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I Do Not Believe It!
By Andy | April 14, 2009
There is something to be said for being a keen mountain walker. it often gets you out of the way during the silly/quiet seasons when political scandals break.
The first I heard of the latest scandal was when returning to civilisation by train yesterday. Mind blowing. Let me me get this right, because I might be mis-understanding things.
Damian McBride — or ‘Mad Dog’ to his friends worked in the Treasury. He was caught leaking information to the detriment of John Major, who was arguing against the publication of material relating to Black Wednesday following a Freedom of Information. Gus O’Donnell (then Treasury Permanent Secretary) judged this to be so serious that (according to the Guardian)”he demanded McBride stand down down”. I presume — in plain language — this means he was made to resign. He stood down and immediately became political special adviser to Gordon Brown. Huh?
Derek Draper decides his route back into politics is to become Labour’s head of all things internet. Except that he knew nothing about the internet. He did though know Tory blogger Iain Dale. They went out to lunch and Draper quizzed him about it all. Dale decided to help him and advised on the strategy that led to the new ‘Red Rag’ site. Blow me down with a feather if Draper’s involvement in this world didn’t attract a whole load of interest from right wing bloggers. Derek has lunch with Gordon, presumably to tell our leader that everything is now OK. He — Derek (keep up at the back) will save us all with this interweb thingy.
Charlie Wheelan (Gordon’s old spin merchant) is now at the trade union Unite. Many people there don’t like Charlie. He shouts at them and apparently makes them cry. These mysterious emails get sent around to people using their Unite email accounts and it is suspected — strangely enough — that they may have been leaked to Guido Fawkes by somebody in Unite who didn’t like Charlie.
Some thing this team were behind the ‘briefings’ against Harman that were being made last week.
In this internet enabled world we live by new rules. Those anting to destroy someone on their own side will leak to a right wing blogger. They used to do it in back street pubs in the old days. Now it happens over the net. We know that of course but Derek doesn’t — because he knows nothing about the internet.
Our Party is being destroyed by people who sit at the top table. Their arrogance is such that they believe that only they can be trusted with important things like campaign strategy. Get caught out and you just have to go quiet for a while. Do your time and there will be a way back, eventually. This is presumably the way they behaved in student politics and they’ve just kept going along the same lines ever since. The deal is about keeping power. Those of us who think about policies and about ideas, well, we’re just far too flaky to be trusted with anything important.
If somebody made all this up you wouldn’t believe it. If you saw this in a satirical TV series, or a new movie, you wouldn’t believe it.
I’d like to say this has to stop before it is too late. But it is probably now too late.
The big question is this. Who is big enough to come in and rid us of this bunch?
This might seem like a task that is too big. This may only be dealt with in opposition. But unless it is dealt with — decisively — the way back is going to be long, very long, and very hard.
PS. It seems that a lot of Party ’stuff’ is discussed in karaoke bars. How very 1980’s. Which bars are they using?
Topics: Westminster Village |
April 15th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Andy, You know better than anybody I am no fan of anything New Labour: If you needed to induce me to vomit all you would ahve to do is mention Auntie Tony’s name, or Purnell or Hutton or any other of the quasi Tories that litter the cabinet, that said, a few comments only:
Yes these emails were crass, vile unpleasant and no adult should be proud of himself for writing them. That said, they were written in January and remained unpublished until a character called Paul Staines tried to sell them to the Daily Telegraph, who didn’t buy them, so Mr Staines published them himself several days after the Telegraph turned them down.
Red Rag exists as a domain, but apart from a “Hello World” message (why does everyone still use that banal salutation?) remains dormant. It might be expedient if the site was removed from the internet immediately?
LabourList is the blog that Draper uses: this often contains contributions from the ghastly old waxworks - Mandy has written for it, Alistair Campbell, the dreadful Purnell etc. They rarely reply to their critics. But to be fair they have not censored any of the contributions made on it, especially in this affair, by obvious Tory posters.
The emails were shocking and I just couldn’t believe it when I read some of them in the papers - it is ridiculous to make claims of sexual impropriety against your opponents when they are some pretty dodgy characters in your own party: who will forget Chris Bryant, ex vicar now Labour MP posing in his underpants on a gay website, or the tricks with women Blunkett got up to: even boasting about being the father of the child of a married woman. We have a Home secretary whose husband appafrently watches gay porn. We also have confirmed batchelors announcing they are getting married, when the possibility of a leadership challenge comes up…..
That said, the Tories and their pals at the Mail have now been banging on about this for 4 and a half days. In London we have LBC Radio which is practically a mouthpiece of the Conservative Party constantly encouraging people to talk about it. One obscure backbencher, Nadine Dorries has made a second career out of popping up on radio at all hours of the day and night telling anybody who will listen how angry she is, how this apology or Brown’s letter is not enough, how it could harm her “career” (I suspect Mrs Dorries is the only person worried abour Mrs Dorries wretched career). Yes of course she has a right to be angry, but to keep going on about it, threatening to sue, suggests that she quite enjoys her role as victim, and if she is going to sue why not get on and do it?. The Tories themselves are keeping this going, which rather gives the lie to the suggestion their main concern is the recession and the bad times people are going through losing their jobs and homes - I daresay those people couldn’t give a damn about these emails.
It is not unknown for the Tories to smear as we all know - just two or three years ago George Osborne suggested Brown was “autistic”.
Yesterday we had the unpleasant sight of three former ministers coming out of their political coffins to pour more petrol on the flames: Byers, Milburn and Field: Field has never got over being sacked eleven years ago and loses no opportunity to give the government a thrashing. Milburn became a consultant to a private health company weeks after flouncing out of the cabinet the first time where he was Health secretary - a company he had been dealing with in that capacity
And Byers: The man whose trecollections of meetings were entirely different to everyone else who had attended it, the man who, while attending a conference, picked up a woman took her up to his hotel room to “see his etchings, left her for a few minutes and reappeared wearing only his socks and glasses. Are any of this tawdry trio in aposition to take the moral high ground and give anyone any lessons in behaviour.
Charlie Clarke has been another “Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells”. Poor Charlie - I don’t see why he had to resign anyway as Home Secretary, since the mistakes were not of his making - and at least he didn’t make us pay for 88p bath plugs. But he, too, never loses a chance to put the boot in.
Finally McBride: Yes a revolting character, but these sort of people are: Remember Bernard Ingham, who used to take swipes at anyone who upset Mrs T - even describing one of her ministers (John Nott) as “semi detatched”.
If I had to appear as Councl for Defence of McBride I would say this: Yes what he did was crass, stupid, unforgiveable. But he resigned. His predecessor, Alistair Campbell, who did the same job for Blair that McBride did for Brown, encouraged the production of dodgy dossiers (and wrote parts of it)that led this country to prosecute an illegal war. A war that still continues and has killed thousands of people including young British troops. He made sure the lies and spin were backed up by people like John Scarlett (who Campbell described as “a mate”). He helped hound an innocent man, Dr David Kelly to his death, and when his repulsive behaviour finally led to his having to resign, he hawked a one man variety show round theatres, like a fifth rate music hall star. In recent times he has been rehabilitated and will “help” Labour at the next election campaign.
McBrides action, stupid and improper though they were, killed nobody. What real harm has been done? Well, apart from embarrassing senior figures and a backbencher from the Conservative party, and doing damage to the Labour party in general and his former boss in particular, little compared to Campbell. Everyone knows these were lies, and the matter would have died had not the Conservative Party and certain disgruntled, and in some cases, disgraced, ex Labour ministers
kept it going.
If I may I would suggest to you there is another scenario going on here: We are six weeks away from the European elections. labour are expected to do badly. Could this be yet one more desperate throw of the dice to get a Blairite elected as leader BEFORE the next election?. Byers and Milburn, the great double act are ueber-Blairites, and just after their lectures yesterday ANOTHER Blairite Purnell made a speech (re)announcing) more of his draconian “crackdowns” in Freuds Tory Welfare Reform Bill, this time about alcoholics, which Purnell seems not to understand is a serious illness, and there are not enough rehabilitation centres nationwide to cope with the prob lems they have.
I sense a Blairite plot coming on here. What do you think, Andy?
April 16th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Brwon is olD Labour savvey, he thinks that Obama won his massive election by using the inter
April 16th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Andy - You said “This may only be dealt with in opposition. But unless it is dealt with — decisively — the way back is going to be long, very long, and very hard.”
And opposition is where New Labour are most deservedly headed - and the way back - probably not in my lifetime - what a waste. All those years in opposition and once in office make a cock up of everything. John Smith will be turning in his grave.
When New Labour get kicked out at the next election I believe they will be in opposition even longer than before. Our trust in them was truly betrayed.
Well, never mind Andy - in a few weeks when you are on the Challenge you will be very fortunate - away from all the idiocy of New Labour - relax in the world that matters - nature at its best!
April 16th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Sory about this will come back later, we have a thunder storm I’ve lost power twice now. I’ll come back and finish it later.
April 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Brown has now apologised, but it is STILL not good enough for that ghastly self-obsessed Nadine Dorries creature.
First the letter of regret was not good enough
Now the apology is not good enough
How typical of MPs of a certain sort, so self obsessed, so far up her own a***, her little private squabbles are more important than her constituents problems.
April 20th, 2009 at 6:34 am
I really despair of the idiot Blairites - their crooked efforts to get Georgia Gould (22 year old daughter of Blair’s “favourite pollster”) nominated as prospective candidate for Erith and Thamesmead has now been shown up and exposed. Not only did Tessa Jowell, estranged wife of “colourful” David Mills, tout for her last Thursday, much to the anger of current MP John Austin, Goulkd’s team were apparently handing out “postal” vote forms already filled out for them.
This young woman has just come down from Oxford (haven’t they all, in New Labour?) and her only “work” experience has been for Blair’s otiose “religous foundation”. What does she know of the problems of the working class in the tower blocks of Thamesmead?
If nepotism is still the watchword in NL at least they shouldn’t give juvenilles extra help, not even for family friends
NL already has enough right-wing scum in it’s ranks (Purnell, Hutton, McNulty et al) it doesn’t need more. When will Labour as a whole realise that Blairism is dead?. They seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the Tories who were out of favour for years trying to revive the corpse of Thatcherism
April 20th, 2009 at 6:36 am
P.S. I forgot to mention that one of the boxes of the aforesaid “postal votes” stored at Labour HQ had been found to be “tampered with” on Friday night so the selection meeting for the following day had to be cancelled.
I’d say bad luck, Georgia - I doubt they can now let her “win” but no doubt it will be hawked around safe Labour seats in the North East till some idiot local party agree to accept it.
April 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
The Georgia Gould case does seem to be worrying, I agree!
April 21st, 2009 at 5:54 am
I suspect, Andy, that she is a spoiled brat who has always been daddies girl and used to getting everything she wants (You can imagine her stamping her little foot and pouting “I want to be an M.P NOW daddy!”). That somebody - or perhaps more than one - has been prepared to go as far as they have suggests to me that this is yet another example of the battle of the Blairites and Brownites - odd that when the seal was broken the ballot papers were torn up. Equally odd is the fact that Gould has been represented by a P.R. firm and thousands of glossy brochures have been distributed. Let’s hope the Erith party get a more representitive Mp - they have enough real problems without being given soiled goods. There is a very good analysis by Andrew Gilligan in yesterdays London Evening Standard. There is also a photograph of daddy, Alistair Campbells wife or whatever she is, and the little darling herself:-
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23678200-details/This+girl+is+not+good+for+Labour+%E2%80%93+or+for+London/article.do
April 21st, 2009 at 6:07 am
For some reason, the picture has been removed since the article first appeared, I ahve sourced the picture of the tedious trio from elsewhere:
http://www.mashget.com/uk/2009/04/19/labour-manifesto-cover-girl-at-four-playing-with-a-toy-office-at/