Alan Johnson is to become the new home secretary, Radio 5 Live has just announced; I wonder what that means for his reported leadership campaign?
No news on Alistair Darling as yet.
As though a reshuffle will make any difference at all; Labour’s ship’s sunk, no matter how many times they rearrange the deckchairs.
Breaking news: Jacqui Smith to stand down this afternoon.
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 mailingâ€.
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.
Only the principle that it’s only fair we should see what we paid for, the new shiny technological Telegraph has published a Google Earth gallery of what MP’s bought with their expenses.
Totnes MP Anthony Steen, for example, claimed more than £80,000 from the taxpayer over four years for work on his Devon estate:
To well-off Tories like Steen the allowances scheme must’ve seemed like just another wizard tax wheeze, just like all those other little wizard tax wheezes Tories’d been using from time immemorial to avoid their full tax obligation and maximise their income stream; just business as usual.
But it’s getting quite hot for some MPs now That we know exactly what kind of lavish lifestyles the taxpayers have been funding all this time, and less well-off Tory Nadine Dorries, whose expenses are also being questioned, has been expressing concern that the media pressure and invasion of privacy may lead to a suicide in Westminster:
“People are constantly checking to see if others are OK. Everyone fears a suicide. If someone isn’t seen, offices are called and checked.”
If MPs want to kill themselves, well, that’s their choice – but far from being suicidal, Steen’s openly defiant. We’re all “Just jealous” (I’m sure he meant envious, but whatever) he says, a view I suspect is shared by many MPs of both parties.
One thing I don’t understand. MPs are just as subject to envy as anyone and Labour members are better at it at than most, so why did none of them ever publicly question the lifestyle their colleagues were suddenly living? MPs are acutely status conscious, always checking out their colleagues to see they aren’t one-upped in some way. Why did no-one object to the sudden acquisition of wealth?
I can only conclude that Labour regarded expenses as the licensed union scheme to beat all licensed union schemes, all the Christmases and birthdays of a lifetime rolled into one. At last former civil servants, union officers and junior lecturers could have the lifestyle they always felt they deserved. Qualms? What qualms? The public voted for them, the public must have wanted them to have the money, QED. Besides, the public would probably never know. As usual few Labour MPs considered the long-term effect of their own legislation.
Now their greed’s been exposed, MPs are threatening suicide. I certainly don’t want anyone to die, for heaven’s sake, but I find it hard to have any sympathy for the poor suffering members. They must have known the voters would think what they were doing was greedy and wrong, but they still chose to do it; and those colleagues who said nothing about the suddenly comfortable lifestyles of formerly cash-strapped MPs condoned the wrongdoing by their silence. What else do they expect? Applause?
It’s no use Dorries trying to blame the media for the pressure MPs are under either. She may have some justification; journalists have always known the allowances scheme was a cover, she says, and for the media to be whipping up outrage now is hypocritical, which is true, and it has been common knowledge that MPs were on the make, witness Alan Duncan’s complicit smirk to camera and response of “Great, isn’t it?’ when tackled by Ian Hislop about excessive MPs expenses on Have I Got News For You.
But ‘everyone knew’ is no excuse: journalists couldn’t publish such wide-rangingly explosive accusations without the actual evidence to back it up and MPs fought tooth and nail not to be forced to reveal that evidence to journalists. So rumour was not substantiated. Nowthe evidence is beginning to be revealed and we all know now, not just a coterie of Westminster insiders.That’s where the pressure coming from, not the media, the voters. No complicit smirks from the voters.
MPs have only themselves to blame: they chose to claim what they did because they thought they wouldn’t be found out. What MPs choose to do now is their choice too: they should stop theatrically threatening suicide like a spoiled teenager who’s had their allowance stopped, and act like responsible adults for once, vote no confidence in the current government and force a general election. Maybe then we might let them leave this discredited parliament with a tiny little bit of respect left.
@AMitchellMP
The new speaker will only have a few weeks to get settled in before the election is called.
about 1 hour ago from web in reply to AMitchellMP
nickbrownmp
Nick Brown