"I was waiting with a crowd of guests at the Pillars of Hercules pub in Soho for the start of a party being thrown by Kevin Maguire, the Mirror's amiable political editor, to celebrate his wife's launch of a chick-lit novel. Political journalists and rom-com novelists are not the most promising mixture for a convivial evening, but we were all rubbing along until for no reason Charlie Whelan, Brown's point man in the unions, turned to the journalists and started laying into the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As he was speaking in a public place and did not ask to go off the record, the etiquette of journalism allows me to say that I was astonished. Darling had been a loyal friend of Brown's, but that did not stop Whelan from denigrating him."
So, Mr Whelan, was this done at your master's bidding? And if so, which master? Brown or Balls?
It says a lot about Darling that - in the space of 24 hours or even less - he can talk about his boss "unleashing hell" on him and then sit next to him and virtually stick his tongue down the same man's throat in a display of support.
ReplyDeleteDarling,like them all,has absolutely no sense of right or wrong.
What a ghastly set of villains occupy that front bench,from one end of it to the other - simply ghastly.
Am I writing your entire column today?
ReplyDeleteAll this back-stabbing is turning the current Government into a Shakespearean tragedy.
ReplyDeleteWhich makes Darling the Marc Antony of the piece (only with less dignity and bigger eyebrows).
D
Whelan is a trained dog. He doesn't care who the master is.
ReplyDeleteOriginal Standpoint article of May 2009:
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/1511/full
Perhaps it was neither Brown nor Balls but Bacchus?
ReplyDeleteStepney
ReplyDeleteMy post to the previous thread about the Standpoint article preceded yours by half an hour
The Laird of Dulnain Bridge is the strongest justification I can think of for rebuilding Hadrian's Wall.
ReplyDeletethe real question, for i think everyone with a brain can see that brown is quite simply the worst liar ever to occupy any position in uk public life, is who else was there? I have posted this question on the article for Nick, but it would be well for people such as yourself to put pressure on him, and the rest of the lobby, to identify who are the journalists who have known this all to be a pack of lies for so long? Was Nick Robinson, someone paid out of the public purse and supposedly therefore accountable to us, present?
ReplyDeleteThe debasement of public life by this loathsome mafia has only been allowed because so many journalists who knew the truth treated the british public as dupes...poor souls who could not cope with, or did not deserve, the truth. It is time we knew who they all were , so we can treat them and their news organisations in the manner which they so obviously deserve. Public life needs a thorough cleaning, including the colluding hacks.
So Iain, any comment? On what I asked you yesterday?
ReplyDeleteGuido points out that the Labour Party has received two individual donations in the last quarter each over 1 million.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/party-finance-analysis/party-finance-analysis-Q4-2009#Top
This did not stop Brown at PMQs from claiming that the Tories were the party of big donations - that labour had no big donors.
They also received about a million from various trade unions.
So a big and classic lie from Brown, bold as brass at PMQs.
I very much doubt that any paper lobby or TV journalist will confront him with his lie.
Strangely no comment from the normally ubiquitous and on-message 'Jimmy'
ReplyDeleteI remember Whelan when he used to be on the radio (BBC 'natch) in the 90s
Even then I thought he was a slippery customer