Bob Piper has been a Labour Councillor for the Abbey
Ward in Sandwell, West Midlands, for 10 years. He is a lifelong supporter of Aston Villa Football Club and a follower of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.
The views expressed here are mine in a personal capacity, not those of the Labour Party, Sandwell MBC, Aston Villa or Yorkshire County Cricket Club. Get it! Mine... just mine!
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
Promoted by Bob Piper of 115 Barclay Rd, B67 5JZ on behalf of the Labour Party, care of 39 Victoria Street London, SW1H 0HA . Hosted (printed) by Swaithe Internet Solutions who are not responsible for any of the contents of these posts.
Please note however, that The Labour Party is not responsible for the content of this website or individual posts as, unless specifically stated, I am writing solely in a personal and individual capacity.
I don't say this very often... but, I thought Andrew Neil made a good point last night on This Week. Talking about the involvement of the Party leaders' spouses in the run up to the election he said he thought it was something David Cameron should avoid. Gordon Brown has an image which, putting it kindly, needs softening up, and an appearance on Piers Morgan's show, with Sarah wiping away the tears, or the doting wife holding hands with him on the platform at Party Conference may be a positive. Cameron's problem is the opposite. Whether it is right or not, he is perceived as a lightweight, a pretty boy from a privileged background who lacks the gravitas to be the leader of his country. Parading Samantha Cameron, a pretty woman from an even more privileged background, just reinforces that image. Daft as it may seem, Cameron needs more photo opportunities with serious ugly heavyweight politicians than he does with other young wealthy pretty people.
Enter Ken Clarke... who ticks all the boxes I would have thought.
The good folk at When Cowards Flinch have decided that they will boycott the annual Iain Dale blog beauty parade because Dale is giving over the organ to the odious racist Nick Griffin. Dale, who previously interviewed former Nazi sympathiser Kaminski for the magazine, excuses his decision to given the oxygen of publicity to fascists on the grounds that he will try to show Griffin up for what he is. Dizzy, of course, runs to defend his master by claiming double standards on the grounds that there wasn't a boycott of Channel 4 News when Tony Benn "interviewed" Saddam Hussein, who.... "had happily thrown around chemical weapons on his own people and ordered the murder of thousands." (Actually, I don't know how dizzy knows whether people boycotted it or not, but there was one hell of a lot of noise in the media from commentators complaining about Benn's visit - many of a right wing persuasion).
However, the main issue is the one of boycotting the beauty contest. Dizzy claims to be a libertarian (although most of his illiberal spoutings just sound like a tame Tory Guido) and then calls people who make a decision not to participate in a popularity contest "silly". Very bloody liberal.
I don't actually participate in the '100 blogs' stuff anyway, and after many, many months of struggle I seem to have got the message through to Total Politics that I don't want their unsolicited junk mail. But if I did either, I think I would drop out anyway because of the decision to give space to the odious racist. Not because I think anyone who reads this coffee table junk is likely to be persuaded to vote BNP, but because it gives Griffin and his cronies an air of respectability, an endorsement from those who like to think of themselves as the political establishment. How you can trot around the Polish death camps one week and sip coffee with a man who denied their existence the next, without vomiting all over him, is just beyond me.
As if David Cameron's alliances with various dodgy East European parties wasn't weird enough, his pact with the Ulster Unionist Party is completely barking. The hilariously named "Ulster Conservatives and Unionists - New Force" is anything but a "force". At least the dodgy Poles give an impression of being part of some sort of wider European grouping, but what on earth do the UUP bring to the table in the "New Force"? A single MP (who is not even a legend in her own living room), a single MEP, and an isolated handful of Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly who surely showed yesterday that they are out of touch with the political mood and the electorate. And when David Cameron attempts to use the "New Force" alliance to influence his new partners, they completely ignore him.
When the smart-arsed media pundits confidently predicted a General Election in the Autumn of 2007 they were acutely embarrassed when the Prime Minister made them all look a bunch of tits by not actually doing any such thing. These influential people in the know who had spent weeks telling their readers, listeners and viewers that Brown was about to call a snap election, that Party workers were on standby, that poster spaces had been secretly secured, had to try to explain to their readers, listeners and viewers why they had been talking complete cobblers. 'The election that never was' story was born. They didn't get it wrong... Gordon Brown 'bottled-it'. He was frit and indecisive. From that moment on, the media narrative, which up to then had praised Brown's handling of the terrorist threat at Glasgow Airport, the flooding in Southern England and the BSE crisis, turned dramatically.
David Cameron is now on the cusp of a similar dangerous situation, and he must be cursing Lord Cashpoint and William Hague for their stupidity in allowing the non-dom story to fester and grow. Instead of the bold young challenger, speaking without notes to his Party faithful, we have seen images of Cameron out jogging with captions questioning whether he could run a piss-up at Marston's. When his Shadow Ministers have ventured out to make their initiative-a-day vacuous policy statements, they have been met like the hapless Gove this week with a barrage of questions on the taxation issues surrounding his Party Deputy Chairman. If you Google 'Gove' and 'Schools' you see initiative overload this week alone, but none of it headline making stuff as Lord Cashpoint's woes dominate the front pages.
Cameron has only himself to blame. The media have been pressing this question for years. Hague's embarrassing Newsnight appearance should have set the warning signals flashing red last year. But still they thought they could get away with it. Stuttered explanations now that Hague only found out about his party Deputy Chairman's true status 'a couple of months ago', despite Paxman's repeated "why don't you ask him?" question, or a shifty looking Liam Fox saying David Cameron only knew 'within the last month' lack credibility. If the Tories are lying and they did know they look like crooks, if they are telling the truth and they didn't know they look like incompetents. The issue is nothing to do with Lord Cashpoint or his tax affairs, but about David Cameron's integrity and his credibility.
As Brown's crew found out in 2007 and Cameron is realising now, you can only spin the media so far. If you go beyond that invisible line and try to make them look foolish, it will come back and bite you on the arse big-style. Cameron may survive the current storm, it may just be a 'Westminster Village' story, but his credibility as honest joe as taken a massive dent, and if he doesn't turn the media narrative around, he may find it is fatal.
Of all the stuff written about Michael Foot, this from Paulie (who nicked it too, but with an attributed source, is good for me
: “We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.”
I'm sad to hear of the death of Michael Foot. My memories of Michael won't be of his unfortunate period as Labour Leader, nor his period of Secretary of State for Employment, but marching along with the rest of his comrades in CND and fighting for the right to work.
A warm tribute by Michael Gove on The Daily Politics... talking about his book Guilty Men (written under the name Cato), about the Tory appeasers of Hitler. The less said about the spiteful Tory attacks on Michael's character when he was the Labour leader the better, I suppose.
I suppose I should make one thing clear from the outset. Labour has spent the best part of the last 15 years sucking up to any millionaire, billionaire and trillionaire it can to try to get donations... and whilst many of us in the Party deeply resent it... it's a fact. But unlike some Tory bloggers I can speak about this issue safe in the knowledge that I haven't taken any tainted cash. The site of some of those who have, leaping to the defence of Ashcroft's patriotism without declaring a financial interest, is truly vomit inducing.
But, if you sup with the devil, and all that, there's a definite air of hypocrisy from senior Labour figures over the Ashcroft affair. Not that I don't share the glee that many will find in watching Hague and Cameron, champions of the squeaky clean New Conservatives, squirming in their silk boxer shorts as the media skewer them on the Ashcroft connection.
But... rich bloke doesn't pay tax, and rich bloke bungs money to the Tories... is that really news? I don't think so. The real news story is the fact that it exposes Cameron as the same sort of double dealing politician in Westminster that he has tried so desperately hard to disassociate himself with. It happened to Blair too, all teeth and sincerity, but behind it the Ecclestone donations and cash for Peerages questions. At least he had the good sense to get elected before being exposed as a hypocrite. The timing for Cameron couldn't be worse. 'Trust me Dave' has blown his cover.
The Tories can bluster about Labour Peers and Labour donations... but this isn't really about the cash, it is about integrity, and about the media narrative. If Cameron cannot turn this around quickly, he can find himself caught in the media shitstorm in the same way as Brown was over the 'election that never was'. And as we all know, once that head of steam builds up, the train just keeps on rolling.
