Nick Cohen's Fear and Filth

bb

This is truly awful. How long can Peter Mandelson and the others go on supporting Gordon? Nothing is going to change the result of the next election now but the Brownites have to go, go,go. If the Blairites don't take the government to the election the whole New Labour project will forever be associated with this stench and shame.

And when you think back to the grace and vision of TB's last speech to the Labour Conference .... it is appalling what has happened since then.

Redvers

It's a beautiful piece, and rather restrained. You get the impression that there's a lot more detail to come, once Brown has gone.

I'm guessing that this is a fair assessment of what happened at the NS?

Marbury

Charlie Whelan threatening to get someone fired, unpleasant as it is and he is, is not evidence of "state interference in press freedom." Neither is anything else Cohen writes on that subject. It's just overheated gossip, as far as I can see. One more thing - why didn't Cohen report McBride's comments about Darling at the time? Good read, though.

Martin Bright

I think you'll find Nick did report the comments at the time

Hawkeye

@Martin - I see you had a starring role in Nick's piece. Nick lays out the way these characters in Labour behave and you want them to win? Everybody who deals with Labour says they are little better than mafia henchmen.
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Yet, you want them to win?
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They treated you like s**t, they treat everyone else with total, utter contempt and they will smear and destroy anyone who evens opposes their slightest whim.
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Nick's piece reveals them for the lying unprincipled filth they are.
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It's time to grow up Nick. You don't have to tory, but you do not have to vote Labour either.

Marbury

Martin - as far as I can see, he didn't name McBride. He did what everyone else did: report the comments but not the source. Or have I missed something?

Ronnie

bb, Mandelson, with Alistair Campbell, orchestrated a similar operation for Tony Blair. The whole top layer of the Labour Party is infected with this virus.

And let's not pretend that the Thatcher government didn't do exactly the same thing. Her ministers often found themselves briefed against in the morning press, 'not one of us...' 'semi-detatched from the government...' etc.

Our political culture is degraded and this is just the latest episode. Individuals and parties who remain in power too long turn in on themselves. Highly motivated people who have been 'in the game' their whole lives tend towards paranoia and delusion.

This is the result.

Martin, my question to you is do you really think that Brown's inevitable demise will actually change anything in this dog-eat-dog culture? Or will we, in six years time, be mulling over the same issues with Cameron as the guy with the biggest teeth?

logdon

I began reading Nick Cohen in the Guardian, attracted by the way he refused to toe the editorial line with it's blind adherence and obeisance to Islam no matter how at odds with liberal western society the well declared edicts were.

It, to me seemed insanely contradictory that Labour supporters could ally themselves with the ultra right wing theocratic dictators, homophobes, misogynists and people to whom the term 'innocent' applied to fellow religionists only.

As the rabid anti-Semitism of the left increased, with Israel generally and unquestioningly declared a fascist state, Cohen's was a voice of reason amongst the puerile hysteria and my admiration grew.

I bought his book What's Left which further reinforced this view.

My beef with the left was the herd mentality which on a roll ploughed all resistance into mulch. The dirty tricks were overlooked in favour of the 'common good' placed to ensure their survival. Emotive bullet point words, parroted time after time replacing true liberal and individual thought. We were truly entering the territory of Orwell.

This article follows his self formed tradition. At last someone with real integrity rising above the ordure of the accomplices of this scuttling brood whose only ambition is that nice second home and expenses cheque when the postman comes calling. A postman, by the way that they would crap on from a great height if he wasn't performing such a valuable task of messenger of wealth on their behalf.

What a piece? And what a piece of work Brown and his greasy acolytes are.

I watched him the other night laying claim that it was he, and he only who had dealt with the expenses fiasco. And won the day. He repeated the words time after time as if some lonely voice in a wilderness of slime. OK, we all by now know that he is a liar but to actually try that one takes the urine out of all of us.

He is self sold out beyond all redemption. We thought that about the messiah Blair but Brown’s madness weaves the warp of Blair’s religiosity with the weft of his own Marxist youthful past creating a double whammy of delusion.

By comparison even the vapid Cameron oozes an aura of freshness and an air of openness. He is well scrubbed and likeable. He is chirpy rather than chippy.

Hello? Is this the deja vu of 1997 come back to haunt us? Who cares. Anything, anything is better than this walking catastrophe which passes as governance. And most certainly anyone with half a political brain has to be better than this brooding and spiteful pathological deceiver.

Cohen has exposed all the above in one sweep in this masterly article. It should be printed in a sixty million run and distributed to all. It, right now is the equivalent of Zola’s j’accuse and no bushell should hide it’s light.

Brilliant.

Anthony a

None of this is surprising.

Browns body language has always reminded me of a school yard bully who's been invited up onto the stage for prize giving..

Brown has no-one to hide behind anymore and it's very clear he's not enjoying the scrutiny (bullies never enjoy being caught behind the bike sheds with a first years' pocket money)

He thought it would be a cakewalk and patently it's not - nor was it ever likely to be.

The only question now is whether he manages to destroy his party with him as he goes down.... As a betting man, I would say that is odds on.