Monday, June 25, 2007

Let's Start Harriet-Watch

All day I have been receiving emails from Labour supporters utterly bereft at the election of Harriet Harman. Luckily for Harriet I have been rather busy attending to other matters, but there are a lot of unhappy people out there. One Labour contact emailed me this...
Harriet flippin Harman. Don't get me started! She was my 6th preference all the way - and there on merit! Backtracking one day into the job - any wonder why Brown chose to downgrade her position. Liability.

Another left-leaning political adademic said this...

If Harriet Harman can be elected leader of the Labour Party, then the
political world defies analysis…

Her performance on the Today programme was fairly lamentable and she has already started denying she said various things to get her elected over the last few weeks. Just to start us off on Harriet-Watch, this is what she said on the need for an inquiry into Iraq...

‘When the troops do finally come home, which we all hope will be as soon as possible, there will need to be an inquiry and I think that we also need to look at the circumstances in which we went in but at the planning and preparation for the aftermath as well, and we will need to learn lessons from that.’ (Harriet Harman, Deputy Leadership hustings, Fabian Society, 16 May
2007).

And on the need for an apology:

Jeremy Paxman: “Do you think the Party should say sorry for what happened?”
Jon Cruddas: “I do actually, as part of a general reconciliation with the British people over what has been a disaster in Iraq.”
Harriet Harman: [interrupts] “Yup, I agree with that.”
(BBC TV, Newsnight, 29 May 2007)


37 comments:

Anonymous said...

She couldn't turn into a bigger joke than Prezza by any chance could she???

Anonymous said...

Iain:

Either my copy of Firefox is having a hissy or most of your blog has been crossed out.

I guess this is what happens when you consort with lefties!

Anonymous said...

I think you've inadvertently crossed out your entire blog. Which is a bit of a first!

ANDY J

Anonymous said...

What is it with the 'strikethrough' ? Does this election of Brown and Harman mean it is now 'Year Zero' and we must forget [Khmer Rouge like] all political thought that has previously occurred ??

I don't like the sound of it - I've seen the film 'The Killing Fields'..

The Remittance Man said...

methinks you're missing an [/s] somewhere in the Harrietwatch article, Iain

Anonymous said...

Oh,` she's new labour trash. This is the woman who within weeks of being elected in 97, helped whip MPs to vote for a reversal of the election promise to reverse cuts to single mother benefit. She's been spoiled goods ever since.

Anonymous said...

Does this mean you regret everything you've ever typed Iain? :)

Chris Paul said...

Mmmm. I didn't hear Today.

But I cannot find the contradiction, U-turn or climb down you promised in your post.

What DID she say today then?

Anonymous said...

Will you be having an interactive "Where's Harriet?(tm)" map, Iain? What larks. We could track her progress as she blunders around the country alienating people left right and centre.

The Indie leader today is in full-on stark raving bonkers mode:
"As an electoral asset... Ms Harman could hardly be bettered...
Ms Harman could be just what [Brown] needs to counter the woman-appeal of David Cameron."

I'm curious as to what type of female voter would feel attracted to Ms Harman - perhaps someone could explain.

Chris Paul said...

Ha ha bloody ha. Cameron's "woman appeal" is long gone. The Indy are not very bright.

But looking at the BBC link I thinking you lot (and the BBC) are putting words into her mouth.

She supports an enquiry, eventually.

And she agrees with at least one of - possibly the second or last of - the three things Cruddas squeezed into his remark.

Cruddas said :

1. Apology
2. Part of reconciliation
3. Iraq a disaster

A reasonable reading would have HH agreeing with the last and possibly the second of these depending on her brain-mouth time.

But it's a stretch to say she definitely agreed with all three things from that exchange and that she has now recanted.

I've been campaigning against the wars since September 2001 and I don't feel betrayed by her on this one.

The single parent benefit - water long under the bridge - is her big error. She should have resigned then. She would have won by more in this contest if she had done.

Anonymous said...

Chris Paul:

You are the biggest twerp on the planet.

Anonymous said...

Leave her alone. She's a liability to the Labour Party. She doesn't appeal to me, a middle class Southerner. There must be others like me that don't like bossy plummies.

Laurence Boyce said...

Oh come on, it’s a purely totemic position. Harriet’s principal purpose is to brighten up our lives. It works for me!

Unsworth said...

Chris Paul may care to enlighten us all with a clear analysis of Harman's exact position on the Gulf War, then.

She is either remarkably unable to grasp the realities or is merely a straw in the wind. As for a consistent position from the start of the Iraq adventure - well, where's the evidence of that?

Either way, she's completely incompetent but, more importantly, will do whatever Brown bids.

And, Laurence Boyce, she may brighten your day but, believe me, my standards are somewhat higher. She could do with bigger tits, for a start.

Anonymous said...

"If Harriet Harman can be elected leader of the Labour Party.."

Luckily she wasn't, although she did make this claim at one point (on stage) before hastily backtracking. Methinks some of her other positions will be less easy to disavow. More power to the unions, anyone?

Laurence, I'm sure it's all worth it just to bring light into your sad life!:-)

Man in a Shed said...

The BBC is again doing its best to help the Labour party by hiding the Harriet - I tell you I never said that - interview on the Today web site.

Laurence Boyce said...

Oh I don’t know Chuck, they look all right to me.

Anonymous said...

What a typical nu-lab labour politician, words as hollow and meaningless as wind in dry grass. Who could possibly have predicted this shaming and dishonourable volte face from a triumphant Harriet ? apart that is from virtualy every sentient being and blogger in Britain over the past few weeks who did exactly that , and still she did it! Still from Harriets patently expedient self interets this is the kind of contempt for democracy and plain speaking that's sure to endear her to the malevolent scunner from Fife.

Hughes Views said...

Oh dear, I feel another Dale fruitless little obsession developing. Still, always look on the bright side, it'll give him something to do now that the evenings are drawing in...

Anonymous said...

She's shown the kind of equivocation and hair splitting that has so ennobled her profession and party in modern Britain. Wretched!

Anonymous said...

Do they do it deliberately? Is it some kind of a semantic point scoring exercise in deceit and manipulation? What a way to treat the members of her party!

Anonymous said...

Labour's 'moral compass' can obviously spin!

Anonymous said...

"it'll give him something to do now that the evenings are drawing in..."

Yes darkness is coming with Brown...

Anonymous said...

Anything that takes the attention away from Brown I suppose, until the next poll drops like bird crap on the heads of the chinless masses at conservateHome :)

Anonymous said...

Bitty...

Richard Havers said...

"as part of a general reconciliation with the British people over what has been a disaster in Iraq"

I think that redefines patronizing.

Anonymous said...

I am a firm believer that we get the politicians we deserve, and Harman is a glittering exemplar of the depressing mediocrity of our political cadre - a vacuous careerist thoroughly worthy of Farepak Britain.

I, for one, shall be playing Harriet-Watch on wimmin's issues and 'the family' (Nulab euphemism for lone parents).

It will be interesting, too, to see what becomes of Harriet's blog now that she has snatched the prize. Who knows? She might even learn to spell.

BTW, can anybody supply me with electronic copy of Harriet's 1990 tract (co-authored with Patricia Hewitt and Anna Coote) entitled 'The Family Way: A New Approach to Policy Making', published by the IPPR? Drop me a line via blog-4-justice.org if you can.

P.S. Polly asks the question on everybody's lips.

Anonymous said...

Yozzer:

What a great name for a blog!

Spend a day in Liverpool these days and anyone would quickly see that today's Yozzer Hughes would:

(a) be making a fortune via the boom in construction that is going on in advance of City of Culture 2008.

(b)drive a Porsche Cayenne (it's four wheel drive - essential for the site visits.)

(c) have a second home in Spain and a portfolio of buy-to-lets that he rents out (at a fair price, of course) to the Eastern Europeans who make up most of his workforce.

Welcome to Blair's Britain, circa 2007.

Was this what you poor saps voted for in 1997?

You poor, poor, fools....

Anonymous said...

Round my way the people who hate Harriet the most are the female Labour suporters/members absolutely none of whom will admit to having voted for her for the Deputy Leadership. As a Conservative I'm delighted with her election and fervently hope that she carries on as she has been doing, nothing could be of greater help to us Tories.

Trubes said...

Alan Bleasedale : Right on man !

Anonymous said...

True Blue @ 11.30 pm

Many thanks!

Hate to correct your spellling, but it's "Bleasdale...no extra E

See you around!

Trubes said...

I so love you jonathon xxxxx

Anonymous said...

Christ!

It's Jonathan!

Anonymous said...

Listening to her on Today yesterday morning it struck me that she was already starting to sound like Prescott.

I think I'll be calling her Harri-cott if she carries on this trend.

Trubes said...

Alan Bleasdale : Reel em in !

David Lindsay said...

I can laugh, so that's what I'm doing. Remnant Labourites reading this should weep buckets. But no one should be remotely surprised that Jon Cruddas has been denied the Deputy Leadership by this shamelessly dishonest splitting of the anti-war majority vote. After all, Harman was the candidate of the most hardline neocons in the House of Commons, Gisela Stuart and Denis MacShane. Hers was a Straussian deception of the common herd.

Furthermore, consider how the Tories - little more than an upmarket Darby and Joan Club - mysteriously managed to find over a quarter of a million people to vote in their Leadership Election, of whom more than two thirds voted for the neocon, socially super-liberal, achingly posh candidate. Who were they? Where were they? Where had they been for the previous dozen years? And where are they now? Harman's implausible vote is comparable: the whole thing stinks.

Meanwhile, to matters historical, yet very contemporary: the old Paedophile Information Exchange was hand in glove with the old Campaign for Homosexual Equality (they were practically a single organisation - same address, same committee, the works), which in turn was hand in glove with the old National Council for Civil Liberties in the Hatty and Patty days.

This is all very well-researched and well-documented; indeed, so different were attitudes within the real ruling class at the time (I mean to publicising these views, not to the views as such, which have not changed one jot) that no secret seems to have been made of these connections.

The people who have done all the relevant (painstaking) research have of course been short of a hearing in more recent years. But with Hatty's new-found eminence, they are certainly going to get a hearing now.

They're on the case, so watch this space...

Anonymous said...

Anyone wanting to change our first past the post system should be use this as reference.

When it comes down to second or third transferable votes no one gets who they want