Leaving aside their general incompetence, bad advisors, dodgy donors, hooray Henry Metrocentricity and extreme reluctance to clarify, much less detail, any sensible policies, even the New Tories should have been able to savage the field of half-dead sheep that passes for the incumbent UK government. Part of the reason is demographics – Britain’s ‘much-admired’ first past the post voting system has been comprehensively gerrymandered so as to make it very difficult indeed for the party which gets a popular majority to ensure a working majority of seats. This has worked in favour of the Tories in the past, so no sympathy there. To ensure a landslide along the lines of the Labour 1997 victory, the Tories would need to be looking at a 15 point opinion poll lead at this stage. This time last year, it was trending that way. So whatever could be the matter?

It’s the economy, stupid. Or rather, the bubble economy which constitutes the UK public sector. Under New Labour, it now accounts for 6.1 million jobs out of 21.6 million full time workers, representing 28 percent of the UK workforce, the vast majority of which must be assumed to be ‘natural’ Labour voters. In addition, there are 7.1 million part time workers, many of whom either work in the public sector and participate in McJob schemes. That’s not to count the 2.3 million higher education students and 176,000 academics who teach them. The vast majority of these cadres wouldn’t be considered natural Tories. – nor have the Tories given them any reason to change their collective minds – but now they aren’t so sure of their masters’ intentions either. Proposed Labour cuts in the Higher Education budgets will definitely reduce jobs and the number of student places, plus a growing wave of discontent amongst workers in areas of the civil service, Network Rail and (privatised) British Airways, may mean that a significant number will lose faith in the ‘devil you know’ nostrum and punish the incumbents.

Moreover, despite the recession and clear evidence that the sporran is empty, Gordon’s job creation schemes, designed to massage grisly employment figures, have continued apace. Overall unemployment rose by 54,000 in the three months to January 2010, but this was mitigated by 20,000 new jobs in the NHS – 1.3 million employees – alone. Employment in the private sector fell by 61,000 in the last quarter of 2009 alone. Nobody can seriously believe that this version of Maoist economics can lead anywhere but to the IMF.

Voter turnout in the 2001 and 2005 General Elections was 59.4 and 61.4 percent respectively, compared to 77.7 and 71.4 percent in 1992 and 1997. John Major’s Tories won with a vastly-reduced majority in recession conditions mainly because Neil Kinnock’s ‘nearly-new’ Labour failed to convince the electorate that they represented a viable alternative. Five years later, the outgoing Major administration left Tony Blair and Gordon Brown with a budget surplus at a time of unprecedented global economic growth. Having put the budget back on an even keel, Major lost, apparently, because he couldn’t drum up the necessary ‘feelgood factor.’ From 1997-2001, after a four year period of pretending to adhere to the ‘golden mean,’ Gordon set about taxing, spending and consequently wrecking the exchequor just in time for a global economic downturn.

With the stakes as high as they are, I predict that the 2010 percentage voter turnout will be as high as in 1997. It would require epic numbers of turkeys to vote for Christmas for the pink-tinged Cameronites to secure anything like a landslide on a Blairite scale, given that from 2001 to the present time, the much-trumpeted growth in UK jobs has been driven by the public sector, so whatever goes down, we are unlikely to see a landslide. But public sector workers will need to weigh up as to what degree the inevitable budget cuts which will follow the election will be more savage under the Tories than under Labour. Meanwhile, those in the private sector know that taxes will rise whoever sits astride the woolsack. They won’t vote Labour.

So I’ll stick my neck out and say that, despite the unconvincing Tory arguments, most voters are going to wake up on polling day, survey the mess and vote for anyone but Gordon. The Tories will win a reasonable working majority, show their true colours and set about vigorously dismantling New Labour’s constituency, the public sector, partly because of the imperative to reduce the obese deficit and partly because that’s what they are ideologically inclined to do. This will be a shame, since it employs a lot of hardworking people who work for the public good, who deserved better leadership than they got under the Great Helmsman.

Thus the next election, which should be about the environment, sustainability, public sector reform, a fairer society, education, training, infrastructure and health will be won by the Tories on the feelbad factor, and Britain’s half-assed stab at the Middle Way will be history.

John J Kelly

Tomorrow belongs to me. Shirtsleeved Dave and his fragrant Chloe. Meet the new Blair, same as the old Blair?

The Tories overturned a 5459 Labour majority by 7,348 votes in the Norwich by-election on Thursday in a decisive and pivotal victory. Their turnout was 6% lower than expected, but 70% of the Labour constituency stayed at home watching Big Brother. The Lib Dems came third as usual, giving the lie to those who perennially hope that disillusionment with the two main parties will translate into a third way. Chloe Smith, 27, a fragrant middle class girl, will become the youngest Tory MP for more than 30 years and poster girl of ‘New’ Conservatives. Gordon Brown declared it ‘a bad night for everyone’ – another breathtaking example of Cnutian self delusion. Tory leader David Cameron disagreed, as well he might.  A 16.5% swing, nationally extrapolated, indicates a landslide General Election victory margin of up to 240 seats. Whether it is achieved by Labour voter disillusionment will be academic to the victors. The Hartlepool monkey would stand a good chance against Grim Gordon and Mandy the Mendacious.

Norwich North came up for grabs early because the incumbent MP, Ian Gibson, resigned having been barred by Labour from standing in the next election, having sold his taxpayer-funded flat to his daughter at a heavily-discounted price. Casting round for something to spin, Labour-leaning pundits – there are still plenty – argue that this qualifies the result as exceptional, that when the electorate awake to the full horror of an Eton claque slashing public sector budgets and effectively putting the emergency brake on the gravy train, they will ‘come to their senses’ and support ‘New’ Labour.

This ‘argument’ ignores the almost-universal rule that elections are lost by the incumbent rather than won by the opposition, especially after a long period in power and definitely if the country is economically decimated, the wealth gap has widened, unemployment rampant, parliamentary scandal and cronyism is rife and it is involved in one or more unwinnable wars. No offence to Chloe, who looks and sounds sincere and will probably do a good job, but Labour voters sat on their hands in Norwich (and Nantwich last May) because they cannot abide the current leadership and the unholy mire into which the country has sunk. The New Labour strategy of wallowing in the fudgy centre leaves undecided voters and radicals with even less choice than before. Those who can be bothered will vote for change for its own sake.

Thus, barring a miraculous economic recovery which will reduce the record £600 billion national debt, itself requiring an equally miraculous reversal of the record trade deficit, unemployment falling from a projected 3 million next May to less than 2 million (ditto conditions apply), ‘victory’ in Afghanistan, peace in Iraq, obliteration of the Taliban, Al Quaeda, repatriating over 1 million ‘illegals’ demonised in the phony War on Terror and collective amnesia about the destruction of civil liberties which has been the hallmark of the Blair/Brown years, the Eton boys’ brigade will be ruling Britain next year. Despite this record, recividist Hounhyms still ‘believe’ that electoral boundary changes introduced since 1997 will make it impossible for the Tories to achieve anything greater than a hung Parliament. They bluster that Cameron needs a swing of 6 percent to draw level, rising to 11 percent to achieve a working majority, while the Tories need a 40 percent share to get near to Blair’s margin of victory in 1997. This tells us more about the desperation in the Labour war room and the enduring capacity to favour fantasy over fact than it does about the state of the nation.

The facts are thus: the Tories won the Crewe and Nantwich by-election last May with a swing of 17.5%, again on a reduced turnout. The recent European MEP elections put Labour in third place, 12% behind the Tories and 43% behind the combined votes of the Tories and the single issue UK Independence Party, most of whom would vote Tory in a General Election. Euroscepticism cost Tories votes in the past: in the next election, this will be an advantage. Were an election to be called tomorrow, the two leading opinion polls give the Tories a 16% lead over Labour. Most polls indicate a projected 40% share, and have done so for several months. Labour’s share would be 24%. This translates as somewhere between a comfortable Tory working majority and a landslide, despite what Labour’s frantic Panglossian spinmonkeys would have you and I believe. A big majority would be bad for Britain, but that’s another story.

No shows will count as a vote against Labour. There is little to choose between Tory Tony and Tory Dave. Gordon IS a moron. Mandy is (fill in the blanks). Next question, please.

John J Kelly

Tony says Gordon must go and I agree, says fat Charlie

Last Sunday BBC political commentator Andrew Marr asked Gordon Brown whether he would consider stepping down as PM if it were the majority view of the Labour Party that it would be in its interests for him to do so. Characteristically, Brown replied “No.” He had a job to do, cleaning up Parliament and saving the economy. Today, his options are somewhat more limited. Twice-disgraced and tainted by the expenses scandal, ‘Lord’ Mandelson is Deputy Prime Minister in all but title. His job is to save what’s left of the Blair Reich. Olympics Minister (yes, that’s her job), the stupid but thick-skinned and loyal Blairite Tessa Jowell has rejoined the cabinet, in another move designed to show that there is no room for corruption in the Brown government.

In a last throw of the dice, Vinny Jones might gain a peerage and join the Cabinet

Tessa was an enthusiastic proponent of the murky and barmy Blair supercasino scheme. Her ‘estranged’ husband, David Mills, may serve 4.5 years in an Italian gaol (see comment below) for abetting Blair’s friend, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, in corruptly abstracting and offshoring Fininvest assets. She apparently didn’t notice that he paid off their £340,000 mortgage with a bribe, claiming she was too busy to notice. Mr Mills, a friend of Formula One supremo, Bernie Ecclestone, also allegedly facilitated the notorious £1 million loan to New Labour early in the Blair First Reich, which saw tobacco advertising on racing cars exempted from the ban on sports promotion. Who will be next to rejoin this cabinet of fools and fouls – Vinny Jones, perhaps?

This morning it was ‘revealed’ in the Murdoch press that Peter Mandelson had exchanged emails questioning Brown’s leadership credentials with none other than ‘psycho’ Derek Draper (Thus passim). Ahead of grisly European Parliament election results, Charlie Falconer, Blair’s ex-flatmate, lawyer, ex-Lord Chancellor and New Labour Illuminatus, pronounced that it might be in the best interests of the party for Gordon to vacate 10 Downing St. Tessa Jowell followed through with the observation that Gordon loved the party so much that he would always step down rather than damage its prospects. Characteristically, Brown nixed this twitter with a defiant speech to activists repeating that he he had no intention of stepping down. So there you have it. Open war. Brown’s staunch allies (Mr and Mrs Balls, Fagin McDarling and the cleaning lady) are menaced by Blair’s Orcs, who have risen from the dead and are now pissing out from inside the big tent.

Brown will step down. It is even conceivable that Mandelson will try to take the reins ‘on a temporary basis’ while a leadership squabble takes place (Thus passim). Never mind the polls, the bookies are offering a measly 6/5 on Brown leaving office. A general election is inevitable, which Thus predicts the Tories will win with a majority of between 240 and 280 seats. Labour will possibly fall to third place behind the Lib Dems. Having lost control of all the UK county councils – while Tory Boris Johnson rules the GLC –  a blue Reich will descend, too comprehensive by half for democracy or even for sound decision-taking by the Tories – look what happened after the Labour landslide.

That’s all she wrote, except to repeat that in order to avoid the Blair/Brown problem, Cameron needs to ditch George Osborne if he expects to have any chance of tackling the inherited economic nightmare. Ken Clarke would make a good war Chancellor. That much said, today’s ‘email evidence’ confirms that hapless toff Osborne told the truth when he claimed that Mandelson, then an EU Commissioner, had ‘poured poison into his ear’ about Gordon Brown aboard Deripaska’s yacht last year, where he and Mandy were guests at James Murdoch’s birthday bash. The Murdoch press chose to spin against Osborne on that occasion. Today they put the boot into Brown. Time to write the memoirs, Gordon. Make them brief. Nobody will read them.

John J Kelly

Has prolonged exposure to the George Bush approach to the democratic process affected his rational cortex, or is the UK Prime Minister completely hatstand?

Any hopes of reform of the British Houses of Parliament under the glassy stare of Gordon Brown were dashed yesterday with his schizophrenic rebuff to the Opposition leader’s call for a General Election. The unrepentant Labour leader said that the government was too busy addressing the crisis in the economy and the MPs’ expenses scandal to hold an election, and that he didn’t want to see the Tories bringing in public spending cuts. I’m no shrink, but there is more than a hint of psychosis here. Brown’s policies exacerbated the crisis in the economy, largely through massive public sector overspending. At least three of his Cabinet Ministers – Blears, McNulty and Smith  - have patently ‘made mistakes’ on a serious scale with their expenses. McNulty, whose department deals with benefit fraud, may well have misappropriated £60,000 all within the rules, of course. (Thus passim). None have been disciplined. Several more Labour grandees, including former Prime Minister Blair, Jeff Hoon, Alan Milburn and various backbenchers, have defrauded the taxpayer to a greater or lesser extent, whether or not it was ‘within the rules.’

The Speaker of the House, the loathsome Labour-inclined Stalinist, Michael Martin, tried to use the police to intimidate The Telegraph and stop further revelations (Thus passim). He was deposed, under pressure from Tory Doug Carswell, Nick Clegg, Leader of the Lib Dems and others. Few detractors were Labour (pace Kate Hoey). In fact, he was warmly applauded from the Labour benches when he made his unapologetic announcement of resignation, no doubt helped by a chat fron Obergruppenführer Brown.  Though the Speaker’s role is supposed to be independent, another New Labour innovation has been to decimate that illusion. (For our foreign readers, this may sound tedious – it is – but this guy was only the second person to be forced from the office, technically the second highest in the land, in over 300 years). This constitutional crisis, and the most widespread outbreak of sleaze since the Rotten Boroughs, happened under Labour, led by an unelected Prime Minister. In the ‘reformed’ House of Lords – now stacked with mostly undeserving unelected representatives, this time chosen by Labour rather than birthright – two Labour peers, Taylor and Truscott, were suspended yesterday for offering to take cash bribes (Thus passim).

If there were an election next week, despite the despicable behaviour of certain Tories with regard to expenses (confirming that the epithet ‘The Stupid Party’ still applies in some cases) polls indicate that Labour would face a wipeout. According to the British Polling Index, support for Labour has fallen to its lowest level since polls began in 1943. 23% of voters support Labour – compared with 45% for the Tories. 17% support the Lib Dems. In a general election, this would translate into a majority of 220 for David Cameron, beating Tony Blair’s 1997 victory by 41 seats.

The country needs an election. Labour delusionally think the populace will quickly forget about the small matter of corruption in high office, the manipulation of the police and security services to political ends, the fawning obeisance to George W Bush which caused so much tragedy and mayhem and the legacy of the largest national debt of all time. The danger is that we’re tired of hearing about MPs’ expenses, but it should be noted that Brown has effectively done nothing about it outside soundbites, and what he has done has been in the wake of Tory initiatives. On their performance in opposition and the evidence (or lack of it) of their economic policies as presented to date (George Osborne is not good with numbers), the Tories don’t deserve to win a huge majority, but they will. This in itself is bad for whatever democracy we have left. But Labour sure as hell deserve to be consigned to oblivion for the atrocities they have perpetrated. It’s also entirely possible that Gordon is a nutter. On these grounds and because I can’t wait for the Tories to get in so that I can revert to type and start kicking them, I commend David Cameron’s petition for a General Election. It will cheer us up no end to see the Browns moving house. No doubt somebody else will pay for it.

John J Kelly

“It beggars belief that the Secretary for Employment and Welfare Reform should be found to be either incompetent in his interpretation of Parliamentary allowances rules, or disingenous in their interpretation. Likewise the stern Ms. Smith. They should resign in shame. But that’s unlikely to happen. We’ve got more important things to do, such as setting an example of ’shared values’ for the wurreld and all its wee citizens, according to this week’s wheezing initiative to ‘combat Al Qaida‘ by training 60,000 shop workers (hopefully not Woolworths’ employees), council staff and parking attendants to take the war on terror to new levels. It won’t work, Gordon. We’re more scared of you and your light-fingered mates than we are of Bin Laden.” (Thus Passim: March 24, 2009). The same piece detailed how ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson allegedly spent £500.00 per week on flowers for his office. Mandelson allegedly put in a claim for extensive renovations to his constituency address one week before resigning as an MP to become an EU commissioner. He sold the house for £135,000 profit. Then again, he sees no problem with people becoming ‘filthy rich.’

Thus has consistently speculated that the UK government uses anti-terror laws and a politicised police force as tools for authoritarian and anti-democratic assaults on civil liberty and as tools to attack political opponents. The arrest of Tory MP and Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green in December 2008 after the leaking of embarrassing immigration statistics is a prime example (Thus passim). Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, was implicated. Michael Martin, Speaker of the House of Commons, authorised police to raid Green’s parliamentary office without a warrant on the grounds that the leak compromised national security. This week, Martin, a former Scottish Labour MP whose role is to uphold the probity, dignity and integrity of Parliament ‘impartially,’ shouted down Lib Dem MP Norman Baker and former Labour Minister Kate Hoey,  both of whom have campaigned for reform of MPs’ allowances in the past. Ms Hoey questioned the wisdom of the Speaker’s tactic of calling in the police again, this time to investigate the leaks to the Daily Telegraph which resulted in the tide of revelations of abuse of privilege and potential fraud by some members of all three parties. Misuse of police time and resources to hunt down a whistleblower could be construed in itself as a further abuse of privilege. Without the leak, the extent of endemic fiddling would have been obfuscated and suppressed. Indeed, Labour attempted earlier to exempt scrutiny of politicians’ expenses on the spurious grounds of national security.

Speaking on Radio 5 last Monday, another Thus favourite, the fragrant Alastair Campbell, Mandelson’s spinmeister Golem, editor of the Iraq War dodgy dossier (and thus an admirable moral commentator) said that as yet, the ‘C’ word had not been used in the context of this scandal. Another ‘C’ word could just as easily be employed in his context, but I digress. Let’s use the C word – not that one, the other one. Corruption.

Shadow Prime Minister David Cameron landed a great clunking fist on the grey jowls of Gordon Brown throughout this farrago, promising a full and transparent disclosure on how MPs spend their allowances, banning Tories from claiming for household furnishings and removing the whip from his aide, Andrew McKay MP. The Prime Minister followed suit by suspending former Agriculture Minister Elliot Morley for claiming £16,000 in mortgage payments after the loan had been repaid. Justice Minister Shaheed Malik (Sultan of ID Cards, by the way) reluctantly stepped down on 15 May, having forgotten to declare a vastly subsidised residence and buying a TV set for £1000.00. Labour peer ‘Lord’ Truscott was also forced to step down in a separate revelation, reported in the Sunday Times, that he, amongst others, had promised to influence legislation in the Upper House in return for cash. But Communities Secretary Hazel Blears (Thus passim) is still in situ, despite having been proven to have omitted to pay over £13,000 capital gains tax on a dubious ’second home’ which she acquired on Members’ allowances and sold for a profit. It is perhaps more worrying that the UK Inland Revenue (HMRC) apparently ’signed off’ on her tax return.

Westminster today is a vast necropolis of skeletons waiting to fall out of closets. Ten days of ‘revelations’ have curiously diminished the impact. Excesses have largely conformed to class stereotypes. Toffee-nosed Tories put in claims for draining moats, replumbing swimming pools and even the upkeep of a helipad. Labour expenses, with the exception of Mandelson’s garden and Tony Blair’s use of his allowance for a deposit on a £3.6 million Connaught Place mansion, have been more dreary – £800 plasma screen TVs, toilet seats and mock Tudor fascia for aspirational capitalist roaders. Cameron, whose expenses were apparently wholly above board, nevertheless expressed public abhorrence that members of his party could behave like – old fashioned Tories. By contrast, after his attempt to pre-empt independent investigation using the gruesome YouTube broadcast (inspired by Mr C word himself, Alastair Campbell) Brown, and leaderine-in-waiting, Harriet Harman, grasped at the defence that members were largely acting within the rules, thus the system, not its actors, was to blame. On this logic, a burglar might argue for acquittal on the grounds that it was the householder’s fault for leaving the window unlatched. 

When, and if, a comprehensive review of MPs’ expenses, remuneration and allowances is undertaken, it must be made explicit that any breach of not merely the rules, but the principle governing those rules will result in instant dismissal. Any breach of UK law, including tax avoidance, should be investigated, tried and punished according to UK civil and criminal law. Several UK MPs are already familiar with the process. Of the 646 members of the House of Commons, 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year, 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit, 29 have been accused of spouse abuse, 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits, 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges, 17 have directly or indirectly  bankrupted at least two businesses, 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques, 8 have been arrested for shoplifting, 7 have been arrested for fraud and 3 have done time for assault. 

John J Kelly

I am personally under no delusion that the Conservatives are more than capable of dirty tricks. Camerons’ chief spin doctor, the ex News of the World editor Andy Coulson (implicated in the Royal phone-tapping scandal) is potentially an accident-in-waiting. The Tories would score highly if they promised to take the moral high ground and acted accordingly. If they had any sense, they would question the value of ‘assets’ such as Coulson and also distance themselves from celebrity public relations ‘gurus’ who have demonstrated that they have no qualms about swapping allegiance, played a part in the discomfiture of Osborne (and have access at the highest level to Murdoch). They probably won’t do either, and the Guido Fawkes revelations will be seen as a justification for the dark arts, but if either party wants to know why the numbers exercising their right to vote have diminished on both sides of the Atlantic, the answer is above. The issue goes beyond them and us. The populace has been duped into penury, taken to war, robbed and manipulated by a claque which has clearly lost its moral compass. While the end seems clearly in sight – Labour will not be re-elected – we must send a clear signal that while they may well have destroyed the UK economy for years to come, we will not tolerate gutter politics and sanctioned sleaze from their successors, who have past form in such matters.

John J Kelly

There is little I can add to the well-published facts surrounding the odious activities of the head of Downing St. Strategy and Planning Unit, Damian McBride, except to state the facts. He was one of Gordon Brown’s most senior and long-standing aides, a fellow Scot, known in media circles as ‘McPoison,‘ partly for his habit of sending vicious and intimidatory texts to journalists who failed to toe the party line. He was paid a ’six figure’ salary by the UK taxpayer to smear detractors at the government’s behest. His resignation statement borders on the psychotic, opening with an attack on Tory blogger Paul Staines, (Guido Fawkes) for revealing the plot to disseminate vicious slurs on the Shadow Prime Minister and Chancellor, implying that Staines should have kept quiet about libellous emails intended to illegally and maliciously distort public opinion of HM Official opposition. He then claims that the idea originated with co-conspirator Derek Draper, as a counter to unspecified anti-Labour slurs. The emails suggested using libelous and unfounded accusations that the Shadow Prime Minister had a sexually transmitted disease (he and his wife recently lost a child) and sexual allegations against the Shadow Chancellor, amongst others. The Prime Minister, usually quick to claim the moral high ground, has not come forward with a statement of condemnation. Alan Johnson, Health Secretary, while admitting that the allegations were ‘disgusting,’ attempted to make light of the issue on BBC Radio 4 this morning, denying any responsibility on the part of McBride’s employer. (In passing, it has been alleged elsewhere that Karl Milner, another former Brown aide, former political lobbyist and implicated with Draper in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal – see below – may have handled donations for Johnson’s Deputy Leadership campaign).

McBride puts his fellow conspirator firmly in the frame. “When Derek Draper originally suggested using a website to compete with the kind of material seen regularly on the Guido Fawkes blog, he asked me in a personal capacity to write up some of the stories doing the rounds in Westminster. Derek and I decided in the end that this website was the wrong thing to do, and that Derek should not take his online efforts down to the level of Guido Fawkes and his Tory backers.” (McBride resignation statement). Draper, a former aide to twice-banished ‘Lord’ Peter Mandelson, was himself disgraced in the 1998 ‘Lobbygate’ scandal, where he claimed that he could facilitate access to New Labour insiders and cabinet figures for a fee. He suffered a breakdown, went to California via The Priory, gained an MA in Clinical Psychology (though not at Berkeley as he implied on his CV) and re-invented himself as a BACP accredited psychotherapist. This latest backsliding suggests that he may be in need of some serious supervision.

Recently Draper re-entered the world of politics with his LabourList website. His own ‘apologies and regrets‘ blog on this website today shows little in the way of apology and insufficient ‘regret’. In proposing that we ‘draw a line’ under this ’silly’ episode, while repeating Green’s ‘excuse’ that the emails should never have seen the light of day, he omits to mention that his putative vehicle for smear, “RedRag” is still a registered domain (listed under an accommodation address). While he and Green have accused unnamed Tory grandees of supporting Guido Fawkes, he has repeatedly claimed that LabourList is completely independent of New Labour. Yet its content unambiguously supports the party line and boasts of inside track information. As for smears, recent examples of its top-level agenda-setting stories in the national interest include a story about Tory Transport spokesman John Leech MP forgetting to renew his car tax. Draper has repeatedly sidestepped questions as to who supports/endorses and/or contributes to LabourList, and whether they are part of the incumbent government and its fellow travellers.

The third recipient of sordid emails, Charlie Whelan, was a sweary former spin doctor (aide to Gordon Brown, no less) under the Blair-led Government, who ’stepped down’ after the 1999 Mandelson home loan scandal, and is now Press Officer of the Unite trade union. All three have strong links to Labour/Brown and/or Mandelson. One was on the government payroll in a senior official advisory capacity. It beggars belief that the country should ‘draw a line’ under this conspiracy to sink British politics to the gutter levels which did so much damage to democracy in the US. Brown needs to issue a statement of unqualified condemnation and apology to the Conservatives and to the country. Anything less is an admission of complicity, and failure to do so should be seen in its own context. In passing, it is obviously and wholly coincidental that the recent resurgence of slimeball spin doctoring and dark arts, which Brown vowed to end when he became Prime Minister, appears to have coincided with the reappearance in High Office of the spotless Peter Mandelson, who allegedly ‘poured poison’ about Gordon Brown into the ear of George Osborne on the boat of a Russian Oligarch (Yachtgate) in an incident which led to Osborne’s political discomfiture, three months before Mandelson returned to government. So successful was his black propaganda that nobody asked what the EU Trade Commissioner was doing on Oleg Deripaska’s yacht, where he allegedly stayed for a week.

John J Kelly

Thus predicts that reluctantly, the shrinking viole(n)t Campbell will enter the fray and snuggle up next to Mandy in the Lords, with the sincerity of a Spice Girl pushed on stage for a reunion gig. It is also odds-on that more propaganda masquerading as comment such as the longwinded, wonky, badly-argued cant which miraculously appeared recently in my former magazine, Prospect (however did that happen?) will trumpet themselves to general apathy. 

Meanwhile, under its relatively new director, wannabe kingmaker Richard Reeves (another ex-hack) of formerly leftish think tank, Demos, has taken another turn to the muddy centre and has invited ‘University’ of Cumbria academic, god botherer and ‘Red Tory’ cheerleader Phillip (sic) Blond to orchestrate a programme of ‘debate’ into  ’Progressive Conservatism.’ (The first question I’d ask is whether the term is an oxymoron or simply moronic). Keynote speeches will be delivered on January 22 by David Cameron, crossbencher Frank Field, Oliver Letwin and the ubiquitous Will Hutton of the Work Foundation (another oxymoron?) for which Richard Reeve once ‘worked’. There is allegedly a lot of money around in the think tank world, ahead of the election, which we are told isn’t happening (it is), despite all this jockeying for the centre ground. I’ll gladly head up a study group to ask: why? Nobody outside Islington and Notting Hill cares what these drooling halfwit spinmonkeys think, or if they think at all. 

John J Kelly

I'm not a top copper, but the giveway clue in this advertisement from Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick's undercover limo service might have been 'police officers at the wheel'. In itself, this is an unenticing, unless the newly-weds wish to be driven at high speed, dragged from the vehicle with a blanket over their heads and bundled up the aisle by ex Plod. Good for shotgun weddings, I suppose.

The story of Bob Quick’s (wife’s) sideline business hiring luxury executive cars, run from the family home has now been well-documented. The unwise and slanderous outburst from Quick, who accused the Tories, and Shadow Home Office Minister Dominic Grieve in particular, of ‘corruption’, of endangering his family safety and undermining the Police enquiry into the earlier Home Office leaks is now common knowledge. His subsequent ‘grovelling apology’ to Cameron and the Tories is now also in the public domain. Silobreaker is the most comprehensive source.

I’m (clearly) not a copper, but it appears that Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick may have compromised the integrity and impartiality of the ‘enquiry’ which he is leading by his rash slander of the party and parties accused by Labour (Thus passim) of encouraging Home Office leaks of allegedly sensitive immigration data which led to the dramatic arrest of a top Tory. On this basis alone, he should resign as head of the enquiry and pass the job along to another department or (preferably) another police force entirely. 

One way to discredit and spin an investigation which might severely embarrass the government is to throw a large spanner into the spokes of the enquiry, add a spice of ‘Terror’ and hope that the resulting muck and bullets will smear everyone, especially if it is timed for the festive season, when not much news reporting happens. A version of this tactic may have been at play here. Bob Quick may have blindly lashed out at what he considered a mischievous attack by the Tory-favouring Mail on Sunday, but history shows that this influential right wing middle class tabloid has been used to great effect in the past by elements of New Labour, especially when there is a ‘Terrorist threat’ angle to the story.

Silobreaker networking image puts Quick in the middle and terrorism on the extreme edge

All this is largely irrelevant, since we already know the ‘outcome’ of this enquiry by the Met Police into the Met Police. We will hear that the Police acted completely independently of the government. Even though the Home Secretary and Prime Minister were informed of the raid on Damian Green’s parliamentary office and had it in their power to mitigate or halt the breach of parliamentary privilege that occurred, they ‘chose not to’ since to do so would compromise the ‘integrity and independence’ of the Police. The leaks, we will be told, were and are too sensitive to be revealed to the public and possibly exposed the entire nation to Terror on a massive scale. It will be conceded that neither David Cameron, Dominic Grieve nor Damian Green actively conspired to encourage the junior Home Office civil servant to leak information, but it will be acknowledged that he had an ulterior motive in so doing – to curry favour with the Conservatives. 

What possibly won’t be acknowledged is that the Police acted disingenuously in searching Green’s offices without a warrant, that it is possible that covert surveillance techniques were used which may have required authorisation from the Home office, that Jacqui Smith and the leaky Immigration Office department had prima facie motive for suppressing information relating to a breakdown of information relating to the number and whereabouts of illegal and overstayed immigrants, some of whom may be nationals of countries with whom Britain has a parlous diplomatic relationship (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia, for example). Neither will it be acknowledged that Gordon Brown and his advisors, principally Mandelson, had no right or justification to publicly intimate on national public media that the Leader of the Opposition and his Front Bench played an active role in colluding to leak information of this nature.

Nobody will be prosecuted (Scotland Yard have already conceded as much). Nobody will be brought to book. Bob Quick wedding car hire will operate from another premises (and frankly why not – good luck to him and his wife) – unless unkind – and possibly jealous – ’sources in the Metropolitan Police’ leak his new address too. Please prove me wrong. And tell me I’m not a Tory. I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. I’m fed up of defending the poor lambs. But independent or not, I wouldn’t fancy my chances when they sweep to power, Superintendent Quick, so I’d keep the car hire business ticking over.

Oh, you are naughty, Mr. Plod. But I like you.

The awful events in Mumbai overshadowed a serious breach in democratic principles in the UK on 29 November, 2008. Nine counter terrorist police stormed the Kent home and Westminster offices of Conservative Shadow Minister Damian Green, searched his home, constituency and Westminster offices and detained him under the Official Secrets Act. The MP was bailed after several hours of interrogation on a putative charge of ‘aiding and abetting misconduct in public office.’ David Cameron MP, Leader of the Opposition, immediately decried the actions as ‘heavy-handed’, ‘unnecessary’  ’Stalinesque’ and redolent of ‘Zimbabwe.’ We heard little from the government until today, when Harriet Harman, Deputy Prime Minister and defender of the nation’s freedoms and morals (Thus passim) categorically denied any government involvement but conceded that, though MPs were not above the law, it was a worrying sign if the police were allowed to rampage through Whitehall riffling through MPs’ correspondence. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith admitted that the Cabinet Office had initiated the investigation into the ‘leaks’ and that a civil servant had been arrested as far back as November 11. It beggars belief that no discussion of tactics had taken place.

Ms Smith, defender of the State’s right to taser and tag (Thus passim) took a different but familiar line on flagship BBC political TV show, the Andrew Marr Programme. While (evasively) denying that anyone in the government knew anything whatsoever, before, during and after a well-resourced and highly politically-sensitive operation, she defended the rights of the police to act unilaterally ‘on information received’ as a sign of their democratic independence and refused to apologise in any manner to the Opposition MP. The argument is Orwellian, rather than Stalinesque, and disconcerting on several levels.

Firstly, if the Home Office was completely unaware of this action, relating to leaked information that, amongst other things, up to 5000 ‘illegal immigrants’ were unwittingly employed by government agencies in positions which could compromise the security of, amongst others, the Royal Family, then we have a problem. This fact was admitted by the government (after a leak) in November 2007. Ms Smith admitted that the Home Office was aware of the ‘leaks’, but claimed she and her department were unaware of the impending police action. Secondly, if nobody in the Home Office, up to and including the Home Secretary, was informed or even asked to provide a view as to the necessity of the high profile arrest and detention of the Opposition Spokesman on Immigration, then nothing has been learned from the systemic and endemic failures which led to the departure of John Reid, the previous hardline Home Secretary with, let’s say, distinctly ‘Stalinesque’ tendencies, whose reign of terror, conducted largely in the name of the War on Terror, split the Home Office in March 2007 and left it in disarray.

Thirdly, if the Home Secretary seriously believes that the nation will believe that there was and is no ulterior or political motive in the manner or execution of this operation, she is still living in the dark, spinning, leaking David Kelly days of Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, who coincidentally, have recently returned to positions of influence. Damian Green received information whose disclosure, whether damaging to the reputation (if that’s the right word) or not of the Home Office Immigration Office appears to be pertinent, urgent and appropriate, especially at this tense time. It is also damaging to the credibility (if that’s the word) of the government. The police raid coincidentally occurred on the last day in of Labour-supporting Metropolitan Police Chief, Sir Ian Blair, sacked by Boris Johnson, a high profile Tory who carries a huge amount of executive power as Mayor of London and Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority. If any link is suspected, action is required. If the government tacitly supported such plainly extreme action – a phone call would have sufficed – then it needs to explain why.

Ms Smith refused to confirm or deny that she or her department had signed authorisation to bug Mr Green’s phones and Blackberry mobile phone device. If it is subsequently proven that devices or premises were bugged by the police or other agents of the state, then the previous Home Office farragoes will pale into insignificance.

The issue of ‘police operational independence’ lies at the heart of this incident. If we are to believe that there was no co-ordination in an assault on the civil liberties of a high ranking Opposition Shadow Minister, so far not resulting in charges and, moreover, breaching Parliamentary privilege by entering the Houses of Parliament and searching his office, then we are looking at the green shoots of a Police State. If the Home Office was aware and, formally or informally, colluded, we are looking at a full grown Triffid. Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman, appeared to contradict Ms Smith by conceding that questions would need to be asked as to how Parliamentarians could expect to function if breach of privilege without sanction, is allowed. The Police know who authorised what, when and how. They should whistleblow, or take the blame if any or all of this is proved to be abuse of power. Cameron should continue to apply pressure for an official enquiry, (pressure has already yielded a Commons statement).

1984 was literally a bad year for British democracy. The Miner’s Strike and IRA Terror introduced breaches of democratic and constitutional principles which Labour in opposition were powerless to oppose. We could be facing a constitutional crisis which transcends tribal politics. This time round, Labour, even in its senescent state, should know better than to think we’ll be fooled into acquiescence by mutterings of things beyond our ken.