The online world is not new, but it was in 2004, when Guido Fawkes started. Its first step was less dramatic than its 17th century namesake, but it grew in time. It’s now a blogging powerhouse, putting out news, gossip, and exclusives to hundreds of thousands of readers a week.
The halls of Westminster aren’t kind to upstarts, but it’s got a warmer reception in other quarters. Many appreciate its incisive focus on Parliamentary politics, even if it can’t blow the chamber up. It’s chronicled the rise and fall of dynastic figures in its own style.
The presence of it harks back to the older ways of journalism, when humour and vigour were as important as wine and song to the elite. It explains its name in a blurb, saying, “English newspaper diarists have historically referred to themselves in the third person since the days of the City coffee house pamphleteers”. It works all the same.