Readers may remember that last year Brian Brivati and I compiled a Top 100 People on the Right list and a Top 100 People on the Left list for the Telegraph. (see HERE and HERE).
Next Monday a small panel of us will be meeting to compile the shortlist for this year's lists. So, who would you delete from last year's list, and who do you think should be considered for inclusion this year?
Since the whole New Labour project is unravelling, perhaps you should reject the whole of the Left List and start again.
ReplyDeleteRight: Redwood.
ReplyDeleteOh - and BTW word verif. was JEHOVH so I think my nominee has pretty authoritative backing.
ReplyDeleteIain, I looked at your left list and could not get beyond Nr 7 because of laughing so hard - by definition, ANYONE on that list a year ago can safely be written out, and Yasmin Alibi-Brown can be entered at every number right up to 100.
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, some of the comments you made last year are so last year ... would love to see you add "One year on" comments to every one of them.
Alan Douglas
They've got Dave marked as being on the right. Surely some mistake there?
ReplyDeleteSir Reg Empey is making a claim to a position on the right.
ReplyDeleteRight list:
ReplyDeleteRedwood for sure;
Boris has to be up in the top 5;
What about poor old Peter Hitchins?;
Sir Robin Wales, Mayor of Newham for having the balls to put into place a Tory agenda in a flagship Labour borough and getting away with it!
Miliband is the ‘if Gordon fell under a bus’ candidate. Formidably nice, formidably clever, he has become the thinking Labour woman’s crumpet.
ReplyDeleteTrixy is going to immolate herself ... :o)
Crikey that's worrying - 100 on the left list and only 25 on the right, half of which shouldn't be there (unless supporting fascism counts as right wing, in which case there'd be one long list of left and right without Boris Johnson and Jon Cruddas who are old school politics) Tony Bliar would of course be dictator.
ReplyDeletemaguire ahead of Rusbridger?!?!?!?!
ReplyDeletePutting Darling so low was absurd. He has influence if only because of the nature of hs position. Whatever you say about his Cabinet-room impact. if the Chancellor speaks out against Brown's economic policies, he's screwed.
ReplyDeleteThe Archbishop of Canterbury should certainly be on the Left list.
ReplyDeleteOr, then again, on the Right.
Actually, do you not a via media list onto which the vast majority of politicians may now be placed?
The Right.
ReplyDelete1. Boris Johnson.
2. david Cameron.
3.William Haig.
4. John Redwood.
5. George Osborne.
6.Lliam Fox.
7. David Davis.
8.Chris Gayling.
9.Tim Montgomerie.
10. Nick Herbert.
________________
Left:
1.Alex Salmond.
2. Milliband.
3.Harman.
4.Simpson.
5. Alan Johnson.
6.Brendan Barber.
7. Tony Woodley.
8.Jack Dromey.
9. Shami Chakrobarti.
10. Alan Rusbridge.
Mike Law: What about poor old Peter Hitchins?
ReplyDeleteYes Sir, you are absolutely correct and he should have a category all to himself. But I'm not sure what an ex-trot who wants to return us to a fantasy that never existed is exactly? Left or right I mean? He's not left but I'm not sure he's all right either.
What about Gaunt and Littlejohn? What about the whole gaggle of belligerent journalists? The misogynist men and bitchy women who get paid handsome sums for their bile (whereas we do it for free).
Look at news reporting in the dead tree media - it's crap. Poor grammar and scant research. Adverts dressed up as news items and celebrity bitching over nothing - she looks great/she looks terrible (she looks much the same actually - everyone looks like that before the first coffee).
So yeah, let's give Peter Hitchens his own category because his foreign correspondant stuff is generally good and worth reading. And let me be the one to name it: The Sod Off party. The party that introduces you to the fact there's a big world out there and makes you want to leave this awful mess.
The ship sank.
If you're going to include any BNP members, for God's sake put them on the right - which is to say, the left - list. Being racist is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for being on the right, far or near, whatever the Beeboids think.
ReplyDeleteDavid Davis is going to go down in the rankings rather a lot isn't he? I think now about no.95. Such a pity.
ReplyDeleteBoris is now probably no 3, with only Cameron and Osborne above him. Simon Milton also higher.
A cheeky suggestion in view of his recent remarks: a place for the Prince of Wales on the right list? Some might argue it should be on the left one.
See Paisley is up there - maybe Peter Robinson could replace him (though obviously not in the top 50...)
ReplyDeleteI got to thinking about Basher this weekend - yes, I know, should go out less perhaps. But I'm not so sure that he's not pulled an absolute blinder - may have even surprised himself at how good it's worked out. DFC isn't liked, he's just significantly less loathed that Brown.
ReplyDeleteAt least you can't kiss up to Widdecombe again this year!
ReplyDeleteas long as I make the list I am sure its quality will have improved over last year...
ReplyDeleteAlan Douglas is spot on. It's not often that a list makes me laugh out loud, but the comments on the "left list" are priceless. You could get a one hour comedy show just from reading them out on the tele. Seriously though, it also shows what a bunch of hopeless dimwits inhabit the higher echelons of the left. Mandelson really was a giant among these pygmies.
ReplyDeleteWhat about that idea of a "Political Eunoch's" list.Could turn into a fence sitters directory but hey..............!
ReplyDeleteYasmin Alibhai-Brown has no place on there. Apart from her inadequate grasp of English ('as China and India get more economically powerful,' 'Madeleine McCann was taken by a Belgium paedophile ring') she is, quite simply, a bad journalist.
ReplyDeleteHer columns are unarguably poor: the thesis is unclear and the argument incoherent. Take today's offering in which she moans about the row in the Met without explaining what she thinks the rights and wrongs of the situation are. That's when she's not referring to ethnic minorities who support the Tories as 'Uncle Toms' or to whites as 'whities' (would she have kept her job had she referred to 'blackies?').
To my mind she illustrates the difference between real and pseudo-radicalism. She pretends to be controversial using the kind of language discussed above, but she actually champions the politically correct norms of the circles in which she moves. In her world, your social cachet will rise with the kinkiness of the sex acts you can describe Tony Blair performing on George W. Bush, but you will become persona non grata if you question the delights of, say, uncontrolled immigration. Look at the way in which YAB started trumpeting her opposition to multiculturalism just as it became fashionable for 'progressive' types to do so. That's when she's not complaining about how much racism she has to endure. The irony of today's outpouring, in which a female Muslim columnist claims that she and her kind face prejudice as she ruminates on the antics of a senior Muslim policeman, will not be lost on sane people.
Sorry about the length of this post. As you can probably see, I've been waiting to get this off my chest for a while.
How about that awful Polly Toynbee woman for the Left?
ReplyDelete