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Sometimes Guido Fawkes is just sheer comic genius
In a somewhat provocative post, Guido Fawkes talked about his presumably serious bidding for this commemorative plaque unveiled by ‘Jonas Brown’. Best of luck to him!
Behind the jokey nature of Guido’s accusation, there is actually a serious thing many members of Labour including me would like to know an answer to. It is in fact directly asked in Steve Richards’ latest book. Why exactly did Gordon Brown suck up so much to the banks?
(picture presumably taken by Guido Fawkes, (c) Paul Staines 2010).
On Ed Balls.
How’s the coalition doing these days? Well, considering. Cameron seems confident, and ‘on top of his game’ at the moment. He has a clear idea of how he can lead the country as well as his Party, which is no mean feat. Meanwhile, Labour seems to go on with its neverending shambles which is the leadership election, with Ed Balls revealing today that he disagreed with Gordon Brown and how he could now work with the Liberal Democrats.”
Here is Ed’s latest account of where things went wrong with him at the helm: Indy article
Gordon Brown fudged Labour message, says Ed Balls
“I could have chosen to have broken away in an emphatic and decisive way from Gordon in the last few years, and I didn’t,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.”
Why not? Of course, the traditional arguments are ‘collective responsibility’ and ‘loyalty’, but this admission goes to the heart of how exactly decisions were made in Gordon Brown’s government. The impression that, “If Gordon didn’t like it, tough”, seems to be getting stronger and stronger everyday, with the publication of a new set of political memoirs (e.g. “The Third Man”, or “The Journey”).
“I disagreed strongly with Gordon on the 10p tax rate cut, I thought we should have gone for the election in 2007, I felt that he trimmed and fudged his message to try to keep the Daily Mail happy in a way which meant that people didn’t know where we stood. I said that to him many times.”
Well, there’s disagreement and there’s disagreement isn’t there? As a junior member of the Fabians, I believe strongly that Labour government under both Blair and Brown screwed up on poverty. Poverty and inequality aren’t even mentioned in Blair’s index. Whatever your views on capital gains tax and corporation tax, the issue about the 10p tax (and the top rate of tax) still raises more questions than answers.
So, whilst Kerry is right to emphasise our achievements, we still have a lot of soul-searching to do. For what it’s worth, I don’t feel Ed Balls MP is the right man at the right time. He wasn’t then, and he isn’t now.
Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes has revealed interesting information about Ed Ball’s leadership chances from his research.
39% of Guido’s Readers Want Ed Balls to Lead Labour Party
Here are Guido’s findings.
“Ed Balls liked to tell the hustings that he was the one the Tories feared most, hence the attacks on him from the right-wing media. Guido takes the opposite view, he is the one that opponents of the Labour Party most badly want to win the Labour leadership because he would be as disastrous as his mentor was for Labour. Today”
Ed Miliband was superb on BBC'S "Any Questions"
Ed Miliband was brilliant on “Any Questions” tonight. I will definitely be voting for him as the ‘change candidate’ leading us to a deserved victory in the 2015 General Election, a time at which the Liberal Democrats will be sadly annihilated (for party members, that is).
William Hague
As it happens I think that Hague’s statement was absolutely correct. He is an extremely learned man from Oxford, and a man of integrity. I am simply disgusted what has happened, and I wasn’t surprised to see both the BBC and Guido Fawkes enjoy themselves so much on this. Yes, I believe in responsible freedom of expression, but not potential legal defamation or moral offense through vile innuendo. Bloggers such as @GuidoFawkes have indeed got out of control, I agree with Alan Milburn. I agree with Quentin Letts, where blogs have become influential. Quentin Legg’s comment that “Reading a blog is like looking at the bedsheets of a boy”, I feel, is very accurate. I am fully behind Ed Miliband who gave his full support to William Hague, emphasising that it doesn’t affect his ability to do the job. Ed Miliband, like me, doesn’t believe in censorship, but does believe in responsibility. He received a resounding round of applause. Martha Kearney demonstrated the typo of innuendo that the contemptible BBC has become known for. For a ‘national institution’, it is really little better than the gutter press. I think Alan Duncan was completely correct to call it a “nasty” blog.
Andy Coulson
The NY Times, a highly respected newspaper, has made allegations against there was “an endemic culture” of phone hacking in the News of the World, and Ed Miliband said that people have come forward claiming that phones were tapped. I agree entirely with Ed Miliband in that David Cameron must issue a statement about it. Mary Riddell said that it has to be investigated properly, as it is a very serious allegation. Protecting Andy Coulson will be at the detriment of protecting the reputation of the journalism profession, and that decisive action has to be taken to restore faith in professionalism of journalists.
Labour leadership
Mary Riddell is absolutely correct, that nobody knows who will win. I was absolutely delighted to hear Ed Miliband to see away from New Labour and to explain briefly the change that is needed in the Labour policy and government, and his wish to demolish the opposition as soon as possible. Quentin Letts is completely wrong to talk Britain down by saying the UK was very nearly bankrupted; this is not true. The UK only paid off its debt from the Second World War from a few years ago. Alan Duncan appears to think that any devestation as a result of debts is justified, and I completely disagree.
History repeating itself?
Sort of, except the Liberal Democrats haven’t been in so much trouble yet.
It will be interesting to see how chief political invertebrate will manage to worm itself out of this mess. Meanwhile, the blogosphere has hotted up. Offshore tycoon Guido Fawkes knows he’s on much firmer ground than his (much nobler) colleague Iain Dale. Firstly, it is now not considered defamatory to call somebody homosexual, therefore making a false statement about someone’s sexuality may not be an issue. Guido will be on rockier ground (or at least his server might) if he is accused of inciting his audience to homophobic remarks, however please note that it would be exceptionally hard to prove that Guido had intended to do this as part of his ‘mens rea’ in committing any offence under law.
I suspect the latter of these two stories will die. The first one will be hot at least until it happens, as the Twitter communication between @ollygrender and @gabyhinsliff alluded to earlier.
Somebody sharing a twin room in a busy campaigning schedule, is not particularly exciting, guys.
Nor is this..?
