Whether or not Damian McBride had to go should not even have been a matter for debate. Tom Harris is absolutely spot on in his blog when he says: “…the Tories might privately have hoped McBride would survive. After all what could be more damaging to the government and to the Prime Minister himself than to be seen to endorse such behaviour by taking no action against him?” Likewise for anyone else found to have been involved in ’smeargate’.
The more I read about these e-mails, targeting not just politicians but their families, the more I can only conclude this is one of the most sordid and damaging things that have ever been produced by ‘allies’ of a Prime Minister, certainly in my lifetime.
So what happens now? Firstly, don’t underestimate the damage this will do to the body-politic in this country, so the clearer and louder the apology, the better. But beyond that, things have got to change. I know current ministers and ex-ministers who have been briefed against or ’smeared’ by people who have then been allowed to just carry on in their posts, encouraged and rewarded even.
Journalists have informed me that at the last reshuffle I got a dose of the ‘briefing’ treatment by one or two who I thought knew better too. And this is from people who are meant to be on our side! But when they brief people, they always think they’ll never get found out. They’re wrong.
The Prime Minister needs to be strong and firm on this issue, because this goes way beyond party-politics. If people want to play university student union style politics in the blogosphere by smearing people with lies and innuendo, then frankly they should either leave and go back to the campus or the PM should kick them out.
It was bad enough that people don’t want to go into politics because they think politicans are disreputable, now they’re unlikely to for fear of being lied about.
7 Comments
April 14, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I think it is time you realised that you cannot win with Brown and his ‘macho’ boys club. Cometh the hour, cometh the woman – and let he that hath wisdom speak her name, for it the Harman that is Harriet…
She wouldn’t have put with this nonsense – she would have caned those boys soundly with six of the best and put them to bed early without any supper.
She would sort things out – a sort of ‘Mrs Thatcher’ for the left – for when times get tough, cherchez la femme..
April 14, 2009 at 8:32 pm
It is too late for apologies. Brown should have dismissed McBride on the spot and then called in the Police and asked them to investigate what appears to be a very clear case of Malfeasance (Misconduct) in Public Office. The fact that he hasn’t done that rather indicates that there are others who may be implicated.
The only hope for Labour not to be completely annhialated at the next General Election is to get rid of Brown and all the hopeless, incompetent Ministers in his Cabinet. But the electorate won’t put up with another appointed Prime Minister … there will have to be a General Election.
And as for Bedd’s ridiculous idea that Harriet Harman will save Labour ….. the whole point is you need to bring back people who have deserted Labour in droves. So what would be the point of choosing a Minister who manages to alienate half the population every time she opens her mouth! Just because she won a Labour Deputy Leadership contest doesn’t mean the floating voter thinks much of her.
April 14, 2009 at 10:51 pm
You say “‘allies’ of a Prime Minister”. I do not think the two are divisible. This has Brown’s psycho-Stalinist-whack-job-inferiority-complex written all over it. He and only he is to blame for this. He has to go and soon.
April 14, 2009 at 10:56 pm
No, that would never do. Harriet Harman is -unfairly or not- tainted by her association with Gordon Brown.
Her call for the “Court of Public Opinion” to try and convict Sir Fred Goodwin, followed as it was by an attack on the house of Sir Fred by anti-banking protesters, shows how inept Harman is. More Student Union than season politician, sad to say.
April 15, 2009 at 9:19 am
I’m sorry : this is lame..
Stop going on as if this is a party wide issue. It’s a Labour specific issue.
And within that it’s a Gordon Brown issue.
The PM is – as everyone with half a brain knows- the cause and source of the problem.
To solve a problem, you first regonise it exists. Mealy mouthed carp suggesting it is a “politics” issue is just avoiding the issue.
Labour appointed without election a man whom all the pundits – including Labour MPs- said was unfit to do the job, flawed and not a team player. Note “appointed”.
It’s all Labour’s own fault. It is your party’s responsibility to solve it. You will not of course so the electorate will – in the most brutal way possible…
April 15, 2009 at 3:18 pm
[...] be mounting on him to just bite the bullet and say sorry. From the grassroots and back benches of his own party, too (yes, those are four separate links to four separate Labour blogs). And [...]
April 28, 2009 at 7:57 pm
[...] all kicked off with the Damien McBride affair when Blair loyalists came to put the boot in. Feeling confident this has [...]