Don’t do it, Gordon! I can see you’re on the edge, but don’t jump! Your career has too much to live for!
So picture the scene: you’re a stunningly unpopular Prime Minister, heading towards spectacular defeat at the next election. People hate you for your role in fucking up the economy, you’re perceived as an emotionally retarded bureacra… how can you make it any worse?
Oh, I know, why not stick to a bunch of retired soldiers?
As repellent as I find the concept of armed forces, going to war and all that, it’s stunningly difficult not to sympathise with the Gurkhas – its pretty obvious that soldiers fighting for a country should be able to live there, so I’m really unsure what planet Brown was on today when at PMQs he continually argued against letting the Gurkhas stay.
It’s almost as if he wants to lose the next election in the most spectacular way possible. Maybe the thinking is that sure, Blair did everything bigger and better than him – Blair was more popular and lasted longer, but Brown can still achieve biggest defeat.
Coincidentally, I had a walk down to Parliament today (dispelling absolutely no clichés about Parliament being in the background of all London activities in the process), and stumbled upon a big gerkha demonstration. When we got to a pub, we saw Sky News broadcasting David Cameron speaking live from where we just were – so we dashed back to see if we could spot him. If you’re a fan of grainy, unedited videos of political speeches, you’re in for a treat:
It was quite exciting – not only was Cameron there, but so was Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne, and… Joanna Lumley. I didn’t get close enough to shout any questions or whatever, but at least now I can say that I’ve seen the leaders of all three major political parties in the flesh (I saw Brown ages ago).
Afterwards we went to the Westminster Arms, where I made a video explaining the above mess of a video, and also tried to start some political rumours:
I got to see all of this exciting stuff by skiving off of a lecture too. So there’s a lesson here, kids: Why not truant? It’s great fun.
Despite being a relatively well informed person, who keeps up with the news and politics and takes an interest and all that, I’m stunningly apathetic when it comes to actual participation myself, such as with political parties or protesting or whatever. I like to think this is because my opinions are slightly more nuanced than what a placard can accurately portray – but it is also because of how stunningly depressing a lot of it is.
Obviously it’s pretty much the done thing to slag off all politicians, “they’re only looking after themselves”, blah blah blah. But this is only a cliché because of the regularity with which political figures re-demonstrate this tired argument for defeatism.
For instance, I was stunned to see that a bigger fuss hasn’t been made of Lord Bell, one of the key figures behind the Tories 1979 election campaign, is now running a public relations campaign for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the President and dictator of Belarus (“The last dictatorship in Europe”). Who, my understanding is, a thoroughly nasty man – political opponents in Belarus tend to “disappear”, that sort of thing.
I could – maybe – understand, say, operating a business in a dodgy country – on the basis that globalisation can sometimes democratise, or that some money coming in is better than none or whatever – but to be employed by the Belrussian President to make him look good… I’m struggling to see the difference between Lord Bell and Lord Haw-Haw.
Having a look at Bell’s Wikipedia entry too, it tells me that he was also involved in the controversy over the shutting down of bribery and fraud inquiry into the selling of weapons to Saudi Arabia… arguing on the side of the Saudis, that the bribery claims shouldn’t be looked into. Amazingly, he was also apparently put on an Iraqi advisory board for the “promotion of democracy” – which I guess is equally as ludicrous as making, say, Tony Blair, a Middle East peace envoy.
And what the hell was he knighted and made a peer for? Services to Bastards?
Apparently Lord Bell used to have scruples, but then realised he could sell them off for a stack of cash instead.
I spent most of the Easter weekend glued to the news channels and the political blogs because it was all terribly exciting – the characters and blogs that I’ve been following for ages suddenly came alive, like it if were a TV adaption of a work of literature.
Seeing Iain Dale, Derek Draper, Paul Staines et al come to life on the screen was how I imagine it must have felt to see the Lord of the Rings films for the first time after years of being a Tolkien bore.
When they suddenly became newsworthy, it was like I already had an emotional stake in the production – whilst they were not childhood heroes of mine (a failed Tory candidate, a whiny disgraced psychotherapist and a muck-raking gossip-monger aren’t quite as inspirational as, say, Batman) – I already felt like I knew them. After all, Dale has commented on this blog, Draper apparently follows me on Twitter and Staines linked to me long ago.
So as you can imagine it was thrilling to see them get their break on TV – especially as they might have been wearing coat-tails that I could perhaps have grabbed on to.
Though this said, I don’t think the plot was up to much. The smears that Damien McBride came up with were rubbish. I mean, I understand wanting to stick it to the Tories – thinking anything but this is tantamount to mental illness in my book, but McBride’s work just smacks of over-thinking it.
One of the smears, according to the Sunday Times, was to suggest that George Osbourne once wore women’s underwear and blacked up. Women’s underwear I could believe – same if it were just blacking up – but both of these things together… really?
I think the most bizarre thing that McBride did though was to suggest smearing ‘mad’ Nadine Dorries, a relatively obscure backbencher who’s MP for mid-Bedfordshire. The suggested smear was to suggest that she’d had an extra-marital affair – which is pretty tame, not to mention difficult for a woman who has been divorced for some time. But this is stupid anyway because you don’t need to make stuff up to have a go at Dorries because she’s crackers.
Want proof? Check out this dispatches documentary following her around the time of the abortion/human embryo/whatever bill a while back – she’s seen hanging out with, and in the pockets of, young earth creationist fundamentalists and all sorts. I think there’s even a sequence in the documentary where she avoids the question of “how old is the earth?”.
She’s also a member of the Cornerstone group of Tories – a group for whom the general Tories just aren’t right wing enough for. Y’know, the unpleasant socially conservative “faith and family” types who sound idelogically closer to Mitt Romney than David Cameron. All Labour would have to do would be to point out that ‘Dave’ is backed up by this group of crackpots and the Tories would look like a right nasty bunch again.
So in a bid to grudgingly help the Labour party, as I really don’t want the Tories to get in at the next general election, here are some of my suggestions for more realistic smears that could be employed:
William Hague wears a bald cap to hide his ginger hair
George Osbourne’s wife has some mental health problems… because she’d have to in order to cope with looking at Osbourne’s face with such regularity.
Derek Draper is actually a closet member of the Conservative Party who was sent to sabotage Labour’s election chances (I’m still hoping that this is true)
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