“There will be about as many people prepared to admit that they ever voted Labour as there were prepared to admit they collaborated with the Germans. Everyone was in the resistance, honest.”
And then there is this piece of genius from Harry Hutton.
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Alice Miles in the Times:
Which makes quite a change from: See what I mean about the dead tree dog pack? These people just are not scared of Gordon Brown any more, or of his dogs. They are now more scared of him getting booted out before they have each stuck their knives in. I can’t see Brown lasting into next year now, I really can’t. I give him a month at the most. UPDATE: Here‘s Guido. Summary: Now they tell us. Watch the film clip and note that the Cameron machine gets mentioned, not at all grovellingly. April 15th, 2009 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 This, as the robot bomb in Dark Star said to the astronaut who was trying to persuade him not to explode, is fun. I think that things are now developing on the Gordon Brown front very fast. As I have already commented today (I’ve recycled my comments earlier today here, and have added relevant links) on an earlier posting, I think that one of the key moments in this was when this got said, two days ago now:
If Downing Street had left it at “nobody in Downing Street knew of the e-mails”, all might have been well. I say “well”, for these things are relative. Well as in Brown might have been able to stagger on for another year. But, I think fatally, they continued to the effect that it is Mr Brown’s view that there was “no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind”. This is a flat lie, and we all know it to be a lie. The spokesman knows it. Brown knows it. We all know it. Worse, from the purely tactical point of view, this lie turns the story from one of merely a few particular and, approximately speaking, deniable emails, into one where anything nasty presided over by Gordon Brown, and the longer ago the better, becomes relevant, because it proves that the Prime Minister not only does now believe in dirty tricks, but always has done. Suddenly, every newspaper hack in Britain knows what to ask, of anyone he can find with anything remotely like an answer. You were at school with Brown, were you? What was he like? Ran the University paper with him, did you? So, how did that work? Tell me about Scotland back in the eighties, the nineties, the noughts. Hm, sounds nasty. What’s that you say? Wales as well, well well. What exactly did he say about Blair? How exactly was Blair toppled? … The whole miserable litany of nastiness going back about three decades suddenly roars back into the centre of British politics, right now. The Prime Minister, with his fatuously excessive denial, has made this happen. (As always with these things, it is not the thing itself that does the fatal damage, it is the denials. See the prediction to that effect in this, although I had no idea then how quickly the fatal denial would come.) For all the surreal daftness of the Daily Telegraph printing Guido stories after he’s blogged them, but mentioning him only to call his a “Tory blog”, Janet Daley does have a point when she says that this story only really got seriously going when the clunky old dead tree media got around to printing it. But now, printing it they are. The dog pack has now assembled and is baying for blood. Even Brown’s demise will not quieten them, for as soon as he is gone, which I now think could happen very soon, the next cry will be: general election, general election, general election. Not only might the country soon be slightly less disastrously governed, it might be less disastrously governed before this week is finished. Because if a general election campaign does start in a week’s time, there is at least the faint hope that the politicians will – and call me a mad dreamer but I just cannot help saying this – stop doing things. Well, maybe. We shall see. What I do definitely know is that when The Sun starts saying that Brown must go, that must count for something. The story is adorned with a picture of one of the mere Brown creatures (an MP and Minister called Watson), but pretty soon it is clear who is the main target:
Men in white coats? How Guido, who has been blogging for month after month about the Prime Mentalist, must be loving that. The Prime Minister is not just disastrous. He is mad. Every Labour politician in the country must now be in despair. Will this despair finally cause them to make the decision they should have made about Brown (“Oi! Brown! No-o-o-o-o!”) decades ago? Maybe, maybe. I really think that this time, they might. If you doubt this, do what these people are now doing. Consider the alternative. UPDATE (see the update here): April 14th, 2009 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
This Daily Telegraph story, which if true, implicates Gordon Brown directly in the recent scandal about a brutish plot to smear political opponents, is dynamite. (Guido writes to point out that he got the story first. But of course). If this whole affair helps accelerate the demise of Gordon Brown, a conceited, foolish and ultimately rather revolting character, and hence speeds up the day when we might just improve some of the things that vex us, then I am going to send Guido Fawkes a bottle of some very good red wine. That’s a promise, Mr Staines! It is a strange atmosphere at the moment. Such has been the oppressiveness, but also clownishness, of this government, that it resembles that of Charles I. His time did not end well. Update: Since we are in the process of jumping up and down on Mr Brown’s soon-to-be-dug grave, I should add that one thing that has bugged me about him is this whole schtick about his being “the son of the manse”. What is a “manse”? I understand it is a sort of Scottish vicarage. Like this commentator, I have had to search for enlightenment. “Manse” is – with apologies to Scottish friends of mine – not a terribly attractive word. For a while, we were given the line that Brown, while he may not have the charisma of Mr Blair, had this sort of Calvinistic, godly work-is-good-for-the-soul quality, which meant that he would not use the sort of sordid, Renaissance Italy-style tactics that have now been exposed. And I am afraid that one side-effect of this whole sorry mess will be a further estrangement between the English and the Scots. Mr Brown is not a great advert for a nation that has given us Adam Smith, James Watt or this even great man. Update: I see that EU Referendum blog, which I recall has actually partly defended the arrest of Tory MP Damian Green by anti-terrorism police officers (remember that story?), is now arguing that all the blogging about Derek Draper, or whoever, is playing the same game as the MSM, which is to encourage the real, underlying problem of mediocre people rising to positions of power because anyone who has a spicy private life cannot survive. I disagree. If mediocre people are so rising, it is surely because a political class has deliberately emasculated itself by enabling a situation in which about 80 per cent of laws in this nation are not made here, but in the European Union, a point that EU Referendum points out regularly. Mediocrity is what you get if serious power drains away from an institution such as Parliament, leaving only perks and minor stuff behind. The 900 llb gorilla in the living room is the fact that Parliament, and backbench MPs, are far less important than they used to be. By discrediting this statist monster of a Labour government, and keeping pressure on a Cameronian Tory Party, bloggers such as Guido are not fostering mediocrity or timidity, but quite the opposite. April 14th, 2009 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I see that Tony Blair’s former master of spin is trying to put as much distance between himself and Gordon Brown’s henchmen as possible. Truly glorious stuff. I have been deliberately avoiding the internet these last couple of days as I have been enjoying a lovely Easter weekend with my relations. We sank a bottle of Rhone wine last night that was particularly enjoyable. Having caught up on the news via Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, I am decanting another one. Oh yes. Happy Easter to believers and non-believers alike. April 12th, 2009 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
In my posting here yesterday about what is being inelegantly called “Smeargate” (aren’t you sick of this “gate” stuff?) I tried my best to keep up with events as they were already happening. I have a lunch date today, but just about have time to fling down some rather link-lacking thoughts (and done in ignorance of Philip Chaston’s previous posting) about what might happen next. (Later on today, I might just get to go through this and pepper it with links, but: I promise nothing. Meanwhile, sorry for all the typos and grammar screw-ups.) I have long regarded Guido Fawkes as a genius, ever since he wrote this gorgeous pamphlet for the Libertarian Alliance. The thing about Guido is that he doesn’t just believe in liberty in an abstract this-is-the-best-system sort of way, although he certainly does believe that as well; he really loves liberty, his own liberty. His throwaway remark yesterday to the effect that he started his blog “on a whim” captures this quality very well. Tactically, this makes Guido worth about ten ordinary Guidos, because of the ten things he just might do tomorrow morning to make you wish you’d never been born, you just don’t know which one he’ll pick, if any of them. (He might just stay in bed.) Why don’t you know? Because he doesn’t know himself. Oh, he has schemes afoot. “Plots have I laid”, as Richard says at the beginning of Richard III before he acquired his numeral. But just when the knife will go in, just which applecart will be upset, which bandwaggon will have its wheels ripped off, which establishment forehead will disintegrate in the face of an oncoming sniper bullet, you never really know. I would hate to have him as an enemy. → Continue reading: One down and the rest of them to go – why it’s fun to be Guido Fawkes today April 12th, 2009 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Guido’s scalp may place further problems for the blogosphere. Labour’s line has been to blame the medium and the messenger, spreading the slurry of ‘dark arts’ to Guido and even Cameron, though they are the primetime guilty party. Now that the monopoly of the mainstream media has been blown right open, Labour MPs are demanding regulation and trying to put the lid back on Pandora’s box. Hear their complaints: the blogosphere is an arena of tittle-tattle and gossip, compared to the comforting blanket of reporters and the NUJ who will take you out to lunch and treat you with respect. They will want to turn the clock back. Well, it is the goodness of blogging sunshine that reveals the dark arts. Time to start flaming the political vampires who suck the lifeblood out of Britain with their lies, expenses, and hypocrisy. Time to follow up with garlic and the stake. April 12th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
This posting will tell any Brits who care about it absolutely nothing, but perhaps our many American readers should be told about this. This being the downfall of one of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s closest advisers. A certain Damian McBride has “resigned” because of some emails about smearing various Conservatives that he sent to another Labourite, the widely despised Derek Draper, who tries to blog for Labour. Blogger Guido Fawkes is being credited with this outcome, not least by the guilty men themselves. They have spent much airtime today jabbering away on Sky News, the BBC, etc, about how “disgusted” they are that their emails have been read. Disgusted that they were caught was how it sounded. Guido’s numerous commenters are exulting. “Good on you Guido”, “we must mark the date in our diaries”, but “mission definitely not accomplished” until such time as this government beast or that government beast (a certain Tom Watson MP is apparently next in line for the chop), or the King Beast himself, are nailed to the Guido wall. King Beast Brown, I mean. For there is indeed something very Nixonian about this, or at any rate it feels that way today. The thing to get is that Damien McBride is not like some College Republican ratfucking prankster. He is much higher up the greasy pole than that, far nearer to the H. R. Haldeman end of things, talking every day with the Big Beast himself. By the way, the sneer quotes each side of “resigned” two paragraphs up are because when heavyweights in this government “resign”, all that happens is they change titles and move office. They keep their actual jobs and they get even huger pay-offs than otherwise, if only to stop them telling the truth to the media instead of the dribbling evasions they are pushing now. The resigned one and his various defenders, including Draper, are asking us all to believe that their Downing Street computers were hacked into, and for all I know that may be true. But if that is so, what does it say about the wisdom of creating a Database State, given that these are the plonkers who will be in charge of it? As Guido has just pointed out, this was the week the government awarded itself the right to read all our emails. Anyway, my basic point is: remember that big cheese TV guy in America who got caught making use of a forged letter that said something bad about someone, and remember how it was bloggers who blew the story to bits. And remember how people said during all that that this was blogging really making itself felt for the first time in real world politics. Well, that moment just happened here in little old Britain. Tomorrow, this will be all over the Sunday papers. Guido’s face and Guido’s blog – the actual blog, how it looks – is being flashed all over the TV news as I write this. The most telling moment for me was when I dialed up Guido Fawkes, and instead merely got a big message saying: “Error establishing a database connection”. A lot of people, a lot more than usual, are tuning in to Guido just now, or trying to. What a shame that the end result of this and other such dramas will merely be a Conservative government presided over by David Cameron. I still live in hope that such a government might be rather better than the present one, but I am not counting on it. Which makes me rejoice particularly at this, from Guido:
The really important stuff will come when Guido gets stuck into the Conservatives for being too statist. April 11th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Why are the Liberal Democrats not called the Illiberal Democrats if they are not liberals either? Maybe they should be called the Lino party, as in liberal in name only. – Commenter Chris H April 9th, 2009 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is has surprised me that David Cameron’s Conservative Party, even though it has been pretty hopeless at resisting or promising to overturn whole assaults on UK civil liberties, has not embraced the idea of a mass repeal of such odious laws more enthusiastically. A commenter called KevinB has raised this point just now. Consider the benefits: it would appeal to liberal-leaning folk who might otherwise not give the Tories a second glance and weaken the challenge from the LibDems; it would go down well with younger people normally less inclined to vote; it would be the right thing to do anyway. So why do they not make a manifesto commitment saying that in the first session of the next Parliament, a Great Repeal Act will be enacted that sweeps away hundreds of encroachments on UK civil liberties, such as the Civil Contingencies Act and the National ID database? Of course, some of this might require the government to pull out of certain EU laws, but remember that the vast bulk of the laws imposed by New Labour have been domestically generated and cannot be blamed on the EU, important though that dimension is. Now at this blog we are not exactly very nice to the Tories, to say the least. But it strikes me that a Great Repeal Act, or Restoration of Liberties Act, would be a nice, catchy idea that even the most authortarian cynic in the Tory ranks might feel would be worthwhile. April 9th, 2009 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Following from Philip Chaston’s post immediately below, is the point that needs to be repeated as to how bad it is that the authorities are now trying – in vain, hopefully – to ban people from photographing the police. Had such photographing been prevented, then this incident, which threatens to engulf the police in further turmoil, would not have been recorded. I cannot believe I am now writing stuff like this. This is Britain, right? April 9th, 2009 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The state spends vast amounts of money, yet the deficit is ‘more that predicted‘? And the recession will be ‘more severe than forecast’? Well mate, I must be an god-damn oracle then, and Paul Marks too in fact, because it is all going pretty much exactly as we predicted and forecast. Government policy is to suck out vast amounts of wealth from the economy and then redirect it themselves… and borrow money from whatever mugs will lend it to them… and to simply print more money like crazed counterfeiters… so the deficit grows by leaps and bounds and the economy tanks. I find it utterly laughable that this was not the predicted, forecast and indeed desired outcome as no other outcome was even vaguely possible. Economic health was never government policy, either in the UK or the USA. The policy objective is increased political control of people’s lives (‘regulation’) via de facto nationalisation of the economy. The fact some investors actually buy into the notion such lunacy actually benefits them just adds some comic relief to the unfolding tragedy. Government policy is working just fine. April 6th, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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