I don't agree with you that this is a storm in a t...

2009-04-15T12:49:00.000+01:00

I don't agree with you that this is a storm in a teacup. It is highly damaging to the Labour Party and to the Prime Minister personally. Sure, there's dollops of hypocrisy swirling around on all sides, and I agree with you about the unnecessarily squalid nature of many of the comments on Guido's blog, which IMHO damage his credibility. But he gets the hits, and is the first blogger to have claimed a scalp inside No.10. He's every right to preen himself. As for Draper, he's what he always has been - an incompetent clueless vainglorious twit, and the real significance of that is how it shows what a bad way Labour must be in if he's the best "media consultant" they can lay their hands on.

You say that "briefing and counter-briefing is as old as politics itself." Maybe, but not briefing on this lavatorial level - I don't recall any of it in the early postwar years; it only became increasingly fashionable after the Profumo scandal brought Macmillan down and party hacks realised it had political potential.

As for the idea that Brown would have "personally authorised" the smearing of his opponents
being nonsense, of course it is - he's a far too canny operator for that. A nod and a wink would be more than sufficient.

I agree with Frank Field's reminder that Harold Wilson said the Labour Party is either a moral crusade or it is nothing, and that what New Labour are now staring at in the mirror is nothing.

Tiscali are evil.

2009-04-15T11:04:00.000+01:00

Tiscali are evil.

Comments on Obsolete: Spin, smears and faux outrage.

I don't agree with you that this is a storm in a t...

Tiscali are evil.