Politics

If political reality means we can’t tax the overweight, then at least let’s have tax breaks for those who bother to take exercise, writes unashamed metrosexual Dan Jones Hands up if you employ a personal trainer. Actually, that’s a trick question. If you can raise your arm without wincing in pain then either you don’t have a personal trainer, or yours is letting you slack off. (Get a new one.) For those of you with your arms pinned to the sides of your bodies from the sheer build-up of lactic acid — ask your trainer — well done. A few years ago your friends might have sneered at you and

Having sat patiently on a barrel of digital dynamite for months — the emails from Gordon Brown’s chief spin doctor Damian McBride to Mandelson’s protégé Derek Draper, suggesting Tory smear stories — I light the fuse on Andrew Neil’s BBC Daily Politics show. In an unedifying squabble, I succeed in stitching up the once again infamous Draper on live TV, forcing him to deny that he takes briefings from McBride. Viewers at home may be baffled as to why I am determined to talk about Draper’s relationship with McBride. They may also be bemused by my unflattering Berkeley University T-shirt. The reason for this is to wind up Draper even more:

Just to clarify. I didn’t intend to suggest in my last post that Damian McBride’s smear tactics would have been excusable if they had worked. Sorry if I gave that impression. I was simply trying to explain the thinking behind the operation. The smears were unacceptable in any circumsatnces The Prime Minister’s belated apology suggests that he now knows how toxic this has become. He is right to be angry because McBride has put his government at the mercy of a maverick right-wing libertarian blogger. Quite why he and the people around him became quite so fixated on Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), is completely beyond me.  But they were

The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride’s pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour’s chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people would think twice about voting for a government that permitted such a culture to exist in Downing Street. The poison expressed in McBride’s infantile stratagem has fed back into the bloodstream of the party  he was supposed to be serving (let’s not pretend for a moment that he was acting as a civil servant in this. But the

I hear Tom Watson is about to make a “personal statement” which should clear up how much he knew about Red Rag and Damiangate. Last time I looked, Guido didn’t have any crosshairs trained on him – but we’ll see.  UPDATE: He isn’t going to resign, I’m told. But expect a statement tonight.