Now Alastair Campbell sticks the boot into McBride and Whelan

Moraymint

I don't know about 'spin', but the way things are looking for Brown and his political and presentational mafia right now, the term 'flat spin' comes to mind.

C'mon all you clever journalists, media commentators and constitutional academics and lawyers: how do we foment a peaceful revolution now? In other words, how do we get this bandit Government out of office immediately, instead of playing impotent audience to another year of this disgusting nonsense?

Bearing in mind that Brown's state is now costing us some £600 billion per year, and rising fast.

You couldn't make it up.

Diswiss

Wow! From a leftie aswell.

Things really are changing,with some truths coming out for once.

cmp

'I was struck not just by their unpleasantness, but also by their incompetence'
What he really meant was 'I was struck by their incompetence much more than their unpleasantness'

Mitch

"It exposes the Brown mentality for all the world to see."

We have gazed into this miasma and do not like what we see.
14 months and still no vision as promised.

Paul Round

" Not through any attempt at distancing"; then why issue such a statement?Campbell is clearly rattled and whatever our views on the man 9and mine are unprintable) he rarely puts a foot so wrong when it comes to communicating.This affair has some distance to run yet

nick

after that vote of confidence Mcbride will be probably be found wandering in a field with a penknife in one hand....

atticvs

Et tu Bruti ??

Silent Hunter

Has anyone said - Kettle - Pot - Black - yet! LOL

Dave Weeden

"... Alastair Campbell sticks the boot into ... Whelan" is not news. They've hated each other for a long time. "but I know the differences, even if they don't." is code for "apart from other things, I'm good at this, and he's not."

Whelan's always been associated with Brown, so Whelan's "mentality" being "exposed" isn't new either. Essentially, I think you're milking something that isn't much of a story. "Campbell renews feud with enemy." Wow.

Diswiss - New Labour's always been riven with internal tensions. (Don't tell me the Tories aren't too!) CMP, however, gets it right. Campbell always combined competence with unpleasantness.

Jenny

When you remember that Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell had Brown on their backs for a decade using the same sort of bullying tactics (the flunkeys may change, but it was always Brown who gave them their sense of direction) it's not hard to understand why people like Campbell and Charles Clarke are saying what they are saying.

This is not some new modus operandi for Brown, it's how he does it. Damian McBride may be gone but Brown will seek an equally ruthless replacement.

What's odd is how many in the media, such as Paul Dacre and Peter Oblong (mind you, he thinks a man with a false passport in the Middle East deserves sympathy if he's picked up by the authorities), have written about Brown's moral superiority over Blair. Indeed, of his moral goodness generally.

Is this going to disabuse them? Perhaps Mr Oborne is too busy writing love notes to Binyam Mohamed to care.

Nicholas

I second Moraymint's plea. They should be ousted NOW and if the Cameroons have no stomach for it somebody else needs to lead the people to the barricades.

I don't think I can bear another year of Brown putting off the inevitable, 12 more months of collective Labour lying and deceit, 356 grey, interminable days of collective Labour mismanagement, goodness knows how many more barmy Labour ideas and/or laws and above all the collective Labour delusion that they have some God-given right to govern, let alone are fit to govern.

But a good suggestion on one of the blogs is that we henceforth copy all our personal and private emails to No.10.

jon dee

I nearly began this post with, "If Campbell is to be believed", but thankfully my memory returned just in time.

I think I'll conserve my energy for a forthcoming Iraq War inquiry when his words will be worth greater consideration.

Ross

Alastair Campbell is worse than Draper & McBride, after all at least they more or less targeted politicians unlike Campbell who was happy to smear elderly hospital patients who had been mistreated like Rose Addis.

TGF UKIP

James, what on earth are you doing promoting Campbell again?

What Campbell says or writes is entirely irrelevant. He long ago left behind any concept of truth so nobody believes a word he says or writes.

He knows he only has traction because fellow journos are daft or misguided enough to quote him.

elizabeth

There is something rotten in the heart of Gordon Brown's Downing Street, and it has spread to places like Oxfam's HQ in Oxford, which are filled with Draper's and McBride's henchmen: Antonia Bance for instance, who is deputy director of the UK Poverty Programme, and is allegedly using Oxfam for her own party political ambitions, if you go by many of the comments on her blog.

RM

Given that Charlie Whelan is copied on the emails and is ths part of the story, why not more focus on Unite and the over £7 million they have given of their members money to Labour since March 2007 (Electoral Commission website).

Lexander

Come on Lord Meddlesome, I want to hear your comments. You know him as well as anybody.

Verity

Nick, or the fingerprints could be put on the penknife afterwards, but while he was still warm.

Denis Cooper

Moraymint, there is no legal way to bring down a government which commands a reliable working majority of 63 in the House of Commons.

The illegal way would be to arrange for Labour MPs in marginal seats to have fatal accidents - non-fatal accidents wouldn't be good enough, as Brown would order them to be carried through the lobby on stretchers, as has happened in the past - but even then it's quite likely that the Liberal Democrats would decide to keep the Labour government in office until after the second Irish referendum in October.

The British people had their say on May 5th 2005, and eventually they'll be given another say on some day chosen by the Prime Minister, which I find will be June 3rd 2010 at the latest:

http:// www.electoralcommission.org.uk/faq/elections/what-is-the-last-possible-date-for-a-general-election

rather than in May 2010 as might be assumed.

For periods of up to five years and a month between the days when general elections have been granted by the incumbent Prime Minister, the British people are legally disempowered from changing their national government.

As Rousseau put it:

"The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it."

Interestingly, the Conservative Party's "Democracy Taskforce" did not address this fundamental problem.

Moraymint

Denis Cooper: thanks for that; I'm enlightened (if not happy). That said, I'm going with Nicholas's post. Henceforth, my email correspondence with friends relating to the unmitigated disaster that is our Labour Government will now be copied to No 10 Downing Street.

I'll (try to) let you know when I'm arrrested.

Not from the News of the Screws

Just curious? How much did Guido get from News International for his efforts. Heard it was north of £15K. Nice work

an stern

So, are those stories in the emails true or not? That is what I and the rest of the great unwashed would like to know. Also, how does one 'hack' into someone's emails? Is it legal?

Muhammad Haque

The challenge is really about the location of the official Opposition Vis a Vis ethics, morality, accountability, honesty and transparency. The ordinary people in the UK are not being served at all well by the mainstream media frenzies. They are the ones who have had to benefit most by the behaviour of McBride and Draper.. It is only a matter of time before one of the tabloid titles or even a broadcasting outfit engaged in similar commercial pursuits reveals further details about the ‘leaking’; to or the ‘discovery’ by Guido F of the particular communications… Once the particular saga is over, the will move on to the next sensation lasting a 24 hour period… The people are not served by the official Opposition either… In their collective roles as MPs since they became elected. Did David Cameron, William Hague and Chris Grayling have not contributed anything to the cause of constitutionality. Not a single one of them is known as a democracy campaigner… Not a campaigner for constitutionality. Nor for accountability. It is important to point out these basic facts and to put the current media sport into perspective. On poverty, on civil liberty and on the Blaired collusion with the GW Bush regime in the war against innocent people [as opposed to and distinguished from the legitimate ground for UNO-sponsored and internationally legally valid and warranted and justified and supportable focus on the people liable for all the violations of human rights in countries and regions in any part of the contemporary world] William Hague, David Cameron and Chris Grayling have contributed nothing for democracy… Or for accountability.

Did any of them go on the broadcast media and pronounce anything at all against MPs expenses and other unacceptable conduct? If they did, when did they do it? My observation is that the McBride e-mails and Derek Draper's reappearance as a Blaired Party spinmeister is more the product of some spin-traders seeking to make profitable mischief than it is about any even conceivable difference between the two mainstream Parties 'of Government' in Britain. On the matters that do matter, like the violation of civil liberties and the open, the brazen introduction of new breaches of the rile fo law and the entrenchment of existing lawlessness as applicable to most organs of the state, Chris Grayling has been failing big time. Likewise, Cameron is not questioning Brown's preaching in anything like an original opposition leader should or could do on the available evidence. And the less said about William Hague the better. The three of them have featured as the main sources or entities in the current Tory Opposition front bench as implying dire retributions against Brown and his lot over the McBride affair. But what has any of them to say on the issues of the UK being embroiled in unnecessary, unjustified, unwanted and unjust international engagements? How does Grayling justify HIS failure on the G20 priorities and the hypes that the City of London interests embarked on in the pre-'summit' days? What are the comparative lessons for 'our democratic society' of the events surrounding the Guardian's reports about Ian Tomlinson’s and the McBride e-mail 'stories'? And has any of the three frontbench Opposition leaders had anything to say about global poverty? Oops! Or even about poverty in Britain? How much did THEY support of the Blair-Brown strategy for creating poverty in the UK? Why did the Tories hire David Freud, the man who as unable to answer simple questions about his big plan against the poor when he was quizzed by news bulletin presenter ion Channer 4 news? As for the Spectator’s tactical use of the name of the ‘records’ of Mr A Campbell, the less said the better. How could the Spectator be presenting A Campbell as a source of impartial opinion on the very matter for which he was compared with some of Adolph Hitler’s henchmen in the time that he spent as Tony Blair’s own spinmeister? Also, what about Bernard Ingram? What role did he play in doing down democratic accountability as far as he created some fo the grounds which A Campbell later used to brow beat those in the ‘lobby’ who had dared to ask questions almost verging on democracy? Has the BBC deleted all the episodes of Bernard Ingram’s appearances on the various ‘news’ slots? He was shamelessly anti-accountability and was openly insulting those who wanted accountability from Margaret Thatcher… Has Chris Grayling or David Cameron noticed that role? As for William Hague, he is the boy who dreamt of being like Thatcher… He could not see anything at all beyond that barrier to democracy which he typically misunderstood as a visage and worshipped as a reflection almost akin to divinity…. These are not sources to lecture the public about any standards

0745 Hrs GMT London 'Bank Holiday' Monday 13 April 2009