Dramatis personae
I think there’s probably a good book in profiling the various supporting actors of the New Labour years. You could source it from blogs and knock it out in an afternoon – there’s enough of us out there who’ve released our pent-up disgust over the years by documenting their various antics.
Many of the characters reveal themselves to be overtly demonic figures – John Reid, Jack Straw, for example. Some are jester figures deserving of laughter as much as contempt – see my favourite political in-joke, Alan Milburn, a man who, it’s has always disappointed me, isn’t a massive figure of fun in this country.
Falling between these two traits are the likes of Denis MacShane. Now plying his trade as the go-to gobshite and strutting bantam cock apologist for any half-baked New Labour disaster-waiting-to-happen, he largely exists these days as an unmissable target for abuse on Comment is Free. Back in the day though, he was an utter shit. Here’s the Guardian Diary column from 2001:
We much enjoyed Khalid Mahmood’s trenchant pro-war piece in the Observer. As he is one of only two Muslim MPs, the member for Birmingham Perry Bar’s defence of the bombing and dismissal of five “myths” about Islam (such as most Muslims opposing the bombing) will carry some weight. The fact that the article was identical to a piece sent last week to one of our three Muslim peers, the Rochdale chippy Lord Ahmed, is just another of those meaningless coincidences that afflict politics and media all the time.
Why Lord Ahmed declined to sign the piece, which reached him on crested Foreign Office paper and was written by FO minister Denis McShane, and pass it to a newspaper, is unclear.
And then is 2002:
What a year Lord Ahmed is having. Not content with turning in FO imbecile Denis MacShane for threatening him with MI5 surveillance after he refused to put his name to a pro-war article…
Isn’t that nice? Like I said, it deserves a book. It’d be a ripping read. It could also be an open-source directory of middle-ranking villains that writers of barely-believable fiction could borrow from when lacking inspiration. Need an icily humourless and petulant but also goonish and indestructible henchman? See H for Hoon.
All it needs now is a title. The League of Extraordinary Governmental Men?
Posted on November 27th, 2008 at 8:43am under New Labour
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• 5 Comments |
Jack Straw could have a book to himself, featuring some of his absurd statements when he was Foreign Secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq. Some of them were so bizarre I could only conclude that it was part of a big experiment to see how much nonsense a Minister could talk and still get quoted in the press without any unfavourable comments. (The conclusion is, unfortunately, that a Minister could say 2+2=5 and certain papers would still print it.)
I think there are going to be some best sellers come out of this thing when it is all over – maybe we’ll be dead by then.
And don’t forget Lord Goldsmith with his over-sized testicles (if I may be so bold as to plug one of my own posts).
I think there are going to be some best sellers come out of this thing when it is all over – maybe we’ll be dead by then.
Doubt it – I suspect a lot of the true believers won’t spill the beans or will be too busy hoovering up consultancy work. On the other hand, I can imagine a book by Milburn being so full of self-regard that it would be inadvertently comic.
I actually met McShane once. It’s true. He’s a preening, cocksure, smarmy little git. And, naturally, friends with Chris Hitchens.