One appointment in Gordon Brown's reshuffle which went unnoticed was the reappointment of Labour's Pairing Whip, Tommy McAvoy. He has held this post since May 1997 - a record. A no nonsense Glaswegian, McAvoy has made the Blair-Brown transition with little difficulty. A naughty Conservative MP likened him to Joseph Fouche, Napoleon's Head of Secreat Police who went on to perform the same role for the Bourbons.Monday, July 02, 2007
Tommy McAvoy: Ten Years Not Out
One appointment in Gordon Brown's reshuffle which went unnoticed was the reappointment of Labour's Pairing Whip, Tommy McAvoy. He has held this post since May 1997 - a record. A no nonsense Glaswegian, McAvoy has made the Blair-Brown transition with little difficulty. A naughty Conservative MP likened him to Joseph Fouche, Napoleon's Head of Secreat Police who went on to perform the same role for the Bourbons.
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6 comments:
This might be news down in the dark lands of Kent but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are on the same (winning) side. The French analogy fails.
Au contraire, eric-the-fish. The analogy seems to me quite apposite.
Blair displays a lethal cocktail of charisma and ego. Brown has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
Sounds like Tommy McAvoy will make a great future pub quiz trivia question to me. In ten years' time, everyone will think the answer to the question "Who served the longest continuous period in one post during the 1997-2014 Labour administration" was "Gordon Brown."
Never mind the day job that photo is more than ten years old!!!
By the way. Tommy is from Lanarkshire - ie not a Weegie.
Nonsense - Tommy is a man of the people. He was the battering ram that Labour backbenchers used back in 93/94to topple the longstanding and loathed regime of Ray "the rent" Powell, whose main quality as whip responsible for accomodation was giving all the decent offices to Scottish and Welsh cronies.
Although Tommy lost when he stood against Ray Powell in the whipping elections that year such was the size of his vote from backbench rebels (some of them quite respectable figures like Bridget Prentice) that Powell was largely busted for his last years in the post and adopted a much more open approach to divving out offices.
So a man of the backbenches as much as a tool of ministers. At least he was once...
A lovelier bloke you will not meet, unless you piss him off then he'll break your legs. Exactly what a whip should be.
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