Where No. 10 is guilty — and has been since the Prime Minister walked through its glossy black door almost ten years ago — is in its failure to tell the whole truth. Its currency has been part-truths and, quite often, downright lies. One example sticks in my mind. When I was political editor of the Scotsman, we ran a story that the Prime Minister was lending his voice to an
episode of The Simpsons. That day I took a call from a furious No. 10 official: why had we done this, after being categorically told the story was untrue? The answer came some months later, when the episode was aired. Mr Blair had recorded his contribution at the height of the Iraq war. Ask yourself this: if the Prime Minister’s aides are prepared to dissemble about something as marginal as an American cartoon show, what hope do the Metropolitan Police have of extracting the full story in the loans-for-honours investigation? Being economical with the truth, misleading the press with statements which are only technically correct, is a habit now embedded in the culture of No. 10. Hoodwinking journalists is by no means a criminal offence. But failing to tell the whole truth to the Metropolitan Police can land you up in jail, should the cover-up be big enough.
And that, ladies and gentlemen will be New Labour's epitaph. With a bit of luck.
16 comments:
"And that, ladies and gentlemen will be New Labour's epitaph. With a bit of luck."
Do you honestly believe the Tories will do any better?
Blair Bliar the country has already figured it out ,even the c4 viewers no it
Leon, if I didn't believe that I wouldn't want to stand at the next election.
leon said...
Do you honestly believe the Tories will do any better?
10:48 PM
The only thing we can be sure of is that if labour continue in power it won't get better.
I find it hard to watch Blair standing there talking bollocks through his arse. ( Is that physically possible )
The sooner Yates gets his collar, the better for politics in this country.
(Try again)
Leon, do you honestly believe that the Tories, clueless as they may appear at the moment, can be anything LIKE as bad as this lot of gangsters?
billy - correct. If the socialists/communists/thought fascists stay in power, we will not have a country within five years.
Tony Blair (P'lice Be upon Him) is a delusional messianic personality. He was going to - and has - change Britain in his own image, sort out the Middle East, become unelected president of the EU, sort out Africa, sort out global warming ... and the company he keeps ... Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, Tessa Jowell and her lovely indicted husband, Caravan queen Margaret Beckett, now, God help us, fulfilling the great role of the British Foreign Secretary, Bernie Eccleston - for such a (failed) king of the world, he never exactly ran with the A List, did he?
if the Prime Minister’s aides are prepared to dissemble about something as marginal as an American cartoon show,
He has been the star of an English Cartoon Show for 12 years and they cannot even face up to that fact
Spot on Verity. I can't put my finger on when the change came from a nuLab government concerned not to be painted as high-tax, high-spend, nationalising, industrially inept old socialists to a government that fell in love with the omission, distortion and misrepresentation of the truth almost for its own sake. When the taste of power was stronger than the wish to do good, I suspect.
And Blair is certainly pathologically narcissistic. And self-deluding to a dangerous degree; the truth for him is what he wants it to be. And he believes it.
I never thought I'd miss John Major. But his rather endearing ordinaryness, extending to including the full postcode of Number Ten when filling in State / embassy visiting books, at least didn't endanger the fundamentals of British democracy as Blair's cabal does.
Iain,
Whilst I can understand the desire to get into power to sort out this unholy mess that 10 years of this NuLab/Socialist/Communist cabal have inflicted, and applaud you for it, I am still not convinced by Cameron. What the hell is he doing listening to Toynbee?
I don't want a 'Tony-lite' - nor any of the NuLab policies, I want someone that is going to sort out the bloody mess Bliar and his cronies have got the country into.
If Cameron were to take the initiative, and treat the electorate as adults, he'd sweep the board; everyone accepts the NHS is broken and continuing with Labour policies is not going to fix it (and that includes increasing amounts of public money - that's clearly been shown not to work); restore our civil liberties and then put legislation in place that enshrines them; wrest back control of our legislation from Brussels and reduce the crippling tax burdens on *everyone* in the country.
One thing you can count on - I will vote for any candidate that has the best hope of getting rid of the NuLab parasite.
verity - please don't use the non sequitur of lazy thinking that 'thought police' is synonymous with socialism - it is not.
Young Fraser does not write well. That 'glossy black door' is a dead giveaway, a flat and ineffective attempt at a telling detail. But I guess that's not the point.
verity, what are you doing posting at 2.01 in the morning? Insomnia? Night duty? Verity is a woman's name, but are you really a woman?
Zanu Labour stands for the belief that selling public services at a stupid price, in monoply contracts, to the largest suppliers (with unbroken histories of incompetence), is using the market. They stand for the belief that the answer to failiure is another law, and more regulation. They stand for the belief that a lie today will be forgotten tommorow. They stand for the belief that if the state has infinite power over the inividual, then all will be well. They are empy and morally bankcrupt.
Unless Dave wakes up to the fact that means don't justify ends we are in for more of the same.
Spin and sound bites and the like are the equivalent of shirt tugging and diving in the 'beautiful game' and it's very hard not to adopt these dishonest 'means' when 'ends' seem to be all that matter.
Its not the winning that matters but how one plays the game.
Iain, in an earlier post you quote Polly T. "...the current knee-jerk view that Westminster is a palace of rogues who should all be sent packing..." Yes, and this view is largely a result of the diving and shirt tugging that has become the norm (for instance biking to work with the chauffeur following along behind with your sandwiches).
I hate, hate, hate cheating and would argue that most of my fellow countrymen feel the same.
"Play up, play up, and play the game".
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