Let’s have a reheated debate
This ‘2020 Vision‘ website/debate/anti-Brown astroturfing thing is probably of limited interest to most people and little will probably said about it here after this. Things get the attention they deserve and 2020 Vision is, after all, largely about two damaged egos, previously found wanting, gasping for the oxygen of publicity.
First we have Charles Clarke, a figure so ridiculous that, while Education Secretary, he had to be kept away from initiatives on childhood obesity and exercise. A hulking, authoritarian figure, nursing an impotent grudge of thwarted ambition larger than his famed double dinners.
And it’s a constant source of huge disappointment to me that Milburn is not held in wider ridicule than he is. He’s like a little known comedian who deserves to be huge. An in-joke that only a handful get. Consider his ridiculous bouffanted hair, geordie sneer, and casual, old school sexism (his description of Harriet Harman as ‘fucking hopeless‘ almost endears you to the woman).
Not to mention his gratifyingly disastrous tenure as campaign ’supremo’ during the last General Election and lucrative privateering after having resigned as health secretary. (You can see why Tony Blair’s being so coy about private equity firms, them being so kind to ex-ministers). That Milburn is invited into television and radio studios to pontificate on anything other than hair care products and the role of preening tits in politics is a wonder of the age. Just what qualities commend him to political debate should the subject of the next Dan Brown novel.
Little and Large’s argument that their new (if rather threadbare) website is not about attempting to trip up a Gordon Brown premiership is so transparent that watching them make it, with what little wits they have between them, is like what it must have been like to go on an outing to Bedlam during Victorian times to watch the inmates.
Why time the debate for now? It’s tacit admission that a debate of the kind they’re suggesting hasn’t been necessary in the last ten years under Blair. Now it looks like Brown’s finally going to park himself in the big chair it’s apparently pure coincidence that it’s also time for a long hard look Labour policy. Amazing. God knows Brown should be prevented from creating policies from the centre, like his predecessor that Milburn and Clarke venerate, if indeed that is his plan. It’s just with these two, it’s like expecting Milli Vanilli to beat The Beatles in a ‘battle of the bands’.
Give it it’s due, the 2020 Vision thing is an attempt at continuity, however desperate. New Labour has always been much more interested in nice shiny websites and initiatives and bells and whistles and spurious ‘debate’ than actually doing the hard stuff like governing. They decided to have a circus but forgot to order the bread.
What hope for a debate initiated by two men, one who’s response to a constituent when asked a question was snarling contempt and they other whose main contribution to political discourse seems to have been ‘Michael Howard’s Bandwagon Watch‘?
Posted on March 1st, 2007 at 10:46 am
| See also • Once Milburned twice shy • One fine day in the middle of the night • Lies, damn lies and Peter Hain |
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Filed under Eye Catching Initiatives, New Labour, UK politics |
Look this whole fecking fiasco is not because anyone of these twats wants to improve NuLabor policies.
Nor because they want to do something to improve the lot of us poor voting public. Who they have held in such contempt, but I suppose some of us deserve that in voting the bastards back in so many times.
It is because the fecking twats realise that under Gordimmo they are going to be out on their arses come the next election.
Back into the real world; one that the monoccular, splineless, pension snatcher, has made a poorer place.
Yes the sudden realization that their snouts might be pulled out of the trough of our money.
That’s what this is all about!!!
Did you see Milburn on Newsnight, at the press conference launching the whole farrago? He has finally completely morphed into Tony Blair, from that insincere “flat hand pushing forward for emphasis†move that no focus group has yet put a stop to, through Blair’s speech mannerisms, and on to each facial tic. It was like watching a Dead Ringers sketch. But funny.
“…the role of preening tits in politics…”
Heh! That’s even funnier than watching the preening tit make a tit of himself on Newsnight. And that’s really saying something.
And Quinn is right. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Milburn has now completely disappeared up Blair’s…
You can watch Spiker and Sponge on Newsnight here.
And you might enjoy this
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/matthew_norman/article2318683.ece
glad to see you back in fine fettle J
I think I love Matthew Norman. Cheers, R.
Why no media follow up on Peter Oborne’s Daily Mail article 4/11/06? ‘Blair to be appointed to Bush Family company and become a millionairre many times over’ was PO’s contention. Surely a huge story in the light of Blair’s total commitment to the Bush cause, aided and abetted by Mrs Blair and her US income stream?
And just how much richer has the Bush family become since the Iraq invasion began the escalation in world oil prices? BP & Shell profits have shown the effect of the Iraq strategy, and now the US posturing on Iran is keeping the oil price artificially high. BP and Shell profits are surely being mirrored amongst the good ol’ boys down in Texas!
It only takes these 2 logical steps to link Blair’s unexplained and irrational decisions to a life of post-PM luxury!