As regular readers know, His Mingness has appointed a new spin doctor. His name is Gavin Grant. His first act was to spin that Ming's a fish and chip loving viewer of Strictly Come Dancing. This rather backfired on him. What I hadn't realised at the time was that Mr Grant was the mastermind behind Mark Oaten's leadership campaign (but who am I to talk?!). Grant continues to advise Oaten on his current rehabilitation campaign (hence the embarrassing Sunday Times piece and Newsnight film in May). Grant has also worked in a professional capacity as a PR consultant to the Iraqi National Congress and (unusually for a LibDem) holds very strong pro-Iraq war views. Has anyone told Ming? The headline "Ming shares PR adviser with Mark Oaten and Ahmed Chalabi" will not do his image much good. Shame that.
Hat-tip to my anonymous correspondent for this very helpful info. Should anyone else have info on further PR disasters Mr Grant has masterminded, do get in touch.
4 comments:
Remember that Ming originally said what a fine & accurate document the dodgy dossier was. He was also an unqualified supporter of bombing Yugoslav hospitals to help the genocidal KLA.
It is clear that the (in my view correct & principled) liberal opposition to aggressive war was Charlie Kennedy's not the LD's.
In that regard may I point to the appearance of photogenic blond Scottish Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen on Question Time on Thursday. In response to a question on Israel he stated that Israel's attack on Gaza's power supply was "a war crime under the Convention". Since the LDs supported the repeated attacks on Yugoslav power supplies (using specially designed graphite bombs to make them unrepairable) he must be the first party leader to publicly say that his party have been guilty of involvement in war crimes.
Why was I the only person in Britain not to get exercised about Mr Oaten's supposed love life? What's it got to do with me or the general public? Never understood the prurient fascination.
I have managed to stop two court cases.
using the sex pistols case and the bill of rights 1688. article 13.
Fixed penalty fine, the police have to act as judge and jury on the spot.
Ian the gun
I am reliably informed by one Lib Dem MP that the whole "fish and chips" story was complete bollocks.
Gavin Grant was not at the party's spring conference in Harrogate and his meeting with Ming as reported in the Times on 24 June never took place.
Indeed, Grant has not been appointed as Ming's image maker at all and the Times story was a smokescreen.
The truth is worse. Grant has been appointed as 'convenor' of Ming's 'Shadow Communications Agency' (an initiative announced in Ming's big speech on 8 June but buried under all the hype about tax policy). Grant is therefore acting as gatekeeper and will control which of the party's many members working in PR are allowed to help Ming and which are not.
Given Grant's extreme right-wing views (recall that, back in the 1980s, he openly referred to himself and his small clique of pro-merger fantatics as "the Phalange"), things are likely to turn very nasty indeed.
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