And another thing…

Have you ever been told that you look like Michael Gove?

Oh, come on, cheer up, Tom. It’s not so bad.

Try being a Liberal, as I was for most of my life, then you’ll know the meaning of depression.

Do you know, I have never, not ever, not once in my life, voted for the winning party in a General Election.

Me too!

Cheers!

Just you and me tonight Tom. While you’re having a swally, and good luck to you, what is the Labour party going to do to win back those who should be its natural supporters, such as me? Or at least some of us. What is it going to do to make it less of a landslide for the Bullingdon Boys.

You know what I, for one, think the answer is. If I thought it was just me I’d shut up. The trouble is I’m not the only one. The Labour party should be asking itself why it should continue to support a leader who will take them so far down for reasons to do with his personal tragedy. Because regicide will look worse? It’s not going to get any worse – it can’t – just because you change the leader. Give him an excuse. Reasons of failing health. But get rid of him. Do it soon.

Because at the moment it all looks exactly like Downfall, and not a mash of it. I haven’t got that from smart alecs on blogs. They have got that from ornery folk like me and their own observations. Everybody around the leader has become imprisoned in a fatalistic mindset.

Well, the country hasn’t, and it’s not too late for somebody in the labour leadership to snap out of it and to put the country first. Otherwise your party will not be forgiven for a generation. You have given us this dreadful, dreadful, national embarassment as our Prime Minister.

Thatcher was disliked in the country but she commanded respect even from her enemies and certainly internationally. Brown commands no respect. Who has Brown got? One off the wall academic who happens to have won a Nobel prize? Don’t quote that at us. Henry Kissinger won a Nobel prize, remember?

I’m still with you Tom. Any time you want to talk about your problems you can ring 08457 90 90 90. The Samaritans are there for you – any time of the day or you can call into your local office at 210 West George Street, Glasgow G2 2PQ.

Remember, we won’t “do nothing” – we are here to help.

On the bright side, the lead is down 2 points from the last YouGov poll, which was published in the Sunday Times.

Comparing a poll with the last poll published by the same newspaper is a fallacy. In the case of a monthly poll, all it tells you is how the position’s changed in the last month, which in general (and definitely in the present case) you already know. The change over the last week or two (13 days in this case) is more useful.

Come on Tom, I know the poll news isn’t good right now but there’s over a year to turn it around. Where’s the spark, the spunk, the come and ‘av a go if you think you’re hard enough?

God loves a trier so put the Bacardi back in the fridge and get back on your horse, Maverick.

Well Tom I have been warning you for months you cannot continue spending, when we have nothing left. Everyone appears to know this except for Brown. He is seen as the danger to the country by most people so you should not be suprised by the polls.
The best thing he could do is go through every spending plan and scrap all that is unnessary and scrap the Quangos. That would start to send out the correct message. You cannot continue spending as if nothing has changed

Not looking too good for Labour now. The irony is that things are likely to get increasing worse as people start to lose their jobs in greater numbers and costs need to be cut.

Relying on events to save your bacon only works if you take advantage of those events.

Never mind Tom, ms Smith is going to install ID cards so the citizens of Manchester will be protected from terrosism. What about the 250,000 commuters into Machester each day who will not have ID cards? Will they be stopped and strip searched?

Really you could not make it up.

I am sure Ms Smith is doing it for the best of motives: but it is clearly and evidently a total waste of money.. in a recession when times are hard..

I’m sure it’s not a death wish but it sure looks like one..

A case where Do Nothing is surely better?

Don’t worry about the polls. Ms Smith will do her best to ensure they don’t stay where they are.

Away with such defeatist talk. If (it’s a big if) the reports on the Guardian’s blog site of a mood of defeatism being rife at Westminster then what a spineless lot the PLP must be. Good thing you chaps weren’t in charge in 1941 when we stood alone against the Hun….

Why can’t you listen when I keep telling you not to read the wretched polls? There’s only one poll which counts, it’s not over ’til it’s over, we’ll fight them on the beaches, etc. etc….

Well the Heathrow decision’s not doing Labour any favours. Ignoring the will of the people is a bad idea, and ignoring climate change is a really bad idea.

I work for an NGO campaigning on climate change and got phoned up at work on Tuesday by possibly the least ‘green’ person I know, asking what he could do to voice his opposition to the decision.

Who’s being defeatist? There’s a difference between giving up and getting drunk!

There’s a difference between an orange and a tiger.

You have never been an opposition MP have you Tom? Better get used to the idea. Losing your seat altogether? Best not go there. At least you have done a proper job outwith the Westminster bubble.

Labour faces quite a while in the wilderness. I even wonder if some in the party are planning for it. I would say,two, possibly three terms in the wilderness, or maybe beyond that. There is not much to chose between Labour and the Conservatives. Elections seem to be won and lost, not on policies or principles, but on conduct and pragmatism. The Tories lost the last one on sleaze and arrogance and Labour will lose this one on, well, sleaze and Iraq and Afghanistan and immigration and the erosion of civil liberties and last but not least, the economy with your wonderful, total abolition of boom and bust.

The real, bum burning, wee you out of the window catch to all of this is that we shall still be paying for your mistakes for a generation. So don’t expect to peruse the catalogue for your ministerial limo any time soon.

P.S. I wonder what the late, great Robin Cook would be saying if he were alive now? Or John Smith, to whom I paid my respects last time I was on Iona.

The Tory press and its media allies (inlcuding the Guardian, a tory paper) are of course going into overdrive on behalf of Dave.
Do people realise what will come their way should he and his bunch of thugs get into power?

Oh great. More do as I say not as I do. Your government and it’s army of interfering busybodies/quangos is forever telling us we drink too much, and our happy hours are to be taken away.

But it’s fine for you to get blathered because you’re doing badly in the polls. I suppose if you go and vomit on a policeman you won’t get locked up for the night either, flash the old HoC ID at him and you’ll be fine.

Face it Tom, you might keep your seat in 2010 but you’ll be damn lonely on those Labour benches.

I can’t wait! (No, I /really/ can’t wait. Gordon needs to admit defeat and resign now before he /literally/ bankrupts us). He’ll be remembered as a RUBBISH PM whatever he does now – But does he really want to go down in history as the man who actually broke Britain?

“I suppose if you go and vomit on a policeman you won’t get locked up for the night either, flash the old HoC ID at him and you’ll be fine.”

Seriously? That’s why MPs never get charged with speeding or with using their mobile phones while driving, eh? And every time – EVERY SINGLE TIME – I’ve thrown up on a police officer I get charged. Victimisation, I call it…

Incidentally, have you ever actually seen a House of Commons ID pass? Unless you worked at the Commons you would never know what it is because it deliberately features no mention of Westminster or to the holder being an MP. Security reasons, I think, but it does make it impossible to use it in a “do you know who I am?” scenario.

Cheer up, Tom, people aren’t so much pro-Tory as anti-NuLabour. (Oh dear, that’s really more of an indictment than a consolation…)

WW,

Baxter’s odd meetings with the famous in politics, page 94. I once spent a pleasant 20 minutes on the Gourock to Dunoon ferry sitting next to John Smith. He was shadow chancellor at the time. I wanted to say to him, get rid of that berk who is your leader (Hi Gordon, I mean Neil,) and take over yourself.

But I thought it would be rude to start speaking to a stranger on his night off just because I recognised him and so I said nothing. I saw a man who carried his own suitcases off the ferry and all the way up Argyll St to his old school renunion, big-shot politico or not, the miniatures in his inside coat pockets chinking all the time.

The Tories will crap over people because they DO NOT CARE. When will the middle class Guardian Tory whingers get this?

@ Wrinkled Weasel.

Tom’s not likely to lose one of the safest seats in Scotland even with a big swing to the SNP.

Presumably that’s why he feels comfortable standing at the sidelines periodically jeering at both teams…

Chris
Labour crap over people when they claim to care. (see British jobs for british people)

Don’t tell me you beleive in politicians?

Most politicians have the morals and scruples of an alleycat.. but are less pleasant to meet. (our host excluded).

They need to be watched like hawks.

One of the problems of the current Government has been a huge majority coupled with an Opposition so demoralised and disorganised after defeat they chose to fight themselves rather than oppose.

Politicians should be our servants. Judging by Conway and others, many (but NOT all) are sponging leeches.

Chris,

since when has The Guardian been a Tory newspaper ?

If it is, why do people bother advertising for “Inter Faith Development Officers” and the like in it ?

Most self-repecting Tories know that it’s this kind of non-job that results in our Public Sector payroll being so ridiculously high.

Ah, reverie. Then there was the time I sat on the Virgin train across from Tom Harris – AFTER – I’d started noising him up on his blog. Did I introduce myself? Did I banjo. I just sat there smirking to myself at his appalling dress-sense. I’ve no idea what he was smirking about.

Jim, What do you do when you encounter celebs and public faces?

I was at a punk rock concert once at the now-defunct Rainbow and the name band was an all girl one, quite well known at the time. I was at the back when the lead singer sat down right beside me to watch the support act and relax with a joint. I played it cool on that one and never so much as glanced in her direction and in retrospect I should have wondered why she sat next to me when many of the back seats were empty. A missed opportunity. Doh!

Then again, Mrs Thatcher interrupted me while I was at work and started asking me about things, so I had to be polite and then more or less was putty in her hands.

I was a journalist and you learn to blag things, but at the same time, you learn to respect personal space, which is what you did.

I think you did the right thing.

Two words:

John Denham…

You’re having a bad day and then someone tells you you look like Michael Gove? That’s just the extra you need, isn’t it?

Nobody should be told they look like Michael Gove, even if they do. Even Michael Gove shouldn’t have that thrown at him. By the way, his partner is a stunning, fantastic looker. How do deal with that?

It is wonderful how this blogging lark allows the great and good to conect with the proles. Good stuff.

Hazel Blears will marshall the troops and give you some extra hope

her advice is here:

http://progressonline.org.uk/Magazine/article.asp?a=3706

particularly, “campaigning is like sex. If you are not enjoying it, you are not doing it right.” Laugh? I nearly voted Labour.

I have ordered my “I’m nuts about Hazel” T shirt.

You should have introduced yourself Jim; I bet Tom would have enjoyed meeting the author of so many interesting comments.
Was he blogging at the time?
I would have – introduced myself I mean, and I just know that he and I’d get on like a house on fire. Same wavelength, see?
I can see it now, sitting together on the train, reading the incoming comments on his laptop, sighing at the rude ones. ;0)

My favourite ‘meet’ though was TB.
Taller and slimmer than he appeared on the telly, those big blue eyes fixed intently on mine, that warm firm handshake and wonderful smile.
That charm….