes later, I find this delightful document from the Shapps family firm, HowToCorp.

And what a magnificent opus it is:

Michael Green spent 12 years building his conventional offline business before turning his hand to online marketing on a strictly part-time basis.
And from a standing start – as recently as February 2002 – Michael has created his online How To Corp business empire! 

Part-time is right!

And how does one make all this money?

you can make money overnight, you can have success, you can earn a 6 figure income, you can do all of these things 

Easy: sack your staff:

I have been in the printing business for 12 years, you could not find a more traditional, conventional business than printing, you have stock, you have paper, people and management, all those personnel issues and so on....
What attracted me to the internet business model is that I can do away with all of those things and I can make as much money or more money, but it goes directly into my pocket, it doesn't go to anyone else, I don't need staff, I don't need premises. 

The rest of this dismal document is blindingly obvious business tips of the kind you get from 5 minutes' Googling, although I was amused by the suggestion that other internet marketers can't be trusted:

very well known names in internet marketing…sell similar 'How To' products and I think they are very dishonest 

Not like Grant/Michael at all. Interestingly, he also plugs 'Costly Internet Blunders' by one 'Rick Adams', also published by the Shapps company. Is Rick actually Grant? Who can tell? But that particular volume is no longer available. Perhaps it's being updated to include the sorry tale of Grant Shapps.

'Michael Green' is a very honest man. It says so here:

Protect your own success by preventing others from stealing what’s rightfully yours.

I am seeing people in real time trying to steal my products 

And yet here's the Daily Telegraph reporting that his company has been caught plagiarising software. I hope Grant's having a serious word with…himself.

But having read all 24 pages of Michael Green's guide to making a mint, what actually is the secret? Well, here we go! All you need to do is

Click Here And Discover How To Make 'Real' Money Online By Developing & Selling Your Very Own Products.
Find Out About Michael Green's Private System For Creating Wealth - Now Revealed For The First Time In His Amazing New Easy-To-Follow Toolkit. 

That's right. The big secret is that you need to buy another Michael Green business guide.

Ironically, given that 'Michael Green' is actually a senior government politician, you can still get 'How To Bounce Back From Recession', which I presume the rest of the Conservative Party hasn't read, or we'd all be rich again.

Remember, folks: there's an election in 2015.