Personality Politics Ousts Policy This Weekend

We love gossip, and we love reading or hearing about the outrageous goings on of our political masters.  For public consumption, of course, we all say we're fed up with personality politics, and attacks upon politicians by their enemies.  The media is with us.  They too hate the sordid world of personality politics and would much rather the political classes concentrated on good, hard policy.  Which is presumably why so much of today's political coverage is devoted to the distinctly gossip based revelations of Gordon Brown's former spin doctor, Damian McBride.  And why yesterday, so much time was spent showing and discussing the laughably neanderthal views of an MEP for a minor party.

Godfrey Bloom (I keep wanting to call him Orlando, bizarrely) is a largely joke figure who seeks - genuinely it would appear - to reinforce his image as a caricature blunt speaking, offence giving politician.  He probably sees himself as "telling it like it is".  Most people see him as being, frankly, a bit of an ass.  He used the hackneyed term "bongo bongo land" to refer to Africa (following in the verbal footsteps of the late Alan Clark, who got into hot water using the same term), and completely unsurprisingly has caused more opprobrium to be heaped on him and UKIP by referring to women as "sluts".  Actually, he hooted the phrase "all the women here are sluts" or some such, whilst at a champagne fuelled reception marvellously titled "Women In Politics".  Mr. Bloom's final escapade was to rage at the Channel 4 journalist Michael Crick for being a 'racist' (Crick had pointed out that all the faces on the UKIP manifesto cover were white; Bloom presumably thought his best line of attack was to inexplicably refer to Crick as a racist).  He then hit Crick over the head with the manifesto - something most politicians have probably wanted to do to Mr. Crick in the past (you can see it here).

The best thing to have done with Godfrey Bloom is probably to ignore him, a bit like ignoring the ubiquitous nutter on the bus who plagues you with his political views.  But the modern British media doesn't have that level of self-restraint, and rather enjoyes stories featuring the Godfrey Blooms of this world, and in any case it was a lot more fun than reporting the actual mechaics of the UKIP conference.  So cue much coverage of the lamentable UKIP MEP.

Then there's Damian McBride and his memoirs (the revelations from which have caused Ed Miliband to suggest that he called for McBride's sacking - very quietly, it would seem *).  The iniquities of Mr. McBride when he was a spin doctor to Gordon Brown are already largely well known, but he's just written his memoirs, and apparently they're quite well written and in any case, here's a great opportunity to have another go at Labour and Ed Miliband if you happen to be a Conservative supporting newspaper, which the Daily Mail - who have serialised the memoirs - is.  There's no doubt that it is fascinating, gripping stuff.  It has frankly malicious, sinister, utterly amoral political doings at its heart that illuminate a paranoid and dark time at Number 10 when Gordon Brown was in charge.  But it is also essentially a story for the Westminster political village.  The fact that it has gained such extraordinary coverage is back down to the undeniably sound principle that we all prefer a good gossip to a conversation of substance.  Covering McBride's sordid past is far easier, and much more entertaining, than trying to engage in genuinely enthusiastic discussion about Ed Miliband's new welfare policies, or whatever his Next Big Thing is going to be.

So it's worth remembering, when we read newspaper editorials loftily telling us that politicians have failed us all by focusing too much on personalities and not enough on policies, just who it is who gives such nonsense a free run for so long.  That'd be the newspapers.

* McBride confirmed Ed's account in a tweet to journalist Tim Walker, saying that he told Gordon Brown to get rid [of McBride] and he was right.  Tweets here.

How Does Brown's Resignation Change the Picture?

It's taken Gordon Brown a long weekend and several intense conversations with Mandelson and Campbell to make the decision that John Major reached within hours. Now that he's reached it, at just the right time to throw a spanner into the Conservative-Lib Dem talks, does it make an alliance with Labour more attractive to the Lib Dems?

Nick Robinson cogently outlined three problems for the LD's - they still get Brown until September; they then get another unelected leader; and they open themselves up to being called a 'loser's coalition'. In addition to those problems, Labour and the Lib Dems alone do not have enough seats to reach a majority (unlike a Con-LD deal), so need to bring in the varied interests of the nationalist parties and the Green MP. In those circumstances, do we get 'strong and stable government'? Not likely. And then there's the undoubted problem for Nick Clegg of entering a coalition with an as yet undetermined prime minister for the long term. If he joins with Labour now, he could end up serving under Ed Balls, David Miliband, Harriet Harman, or any one of several others? Is he equally happy with any of them? All, of course, unelected as PM.

New Labour has lived and died by the spin, and they are now using a last minute spin gambit from a discredited leader to give their tainted brand a few extra gasps of the breath of power. Like they needed to do anything else to remind us of their unsuitability for power.

UPDATE: Robinson accurately describes this as "an audacious bid by Gordon Brown to keep Labour in power, and to keep himself in power for a few more months". Audacious indeed.

Harp Playing Angels On Clouds In Downing Street

We have, of course, got it all wrong about Gordon Brown's Downing Street, as Ed Balls, a deeply lovely man himself, with nothing but kind words for all about him, has corrected us. The BBC reports him thus -

Schools Secretary Ed Balls also told the BBC he did not "recognise this atmosphere" of alleged bullying at Number 10.

"Jeremy Heywood, who is the top civil servant, said the opposite was true - it was a friendly, caring, supportive environment. I think he is right," Mr Balls said.

Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it, to know what a caring, supportive, beautiful environment No. 10 is to work in? Don't know WHAT Alastair Darling can have been on about when he referred to the 'forces of hell' being unleashed. And remind me, why did former No.10 adviser Damian McBride have to resign? Was he just being too nice to people? Or was he caught out trying to plant some truly unpleasant, untrue and hurtful stories about his enemies on a website?

How Spin Works - Part 2

Pity poor Christine Pratt. For whatever motive - irritation, perhaps, that she was hearing a story being denied by Downing Street which she knew to be true - she made the fateful decision to enter the political bear pit. She said that Downing Street was wrong to deny that there was any bullying at the heart of government, as her own charity, the National Bullying Helpline, had received complaints from No. 10 staff. At which point, Ms. Pratt became the target of a variety of spin efforts on the part of No.10, that might well qualify as a form of bullying in its own right. She was derided as a political operative, a stooge of the Conservatives, someone unfit to be running a national charity, a liar, an unreliable witness. She has also managed to lose all four of her national patrons as a result of the furore. So Ms. Pratt has seen at first hand just how aggressive the political world can be.

As for No. 10, it has pulled out all the stops to alleviate a damaging story. As I've already noted, they have managed to deny allegations that were not originally made. They have had the Dark Lord of Spin himself, Lord Mandelson, casting aspersions on anyone who has dared to suggest that Gordon Brown is anything other than merely 'driven' and 'passionate'. We've even seen John Prescott - yes, he of the flailing punch - step up to the cameras once again and assert, with his usual pugnacity, that of course there is no bullying at No. 10.

The government did have some time to prepare its response, as Patrick Wintour at the Guardian (The Observer's sister paper) reports today. The Conservative blogger Iain Dale reminds his readers of John Prescott's record, and of Peter Mandelson's earlier views of Gordon Brown. All of which adds up to a political whirlwind that may claim poor, unwary victims like Ms. Pratt, but is unlikely to significantly change the electoral arithmetic. There is an issue of character with regards to Gordon Brown, and there has always been an issue of spin, with New Labour (Mandelson, Brown and Blair's creation) in particular. But voters will still be more interested in who gets them out of an economic crisis most effectively.

Spin and How It Works

Gordon Brown has denied ever hitting anyone. Excellent. Well done. But it wasn't one of the allegations made against him in any case.
No. 10 categorically deny that Sir Gus O'Donnell ever instituted an inquiry into Gordon Brown's behaviour. That's nice. But again, it wasn't one of the allegations made - all Rawnsley says is that O'Donnell heard informally about Brown's behaviour and gave a private warning to the Prime Minister.

So, when in doubt, just refute a few allegations that weren't actually made

The Smears Behind Joyce's Resignation

As if Labour hadn't had enough trouble with smear allegations after the Damian McBride affair, two newspapers - neither admittedly friends of Labour - have published stories suggesting that Eric Joyce had other reasons for resigning as a parliamentary aide to Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth. Those reasons, according to the Times and the Mail on Sunday, were to do with smear campaigns being proposed against the outgoing and incoming heads of the Army. General Sir Richard Dannatt has angered Labour's high command with his very public criticisms of their provision for forces in the field, and it is clear that government ministers are worried that his successor, General Sir David Richards, might be similarly awkward. His daughter apparently works for David Cameron, thus fueling their suspicion.

Black propaganda is, unfortunately, part of the warp and weft of politics, and you can usually spot a government on the way out when its black ops start to spring back into its face becauase no-one wants to play their game any more. The Whitehall bunker seems ever more out of control at the moment.

Labour's Deceit Made Clear

Most of us will instinctively mistrust the weasel words of Gordon Brown and his acolytes as they seek to explain how they never intended to go for an election, it was hyped up beyond expectations, etc. etc. Really? Difficult to explain, then, why Labour headquarters had already printed out election leaflets with a named date for November before the Tories ever assembled for their conference! The leaflets in question, poorly 'hidden' under a pile of innocuous paper, were spotted by eagle-eyed students on a recent visit to the home of Labour spin!