Lord Bell, AKA the King of Spin, made some noise at the annual Freedom Dinner (established by libertarians to mark the anniversary of the smoking ban) last night at Canary Wharf’s cavernous Boisdale. He had stern words for the anti-tobacco lobby:
‘There is not one shred of scientific evidence of the existence of passive smoking and it’s one of the more terrible lies told by a democratically elected government in the world.’
Bell, though, was only getting going. He aimed his real fire at some recent prime ministers, saying: ‘We could do that Blair devil eyes campaign, because he is actually the devil.’
He expanded on the demonic theme (although it wasn’t quite clear who he was talking about):
‘There is a hell, a hell on earth and the devil is in Downing Street. There is a devil, and that devil is compassion. The devil tells us that if we do not care about certain things then we are evil.’
Lord Bell did not spare the Heir to Blair either:
‘We have a non-elected government, this government has no mandate. And after the next election they will probably add apples to pears and claim to have an electoral mandate and probably perform as badly as this government has performed.’
The silver haired assassin was still not done:
‘Why do people seem like pygmies these days? Because they are. I’ve worked for Thatcher – she was a giant. I worked for FW De Klerk – who single handedly ended Apartheid. Politicians today are pygmies.’
I imagine that this interpretation of South African history will upset some people; but it was refreshing to hear a spin-merchant actually speak his mind.
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