UK elections

Oh Sugar, Sugar.

Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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I thought Sirallun famously abhorred bullshitters but he seems to be pretty good at it himself.

One minute I’m listening to The Apprentice’s Alan Sugar telling us BBC listeners how utterly fantastic and in control Gordon Brown is (but only after Gordo promised to ennoble him in pursuit of temporary glory while The Apprentice is still on air. He didn’t come out and say it before that). Then I turned to the Guardian’s politics liveblog to find this post:

1.09pm: A Tory press officer has just been round with a photocopy of a letter Alan Sugar (as he then was) wrote to the Financial Times in March 1992. This is how it starts:

Sir, I have noted with disgust the comments of a certain Mr Gordon Brown who has accused me of doing well out of the recession after reading the letter published in the Times from 40 top industrialists.

I do not know who Mr Gordon Brown is. Excuse my ignorance, but I don’t. Whoever he is [shadow trade and industry secretary], he has not done his homework properly. The man doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How he has the audacity to say that Amstrad or Alan Sugar has flourished in recession is a complete mystery to me.

Hahaha. Poor old Gordo, he really is a disaster area.

UPDATE

1 Apparently that quote was broadcast on last night’s Newsnight, so I’m well behindhand with it. But I didn’t watch Newsnight, it’s on the same time as Question Time so again maybe I’m not.

2 Shuffling continues apace – the latest is that Hoon’s resigned and Tom Watson, self-described digital MP, has Twittered his goodbye; it reads like something addressed to Kim Jong Il:

However spitefully your character is traduced and your triumphs degraded by Labour’s enemies, they can never erase these towering achievements to your name. To have had the opportunity to serve the public as one of your Ministers has been an honour, for which I thank you.

Pass the sickbag, Mother.

3 And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust…. Margaret Beckett’s going too, to spend more time with her hanging baskets.

4: I was right: next goes Caroline “I am staying in the Government. I am very proud to be in the Labour Government, I am very proud to be part of Gordon Brown’s Government” Flint, who actually spoke in support of Brown this morning. Now going, she’s saying he treated her like so much “Female window dressing’. This from the woman who recently appeared glammed up in a flame coloured frock and killer heels, posing coyly on a chaise longue for one of the Sunday papers.

5 Ha! One of my most loathed Labour MPs, Employment Minister Tony McNulty, is off too. The trickle’s becoming a flood. The brass-necked, greedy dishonesty and sheer hard-faced gall of Employment Minister Tony McNulty, who’s been highly visible in the Guardian’s pages and elsewhere demonising non-existent cheats and scroungers with his hateful ‘no ifs or buts’ anti benefit fraud campaign, beggars belief. Talk about rubbing the faces of the 2 million unemployed in it. What an asswipe. His constituents think so too – someone graffitied “that’s £60,000 you owe me Tony” on his constituency office door.

Don’t You Know There’s An Election On?

Sleaze, UK elections, UK politics
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The story above is now a thing of the past, says Gordon Brown, who’s been touting his newly rediscovered (for the 5th, or was it 6th? time) Presbyterian conscience all over the media, all the while grinning as rigidly as only someone who just had his medication can.

But crowded out by the blanket coverage of MPs’ licensed larceny and untroubled by very much scrutiny at all Labour’s petty election tricks roll on as usual:

A couple identified as “Gillian and Barry from Port Seton” were quoted in leaflets used in the Lothians as saying: “It’s Gordon Brown’s leadership that will get us through these tough times. Labour is the only party on the side of hard-working families, standing up for Scottish people nationally and in Europe.”

The couple and their young daughter Hanna also appear on the front of Scottish Labour’s manifesto for Thursday’s poll.However, leaflets distributed in the Highlands and Islands attribute precisely the same quote to “The Conniff Family, from Wester Ross”.

The quote also appears next to a family on Labour leaflets in Greater Manchester, with the phrase “British people” substituted for “Scottish people”.

Another variation turns up in Central Scotland, where “the McDonald family from Sauchie” feel they can “rely on Gordon Brown’s leadership to see the country through these tough times”.

One of the Conniff family, Christine, was a Labour party list candidate in the Highlands and Islands at the 2007 elections.

Dundee West MSP Joe Fitzpatrick, the SNP’s European election campaign coordinator, said Labour had been caught red-handed.

They do seem to making a habit of that.

Lest the voters should temporarily forget such blatant dishonesty and actually make a decision on the issues, Labour’s spin merchants have drafted ‘personal’ apologies for Labour’s MPs, MEPs and local councillors to send to voters ahead of this Thursday’s Euro and local council elections :

The letter for Labour’s local councillors

Dear [Insert Name]

I know how angry people are with Westminster politicians. I suspect you are as fed up I am, as day after day more stories come out showing greed and in some cases, serious wrongdoing. I would like to echo Gordon Brown’s words – that I am sorry that the political system and some MPs have let you down.

I’m sure Insert Name will find that very reassuring and resolve to vote Labour right away, or they would if they could find its name on the ballot paper.

But Insert Name may be a Wirral voter, where the spirit of Damien McBride is alive and kicking. Local Labour activists are accused of using BNP tactics against a defecting councillor:

WIRRAL’S Labour group last night refused to comment on an email calling for help to hand out leaflets in the ward of a defector from their party – despite one of their own volunteers comparing it to “a BNP mailing”.

The email, leaked to the Daily Post, contains a furious rant against former Labour councillor Denis Knowles who two weeks ago quit the party and crossed the council chamber to the Tories.

The leaflet also featured a mock-up picture of Cllr Knowles with two faces – one saying he is a Labour supporter and the other saying he is Conservative.

[…]

… the email calling for party members to deliver the leaflet was criticised by one of its recipients. The email describes local Conservatives Ian Lewis, Leah Fraser and Chris Blakeley, along with Tory leader Jeff Green as “very scary people” and highlights their names with skull and crossbones motif. It is signed “ANON” and underneath says: “Leader’s Office, Wirral Council” and gives local Labour HQ contact details…. It is understood that the email was not intended to go outside the Labour group.

They really don’t have much luck with those internal emails, do they.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being partisan, so will I’ll also point out that Labour aren’t the only party resorting to negative spin and dirty tricks. The Lib Dems in Cornwall are also accused:

THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS have been forced to make a formal apology after using a highly offensive obscene term to describe an opposition councillor in a campaigning leaflet.

Mebyon Kernow councillor Stuart Cullimore said he was “absolutely appalled” at being the subject of foul-mouthed abuse in an official Lib-Dem leaflet ahead of Thursday’s county council and Euro elections.

The leaflet, calling Coun Cullimore a “greasy-haired t***”, was distributed to houses in the Camborne South division on behalf of Lib-Dem Cornwall Council candidate Anna Pascoe, who said “foul play” is suspected.

It’s my considered opinion that judged entirely by his photo and the fact he’s a candidate for the formerly Vlaams Blok-sympathising, Cornish separatist party Mebyon Kernow, that the candidate is indeed a greasy haired twat. Anyone can have an opinion, but it’s hardly the thing to put in an election leaflet.

With only 3 days to go till the election there may well be many more dirty tricks happening nationwide, but if there are, they’re not being reported very well. Not enough space o the front or inside pages and for that we can again blame dishonest MPs.

BNP Fail

UK elections, UK politics
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Various socialist blogs are busy with their ritual “stop the BNP” dance as the European elections approach, arguing about tactical voting and voting for which party will “let the BNP in” but how dangerous is the BNP really? Daniel Davis for one doesn’t think it’s very likely they’ll win a seat: “ The polls are coming in, and BNP support is basically slap bang where it was in 2004 – about 4% in online polling and about 2% when people actually have to identify themselves face to face as a BNP supporter.”

Apart from the polling data, which can always turn out to be wrong or too optimistic, there are other indications the BNP isn’t that much of a threat this time around. They’ve put their foot in their mouth on the Gurkha question, not to mention questioning a victoria Cross recipient on his bravery, neither of which does much for their patriotic “we’re not racist, honest guv” image.

BNP election leaflet fail

Now take a look at their election leaflet, with its Union Jack imagery and patriotic spitfire and properly British people smiling and explaining why they like the BNP. But:

Georgia Gould told to fuck off

New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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Labour rank and file reject candidate bid of entitled, unqualified second generation New Labourite:

Georgia Gould, whose mother, Gail Rebuck, is the head of Random House publishers, caused consternation among the rank and file in the solid Labour seat of Erith and Thamesmead in south-east London, when she launched her bid to replace the sitting MP, John Austen, who is standing down at the next election.

At a secret hustings last night, Ms Gould’s brutal introduction to the rough world of local politics ended in defeat.

[…]

Oxford graduate Ms Gould had been accused of attempting to parachute into a safe seat through her impeccable New Labour credentials.

Her father, Lord Gould, was given his peerage by Mr Blair for his role in helping to found New Labour: there are photos of Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, bouncing Ms Gould on his knee when she was a baby. Her mother is a close friend of the Blairs. Eyebrows were also raised when Alastair Campbell and Tessa Jowell lent Ms Gould their public support.

Four years ago Gould would’ve won this candidacy, no matter how the rank and file felt about it. But with the sliding fortunes of New Labour in the past few years generally and the ongoing revelations about corruption in Parliament especially, the local Labour Party sensibly decided, safe seat or not, having somebody with no other qualifications but her name as a candidate was not a good idea. It could’ve been a reverse Portillo moment at the next election otherwise. Of course the winner of the hustings, Teresa Pearce, isn’t that great either, having been a “tax expert with PricewaterhouseCoopers”…

Do Keep Up, Pundits

Gordon Brown, New Labour, UK elections, UK politics
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Me, April 2008:

I predict, right here and now, that Alan Johnson will be the next leader of the Labour party. I’m even willing to put a fiver on it, as I did on John Major, and I was right about him too…

….who would this likely new leader be? Harriet Harman? Dawn Primarolo? Cooper herself ? Those cooing martinets of incompetence offend women and men alike. Straw? Iraq – enough said. Hillary Benn? Not unless technocracy gets sexy all of a sudden. One of the Millibands? Surely they can’t’ve finished their work experience already….

You see what I mean. Who’s left that hasn’t pissed everyone off, but Alan Johnson?

Jackie Ashley, recently-turned former Brownite, in The Guardian this morning:

… If the party gets the kind of historic shredding the polls suggest then all bets are off.

…Stopping that kind of meltdown is focusing many minds and explains why Alan Johnson has become such a fashionable figure. He is genuine, genial, moderate and working class. He has spoken loyally without sounding greasy – and without closing the door on his own emergence as a unity candidate leader. Yesterday, defending Hazel Blears, he emphasised her roots as a working-class woman. “Blokes and blokettes, keeping calm and carrying on” would be the message.

What did I tell you? Sometimes even I’m shocked at my own prescience. Anyone willing to stake a fiver against Johnson now?