McNulty for Chief Whip?  

TrevorsDen

Then this points to me that the current whip will not be reshuffled as Nick Brown can then continue in his shadow whipping operation.

Would McNulty want Nick Brown as deputy and would Brown risk a weakening of his position by moving his namesake?

And what is the point of a reshuffle if some significant change of tack is going to take place? No change in policy then why reshuffle?

Is Brown in a mess? Is the pope Catholic?

mitch

Ahhhh more dithering then.

JP

"Friendly and engaging?" Tony McNulty comes across as about as friendly and engaging as a kick in the boll*cks!

Chuck Unsworth

"He is a friendly and engaging presence on TV"

Seriously?

He makes my skin crawl.

dogface

"Friendly and engaging"? Uncouth and bullying manner disguises these qualities rather well!

EyeSee

Not sure if there is a good signal to the planet you are on James. Here's hoping. The only way savvy could appear in the same sentence as McNulty would be if it also included 'voters come to senses and no one votes for him'. McNulty is the sort of person the word obnoxious was invented for. Certainly he is a cipher for New Labour in that he is a conniving, self serving other world being. Frequently feeling called on to explain the interchangability of black and white. A common requirement since the Lying Party came to power.

Nicholas

Horrible, loathsome Labour thug.

Seasurfer1

The English may not stomach another Scot. Times are about to change re this Scottish matter.

molesworth 1

And I quote...

"molesworth 1
September 25th, 2008 10:01am

I think it'll be between Nick Brown (who unfailingly reminds of Alan B'stard's fish-faced little sidekick) & Tony McNulty, of whom you'd really think twice about getting on the wrong side."

So what's all this nonsense about filthy hacks trawling the blogosphere for ideas,then,eh..?

GS London

"He is a friendly and engaging presence"

Good Lord. Are you mad?

jon dee

Tony McNultys TV presence during the 42 days debate was that of a sweating sneering gum-chewing thug.
Ideal Labour Chief Whip material then.

mac

Like my fellow coffee-housers, I'm puzzled by this benign estimation of minister McNulty. Every time I've listened to him at interview I've found him to be a hectoring, over-bearing and relentlessly on-message zealot, hammering the party's approved line on the latest dubious and sinister Home Office 'security improving' measure he was there to justify. Ideal clay I would have thought for the 'obey me, or suffer the consequences culture' favoured by G Brown.

Ian C

It is not what you or I might think of him, it is what those gullible enough - a significant majority - think that matters.

And if we, for a moment, put oursleves in their shoes, McNulty has a whole lot more of what it takes than the vast majority of the current Labour first and second string. Kid yourselves not, he would be a strenghtening of the front bench for Brown.

Max Kaye

"He is a friendly and engaging presence on TV"

More like a 1930s' NKVD heavy: the sort that would liquidate his own family for advancement and his 'cause'.

Max Kaye

My original comments on McNulty have - I assume - been deemed too extreme to publish.

I'll therefore limit myself to repeating Nicholas's comment:

Horrible, loathsome Labour thug.

Liz Brown

McNulty - he master of spin - cannot open his mouth without claiming that black is white - a loathsome liar - aaaaaaaaaaaargh

David Lindsay

Peter Hitchens records (http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2008/06/what-mr-mcnulty.html) McNulty's words to an Index on Censorship gathering on Monday 16th June (the strange reference to the "outlaw community" is to his Irish background - the academic Conor Gearty had used this phrase earlier):

"It is not my job to pass laws that outlaw radical politics. It is not my job to come up with laws that say 'anyone who says they don't like George Bush, Tony Blair or what's happened or not happened over the last 5-10 years is somehow a violent extremist'. It absolutely isn't.

"I know it's terribly hard to believe but I used to be radical myself. I used to think that politics was about selling newspapers...my excuse was I was very, very young but, you know, like a lot of government I'm an ex-Trot.

"And discovered myself in a very very clumsy way what politics was all about and what I wanted from politics.

"I say - by the by - at a time when it was very very dodgy in some senses to be so coming from the 'outlaw community'. I remember growing up in the 70s, I remember my father coming to me and saying 'Can I just have a look at all those books you've got and I know you're every interested amongst other things in Irish politics but PTA (The Prevention of Terrorism Act) has just been passed, if you've got anything there from or by the IRA you'd better get rid of it'.

"I don't say that's anything like the experiences that some have now but I do understand that the mythology that says that as a consequence of that the entire Irish community in this country were against the terrorism effort or against the PTA doesn't follow at all. This is how far back I go...In the late 60s going to church in Kilburn and seeing young men dressed all in black with berets and sunglasses on 'collecting for the boys' - as it was described at the time - and old ladies going up and spitting at them and throwing the collection bucket over.at the time. I do think there are very thin parallels between all aspects of the Irish position and what prevails now. I know it's difficult, I know it's contested terrain. I am not about outlawing young people from any community having radical views, and disagreeing with my views. It's absolutely the opposite."

Which is why some of us are determined to restore the party that was otherwise destroyed by Communist and Trotskyist infiltration of the unions and the Constituency Labour Parties respectively, eventually leading to the creation of New Labour by utterly unrepentant old Communists, Trotskyists and fellow-travellers who had merely moved on in terms of their means from economics to the culture wars, with their ends unchanged.

The party owing "more to Methodism than to Marx", indeed owing nothing whatever to Marx. The party of the Welfare State, workers' rights, progressive taxation, full employment, strong local government and a strong Parliament.

The party (or at least, a party - the same gap now exists where the Tories used to be) of, in the words of Hitchens, "patriotism, the Armed Forces, proper policing, proper schools, traditional religion, marriage, and the Monarchy".

The party of Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Bevan and Gaitskell.

Not the party of Tony McNulty.

Chris Heathcote

"He is a friendly and engaging presence" ?! He's a pugnacious bully!

Nicholas

Good post by David Lindsay. Reveals both the cloaked extremism lurking inside New Labour (are some of these people actually sleepers for the destruction of Britain as we know it?) and the much more benign characteristics of the "old" Labour party, now well and truly hi-jacked by charlatans.

One of the reasons may have been the destruction of the traditional British working class - by various factors - and the strong sense of unregulated decency and pragmatism that was once inherent in the English, now being so much under threat from imposed and artificial "diversity", "multi-culturalism" and the heavy, soul destroying hand of Political Correctness. The latter particularly as the gagging tool used by characters like the radical Trot in Labour clothing and "reformed" Terror supporter McNulty to gain their power and suppress their opponents. Ironic that in grasping power these characters now resemble (and much more so) the totalitarian fascists they once believed they "struggled" against.

The end always justifies the means to these radicals, it's just they never get there. Anyone planning to vote again for them needs to think long and hard about their dangerous and destructive credentials.

Frank Pulley

McNumpty has been toxic for policing in this country. I'm just very glad he's leaving the Home Office, pity his bovine boss isn't. His pseudo-intellectual bullshit, delivered with the cockney still breaking through occasionally - a sort of male Hyacinth Bucket @ Bouquet, tells us all we want to know. Since when was Chief Whip a promotion? He's there's to whip a herd of cattle with foot and mouth disease towards the abattoir for culling and the pyre. There's the beef!

A friendly and engaging presence?? Christ James, I give up on you!

Nah, I geddit! They pay you to print these things to provoke the fury and ephithets that follow, don't they. Good wheeze. Keep it up.

Frank Pulley

Max Kaye

Patience Max, sometimes the 'moderator' is pissing himself at the responses and forgets to print them.

Max Kaye

Thanks Frank Pulley, I was worried that perhaps the Thought Police had got their claws into our mod.... It's cold in Kirkcaldy or wherever it is to that they exile political dissidents.

Maria

James clearly hasn't read Oona King's book 'House Music' where she describes in graphic detail the way Tony McNulty treats his colleagues. Brown alwready has half the female Labour MPs plotting his downfall, making McNulty his Chief Whip is to the surest way to continue his own very quick downfall.

MR MC NULTY NO. 1 FAN

"He is a friendly and engaging presence" -

THIS MAN ALSO IS INTELLIGENT , HARD WORKING AND AN INSPIRATION TO US ALL . AND HE LOOKS TO BE GREAT CRACK ALTOGETHER ! TONY FOR PRIME MINSTER.

A Disgruntled Harrow Resident

I live in Harrow and am unfortunately represented by McNulty - would the Number One Fan like to buy my house so that he can put his vote where his mouth is???
Although McNulty does have an office in Wealdstone - and a house apparently which he was receiving expenses for despite his parents living there - he knows little about his constituency so clearly does not visit his parents very often!
ROLL ON THE GENERAL ELECTION