Yesterday I commented HERE on the Sunday Telegraph story on Hilary Benn and his supposed failure to declare shares held in a company which does business with DFID.
The very timing of this story seems to be particularly suspicious - almost as if the timing is intended to damage his campaign. This set me thinking. In whose interests would it be to dump Benn out of the deputy leadership race before nominations close? Previous opinion polls have suggested that Hilary Benn is very popular among trade unions and Labour Party members, so if he makes it onto the ballot his stock may very well rise.
There is, of course, one candidate in particular who is relying on trade union support and that is former trade union leader Alan Johnson. Johnson already has around 80 MPs signed up to him and if he gets the majority of trade union votes he may well be home and dry.
This fact hasn't escaped the dirty tricks department of the Alan Johnson campaign. They are the ones being fingered for the leak of the Benn story to the Sunday Telegraph. Benn's campaign team are said to be plotting their revenge. Nothing like a bit of fraternalism is there?
UPDATE: The John campaign media manager has been on to me denying any wrongdoing. I'm happy to publicise their denial. However, my sources are fairly strong on this...
Nice to see a fair fight. Could this be the week of a thousand leaks?
ReplyDeleteYou mean a newspaper is taking sides? Or a rival is leaking un-favourable stories? What is the world coming to?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the Dave team were perfect Bulingdon gentlemen weren't they?
ReplyDeletePerhaps its naïve , perhaps rather attractive in the open handed way of gorgeously gilded youth , but Conservatives always seem to me to simply nicer people .
ReplyDeleteThe others are beastly to each other all the time whereas Conservatives like eachother often happily sharing wives and bank accounts in open displays of affection .
Further evidence, if any were needed, that a good Socialist soon becomes a bitter scheming fiend wearing only the mask of humanity. .....
So much effort is being made by Labour to look united and dignified following the excellent example of the Tory leadership race. But you only have to look at the Labour MPs to see there is some very nasty in-fighting going on among the factions. Labour is terribly divided and keeping a lid on the simmering civil war is getting harder.
ReplyDeleteIs John Campaign a new candidate for the deputy leadership? He sounds a bit symbolic, rather like having a John Bull in the race.
ReplyDeleteTosh! It could be anyone who "leaked" this public domain story - PD ever since Benn has been in the HoPs - to the press. Who has been pestering Tory bloggers for weeks with the story that Benn is struggling to get his nominations? Was that Johnson too? Or Blears perhaps?
ReplyDeleteAnd the Davis camp never tried anything like that during the Tory Leadership campaign?
ReplyDeleteSurely 'fratricide' ? Anyway this is all speculation, and I'm not at all convinced this is the work of the Johnson team.
ReplyDeleteBut why let a little thing like lack of evidence get in the way of totally unsubstantiated assertions and allegations, eh Iain, after all, this isn't journalism, it's the blogosphere...
"Sunday Telegraph story on Hilary Benn and his supposed failure to declare shares held in a company which does business with DFID."
ReplyDeleteThat wasn't the story!
Unlikely as it seems, Hillary Benn's name has been put mooted for the post of Foreign Secretary. It seems to me that its more likely to be someone who fancies their chances at the Foreign Office who's been trying to get him discredited.
ReplyDeleteThis story is as old as Benn being an MP - if holding shares discredits you then he shouldn't have ever been promoted.
ReplyDeleteP.S.
Is Blears really this small?
http://www.hazelblears.co.uk/news
fair enough you say you have sources and i guess you can't disclose them
ReplyDeletebut the post, as it stands, is no different from any conspiracy theory:
someone brought about A
who would have most benefited from A?
B
so B must have brought about A
you see that anyone could have written this post
A slightly different question is "Which deputy leader candidate provides the most balanced ticket?"
ReplyDeleteLabour have recently nearly always had a left-right pairing - Foot Healey, Kinnock Hattersley, Smith Beckett (ok an exception), Blair Prescott.
Does Gordo want a blairite or a leftie to balance the ticket??
It would have to be Blairite wouldn`t it anon ?
ReplyDeleteAt nest is a case of "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest syndrome". From my student politics days I always assumed that the lefties would be nice but misguided people - as they were always on about the disadvantaged / working class / the unemployed (which they'd help create of course) etc - but once you got to meet them you learned about the only thing they could agree on was hating the Tories. The back biting and stabbing was amazing to behold.
ReplyDeleteThe back biting and stabbing was amazing to behold
ReplyDeleteThe Liberals are the worst though. Just astonishing how a collection of people who believe in nothing in particular can hate eachother so much.
Johnson is a postman what did you expect?
ReplyDeleteWhen these fuckers aren't kicking your christmas presents around the sorting office they are busy nicking postal orders and credit cards, then when they do condescend to leave the sorting office they either scream around in a big red van dumping your parcels on other peoples doorsteps or smash them up cramming them through your letter box
And they fucking deliver bills!
Dogs without exception hate the bastards, dogs know !
Interesting facts about the aptly named 'Johnson'; his own old trade union doesn't support his bid for the deputy leadership, and they booted him out as their leader because he was crap; apparently he cried like a girl! He doesn't mention that when he boats of his trade union credentials does he?
ReplyDeletedale saddened by anti-maude tricks.
ReplyDeletethe thing is, iain, that francis may be a nice guy and all that but he does like chasing the quick buck and it's getting sticky when the buck comes from playboy, even indirectly.
no pun intended on sticky.
Meacher has jumped out of race. bbc news24
ReplyDeleteComrades all.
ReplyDeleteI like Hilary Benn - anyone's got be beter than Broon. At least it would mean we wouldn't see any more of that bl**dy cr*ppy false smile of his. I don't know if I can take two years of Broon. He's not even pm yet and I'm starting to get stir crazy already. Let me out, I'm Enlish, well, sort of.
ReplyDeleteAuntie Flo'
Will you look what a few days of that horrible man has done to me. He makes me so angry that I can't even spell
ReplyDeleteAuntie Flo'
Iain
ReplyDeleteWhy are the Tories tacitly supporting McLean's private member's Bill to exempt MP's correspondence from the FOI? Where are the libertarians in Dave's New Model Conservative Party?
Contary to popular belief. Not having "skeletons in the cubourd" is not a requirement for high public office it is in fact a possitive requirement.
ReplyDeleteIf you are honest you cant be controlled by the whipps office and so cant be trusted to do what you are tole by the party big wiggs and therefore sponsors.
So when entering politics as a political vigin. You will find that the party will corrupt you one way or another, or you get nowhere important.
The utter hypocracy of socialist politicians holding any company shares at all is bad enough. However a so called far left socialist MP from the Benn family especially owning them, is even worse then hypocritical.
The direct ownership of company shares shoud be made highly ilegal. The temptation to insider trade or worse is too much for even god himself to resist. As for most socialist politicians..... Its best not to go there.
Dont concern yourself who has the goods on who. Because the respective partys have the goods on every important MP including themselves and on a fair amount of us as well, or they will soon find/invent/encourage some.
Its only worth speculating on why has it come out on the BBC now, and even more importantly why it did not come out on the BBC before.
Because it is only going to make a little bit of difference to anything that political parties care about( which is votes ), when it is plastered all over the BBC 'prefurably' for weeks.
Andrew, they're not. But some of the Labour front bench is. Read today's Daily Telegraph.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Kitchin
ReplyDeleteSorry to answer on Iains behalf as he may have a different reply.
They are as sick and marginalised as they are non exsistant in any British socialist party since the seventies. Its just a shame that the British people have not enough realised this yet.
You may be happy to know however that libertarianism is very alive and well in the Conservative party membership.
Who is this 'John' guy ?? And why are you making such serious allegations without any substantiating proof ??
ReplyDeleteThis strikes me as something of a smear campaign. By all means use 'anonymous' sources, but let us have some facts to back them up.
Also, shouldn't you publish the denial in full for us to judge the wording for ourselves ?? This is a bit of 'hit and run' without it.
hitch - my father was a postman and he is as honest as the day is long so take your infantile hate speech and rantings elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteTony said... Labour is terribly divided and keeping a lid on the simmering civil war is getting harder.
ReplyDeleteYou talk a load of old twaddle.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the Dave team were perfect Bulingdon gentlemen weren't they?
I heard that,was it true do you know ?
Gordon Brown has ousted a sitting prime minister, he hopes, using Labour party control plus , so he certainly can control who will be the deputy party leader. In return for no challenge to Brown parliamentary party members, particularly of the awkward squad 'I am no worshipper at the altar of Brown' variety have been offered different trade union commissars, Cruddas to those who are of the old Labour tendency, Johnson to the newer factions. Both are acceptable to Brown as long as there is no challenge from the left to Brown himself (all challengers from the right having been variously defenestrated in the last 18 months.)
ReplyDeleteSo the left challenger may get his nominations after all, as the fix has burst into the open today.
Iain
ReplyDeleteSo is David McLean on his own with this Private Member's Bill then? (apart from Jack Straw supporting it).
I'd like to see some high profile Tories speaking out against the FOI exemption Bill- a true test of libertarian values, if ever there was one!
More baseless smears! You really don't care, do you?
ReplyDeleteGordon left the TV studios on his launch procession, heading for a torrential downpourin brighton.
ReplyDeleteTony's response; "Apres moi - la deluge!"
I'm not one to doubt your sources, Iain, but Johnson isn't really basing his campaign on trade union support.
ReplyDeleteThe only ones who are doing that are Hain and Cruddas.
Johnson isn't liked at all by the current crop of union leaders, who will have a big say in determining who gets the recommendations to members on how to vote.
Of the two of them, this looks more like a Hain op than Cruddas, but if you say Johnson, presumably you have reasons...
Probably Brown who leaked the dirt on Benn. Benn is much the best candidate and would be seen by Brown as a threat, he would much prefer the joker Hain.
ReplyDeletehatfield girl said...
ReplyDeleteYou get more like verity by the day !
Off topic, Ian - but have you heard the mp3 or transcript of Radio Five's Jane Garvey describing the BBC on 2nd May 1997 ?
ReplyDeleteJane Garvey: I do remember I walked back in - we were broadcasting then from Broadcasting House in the centre of London, all very upmarket in those days - and the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. [Hearty laugh from Peter Allen] I'll always remember that. Er... not that the BBC were celebrating in any way, shape or form…
Peter Allen: No no no, not at all...
Jane Garvey: ...and actually I think it's fair to say that in the intervening years... er... the BBC, if it ever was in love with Labour has probably fallen out of love with Labour, or learnt to fall back in, or basically just learnt to be in the middle somewhere which is how it should be. Um, but there was always the suggestion that the BBC was full of pinkos who couldn't wait for Labour to get back into power. That may have been the case - who knows - but as I say there have been a few problems along the way over the last ten years. Wish I hadn't started this now."
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2007/05/jane-garvey-transcript.html
If Benn had anything about him he'd challenge Johnson to a duel - either rapiers on The Heath or pistols at dawn.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Kitching does make a good point , I read the Telegraph and I cannot see the Conservative opposition.
ReplyDeleteIs Iain Ill or something ? I do hope not . Get well soon won't you Mr..Dale don`t get up and do any strenuous typing or anything . That would never do ....
Andrew Kitchen, No, he's not on his own unfortunately. MPs in all partis are supporting the Maclean Bill. I am not.
ReplyDeleteIt's hilarious to see all the NuLab comrades knifing their best asset. Benn is by far their most attractive candidate in the marginals and will be kept off the ballot paper due to a typical commie conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteServes them right. they can cry about it in opposition (i wrote this on conservativehome too if that is OK with you)
David Green