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

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