Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Quote of the Day



"Above all, The Man said, we must avoid having the sort of debate
that the Tories and the media wanted - about spin doctors and aides at Number Ten. 'That will be the death of this government.'"

Tony Blair
Quoted in Chris Mullin's diaries

14 comments:

davidtbreaker (www.davidbreaker.com) said...

Can't come soon enough!

David T Breaker
www.newsjunction.co.uk

BrianSJ said...

Lovely. Well found. Just not very relevant :-)

Bond007 said...

very relevant / apt ... good find

tory boys never grow up said...

Well it looks like Tom Watson has tried to answer all the questions you asked. Perhaps you should put up your evidence or apologise.

Oldrightie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Oldrightie said...

Excellent but note he didn't mind the No.10 environment, just did not want it discovered.

As for TBNGU, sick as a parrot? He should be. He is so archetypal of his lords and masters. McBride, Draper, Mandy, Watson and of course, Lord of The Flies himself. Labour, you really have to laugh.

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Looks as though they are now playing the Liberace/Aitken/Archer tactic of coming on heavy with Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Runne.

That would be a big mistake.

See you in court, Ratf*ckers!

tory boys never grow up said...

Oldrightie

Carry on making accusations that you cannot support - just like those idiots Draper and McBride. You really are cut from the same cloth.

Chris Paul said...

Very good. If there were an election in a few weeks we'd probably be toast. Is Guido simply trying to protect a bet on no June 2009 election? Blair was right. Campbell has said similar in relation to this event. Tories are vulnerable on policy. And whatever Frank Field may imagine Labour has some but Tories don't have any ... not any that are attractive in any case.

Another thing that Campbell said of course was that his (and Blair's) understanding of political communication was different. And it was too. It was about policy.

Ralph Hancock said...

Yes, it's not just Blair thinking, it's basic left thinking. Not, 'We must not have spin doctors and aides at No.10 (because I am a pretty straight kind of guy).'

But 'We must have them. Above that, we must keep them secret. Above that, if we're found out, we must avoid debate about it.'

It's dealing with something about something about something we oughtn't to do anyway. It's deeply meta.

No wonder none of these people can actually deal with anything real. They're too busy guarding themselves against the consequences of the consequences of the actions they are about to commit.

tory boys never grow up said...

Tachybaptus

I actually have a lot of sympathy with what you are saying - and I think you will find that many on the left would actually be happy to have a real debate about actual issues - if no one has noticed there is a pretty important budget next week.

But you are actually a bit naive if want to attribute all of the current situation to Blair/Brown - perhaps you should remember who introduced SPADs and you don't remember the days of "there is no alternative" and "there is nothing wrong with the policies only their presentation" . Have a look at some of Cameron's speeches and you will see that even the longer ones are just collections of soundbites and themes - rather than a connected and detailed argument.

And then there is the right wing blogosphere - where smearing was the norm well before McBride and Draper (just do a blogger search on Cherie Blair if you don't believe me), and any attempt to put a counter view is usually met by abuse. Left wing blogs on the other hand are criticised for being boring and unentertaining. Waht do you think Guido means when he refers to the Guidoisation of politics.

I'm not saying that all is well on the Labour side, it patently isn't, but given the competitive nature of UK politics perhaps it should be realised that this is something which needs ot change across the board.

Some may talk of the blogosphere having come of age this week - actually I think it has shown its age and political immaturity.

If you want to hear some sensible thinking on how the left should use blogs you could do worse than look at Hopi Sen's recent posting on the matter.

Rob said...

It's amazing to think that this is entering it's fifth day of dominating the news cycle and the pressure seems to be ramping up. I think the blogosphere and politics has changed forever over the last few days. Us political geeks were already on board but now the wider public has been enlightened.

Ed Milliband is now at this very moment lying through on his teeth on newsnight trying to save his master's skin.

Twig said...

Wasn't it Tony Blair who described Brown as psychologically flawed?

The Party should have listened.

Unsworth said...

@ Chris Paul

"If there were an election in a few weeks we'd probably be toast"


Who are "we"?