The Labour smear machine is up to its old tricks again. They are trying to persuade the Sunday lobby that the Mail on Sunday’s story last week was a put up job by the Tories and by Michael Ashcroft in particular. They will stop at nothing to divert attention away from their own incompetence and alleged corruption. But it won’t work. Everyone in the Sunday lobby knows that Jonathan Oliver’s story was a good bit of old fashioned journalistic research. The Labour donors were published the previous Tuesday; he noticed some odd names in the list and went to work. It’s what he does – and does so well.
The upshot has been that many of the other Sunday political journos have been hauled over the coals by their editors for failing to get a story that was staring them in the face. In particular, the Sunday Times political team got a withering dressing down from the powers that be at Wapping. “This is our kind of story, and you should have got it”, they were told. It was the Sunday Times, readers will recall, who broke the Cash for Honours story.
So if you see a story in any of the Sundays alleging the Tories put the Mail on Sunday up to it, you will know the truth. This is a line being peddled by Labour spin merchants. And shame on any Sunday journalist who falls for this trick. It’s a diversionary tactic and they know it.
37 comments:
Let's hope more detail is revealed tomorrow about Mendelsohn's complicity in the generation of these donations.
It's so damn obvious that he was cranking up supplies for Labour's war chest at the time the 650k was received - they were in full on early general election mode and raising funds for that election was his raison d'etre in Brown's forward planning cabal months before his formal appointmeent in September.
We've also got Keith Vaz on the Beeb telling anyone who will listen, that this would not have happened if the Tories had not walked away from the talks on donations.
Labour realise now that they have been caught red handed. They can no longer use "I know nothing" as an excuse, so they are coming out fighting with good old fashioned spin.
I've heard that the Labour Party are looking for an MP to release a sex tape on the Internet as a diversion.
Goodness!
David and the shadow cabinet need to go in for the kill and quick. Labour are making a good fist of spinning their way out of this.
It is always one of the most amusing things about New Labour, the way that over a short space of time you will hear from senior Ministers down to lowly muppets all using just about exactly the same words as they repeat the latest spin from the Fuhrer bunker.
"Mostly Ordinary said...
I've heard that the Labour Party are looking for an MP to release a sex tape on the Internet as a diversion."
Please don't let it be Prescott. :=)
I see the nice chap named Dirty European Socialist is all over the Three Line Whip blog and trying to smear the Tories as well.
As for Labour spin. What's new?
And there was I thinking that the attacks on Harriet Harman and Wendy Alexander were down to Brown's spin-doctors trying to distract from the incompetence and/or mendacity from high-ranking Labour officials.
I was beginning to wonder if it was all a Tory Party plot...
It's how often the BBC repeat this spin, that is important. Although the public may not be that stupid. but I wouldn't bet on it.
It's obvious that the BBC news department and Labour spin machine, have been colluding directly for many years. I suspect there have been informal meetings and phone calls, discussing the best way to cover Labour's minging backside, and the Beeboids know exactly what to do!
jailhouselawyer said...
I was beginning to wonder if it was all a Tory Party plot...
Delusional Labour cretins never cease to amaze me!
GORDON BROWN HAS ADMITTED THAT THE LAW HAD BEEN BROKEN, you moron.
It isn't smear ffs!. It is a real story of massive public interest, however it got into the public arena.
I mean it's not like Labour the Guardian and the BBC colluded to crap on Major at every opportunity.
Daily Referendum - You are right. I predicted on a thread below that they are going to get away with it by stonewalling and repeating the same transparently untrue excuses over and over and over again. Gordon will look grave, Harriet Harmperson will look smug and her fat wobbly bottom will still be on the back seat of her ministerial car in a week's time; a month's time ... and in the end, there will be nothing new for the press to write about and it will all evaporate.
And from the point of view of logic, if they can get away with millions and millions of pounds paid for honours, they can get away with mean-spirited little poxy £5,000 "loans".
For anyone who hasn't read it, Matthew Parrish has written a scorcher today. Toxic. A killer. Yet if Labour continue to shamelessly protest their innocence with bare-faced lies that don't even hang together, they will get away with it.
The Tories need to come storming in with heavy artillery and merciless rhetoric, because I can see this slipping away even as I type.
For anyone who doesn't know, Matthew Parris can be found over at timesonline.co.uk
Surely it's been acknowledged by the Conservative side that this is indeed the result of some well targeted Ashcroft-backed research.
And very effective it will have been, if the outcome is Labour accepting the £50,000 limit on donations - including those from the unions.
Not surprisingly the brothers are exceedingly outraged by this prospect. How very pleasing.
Verity.
I've just popped over to the Timesonline. Parris is on excellent form.
Anonymous Conservative, no, you're wrong.This has not been acknowledged at all. It simply isn't true. It was put about by Labour spinners to try to drag Lord Ashcroft's name into the mire.
Anonymous Conservative = Anonymous Labour Troll.
Rubbish. I am what I say I am - but will acknowledge I did think Ashcroft was fighting back very effectively, and with a favourable outcome. But perhaps I was naive.
Brown's game, it appears, will be to p[ush through the legislation with possible help from the Lib Dems. Hope the Tories kick it out in the Lords then that will give Brown the chance to show his 'strength' by invoking the Parliament Act.
Tories must be careful.
As for watering down listen to that twerp Spencer the flowery politico on Sky News. "It'll blow over"
Everything is the "Nasty Tories" fault ? And there was I thinking it was all down to hubris; incompetent Labour Ministers ; questionable practices by Labour Party officials and a control-freak for a PM !
There is an underlying root cause of all these problems. New Labour's failure to consider the truth important, only presentation and media management. They have drunk so long from the cup of deceit and spin that they can no longer recognise reality when it slaps them in the face.
They are decrepit.
Just take Brown's suggestion that what's needed is party funding reform. What reform does he suggest ? That Labour party officers obey the law perhaps ?
Will he suggest new laws that his officials will be less likely to break ? Or is being caught the new crime ?
What they want is to command. To command that we give them cash taxes) so they can rule. They don't want citizens or even party members - just subjects.
The Labour leadership are a disgrace to our nation and they make me sick.
"As for watering down listen to that twerp Spencer the flowery politico on Sky News. "It'll blow over"
I was just jumping back on here to mention Spencer's revolting piece of Labour spin, it was something to the effect of,
"...it will blow over, and although it seems serious at the moment, in the end, it will be found that, nobody did anything that serious..."
I see the MSM are all getting back on message. Bunch of NuLab toadie W*****s! Sky should be ashamed
If I ever bump into Mr Spencer one day I would express my enthusiasm for his err.. professionalism, in no uncertain terms
What does it matter who tipped the story? If that's what Labour are really trying to spin then it is a non story anyway - except perhaps to get the lobby fighting among themselves?
It is a good story. But I'm sure it is not the only good story from numbers that are - or are not - in the EC schedules.
PS Anonymouse 2:36pm
What do you mean : "At the time the 650k was received" ?
This was spread over a longish period and not in a single event.
I'm begining to think that security is also being used as a diversionary tactic. I have noticed that whenever nulab is in some sort of trouble about something then out comes a bulletin regarding the number of enemies in our midst and lo and behold out come another last week.
I think that this a most deplorable thing to do and we might get a bit complacent hearing the same old chestnut. This kind of bulletin should be used with care. Playing with security for politcal purposes is a dangerous game.
Keep watch and see if I am right!
Rex, This standard Labour practice.
The "dirty bomb" threat, from that mumsy, waste-of-space, Jackie Smith, was wheeled out yesterday.
Iain it's at times like this you betray your lack of understanding of journalism - your last foray into Sunday lobby politics didn't go down too well.
Not a single Sunday paper will be considering writing that the MoS story was a Tory put-up job. Do you think that any of the other major Sundays are going to want to draw attention to the fact that the story which has now been leading the bulletins for a week (teddy bears aside) was written by one of their major rivals.
Just because that is the line Labour are putting around does not mean you need to warn Sunday political hacks from writing it.
Worth noting that this is the same Iain Dale who smeared Gordon Brown and his team by saying they broke the law in ripping up a cheque - eventhough he didn't bother to check the legal definition of what a cheque is - which is something that most trainee lawyers and accountants learn very early on and can be found in numerous places.
Oh, so it's all the media's fault.
As a taxpayer, I'd like to know why Her Majesty's Opposition was such a waste of space during the Blair years.
Who allowed Hutton to gag the Beeb?
This didn't happen yesterday. And I've never seen any Tories supporting Media Lens or similar watchdogs over media bias.
This kind of selective memory is no different from Labour's current spin that Donorgate is a hangover from the Blair years.
It's like the joke about the 1960's . . . if you can remember them, you weren't there.
Obviously, Gordon can't remember being Chancellor.
Well, grow up, 'tory boys never grow up'.
No one is obliged to read the rantings of a West Ham Supporter. And I don't think Iain has a publicly funded army of editors and researchers.
Sky and the BBC also got this reporting confused, and they were assisted by both.
Moreover, on the stories about whether the cheque was 'torn up' or 'returned' or 'will be returned' (as in the latest Harriet Press Release) the truth is still out.
Why is it that everyone believes what the MSM has to say is gospel and cuts bloggers no slack at all?
I reckon bliar tipped that journo off via an intermediary of course,such a brilliant shot right where gordon lives his supposed integrity and daddys moral compass.All this came from his old manor and who would know best where the bodies are buried.
Ah Iain, how much did the Mail have to pay you to write this? And how on earth did you get direct quotes from the Sunday Times? CAn't imagine the political editor David Cracknell or his chum would forward them to you - or their bosses? Surely, they're not passed on to you indirectly by sources close to the Mail on Sunday!? Course not, what interest could they possibly have in insisted "their" story didn't come from the Tories?
Well there's another donor popped up, LOL
http://tinyurl.com/32o3e7
"Mahmoud Khayami, a French citizen, has given a total of £830,000 in the past eight months, making him Labour's biggest individual backer after Lord Sainsbury .... "
What's your reaction to this, Iain, having strenuously denied it? [from the Hennessy/Kite article in today's Telegraph]
"A sophisticated Tory operation was understood to have been behind the initial revelation of Mr Abrahams's proxy donors.
Last month, the Department of Transport received under the Freedom of Information Act a request for information about the ministry's dealings with two of the proxies, Mrs Kidd and Ray Ruddick, from Richard Hardyment, a research assistant for Lord Taylor of Holbeach, a Tory spokesman on Defra issues.
A shadow cabinet minister this weekend attempted to play down the extent of the Tories' involvement in the beginnings of Donorgate. However, he admitted that the party had deliberately set out to "fan the flames" as the scandal developed.
He said an impromptu "attack unit" consisting of George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, David Davis, the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, the work and pensions spokesman, and Andy Coulson, the party's communications chief, had met every morning at 9.15am in Mr Cameron's office, to plot strategy - and would continue to do so while the Government was on the rack."
I must say, as a mere ordinary Conservative voter, I'm delighted to read all this. Just the sort of thing we should have been doing all along IMHO, and seems to have been very successful. But perhaps you don't think so.
Yak40, what exactly has Mahmoud Khayami done illegally? The article even says he is permitted to donate.
'mostly ordinary' said:
What has Mahmoud Khayami done wrong?
He is only street legal by a whisker. It is like the £950 donations, just under scrutiny level, to Wendy Alexander. And they say they don't know the rules?
Some wag on another board asked if the Bank of Scotland was about to print £950 pound notes . . in invisible ink . . .
The question is why a French, Iranian car dealer, whatever, not entitled to vote, is donating to the Labour party.
Isn't the word 'conduit' of French origin?
Agree 100 per cent with anonymous Conservative at 3.38pm.
It's well known at Westminster that the whole thing was a Tory operation. Good luck to them. Bit sad that friends of the Mail are trying to persuade people it was there idea. Yeah, right!
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