Labour know that none of these Bills will pass, and thus makes the whole thing even more political. As TB's buddy Strathclyde said, there are only thirty odd legislative days left in the upper house and it would be a failure on the part of the Lords if they did not conduct proper scrutiny. The ever plugged in Kevin Maguire just let slip the entire Labour strategy on Sky moments ago. There won't be time to get these through, but it sows the seeds for the election campaign, which started officially about two hours ago it seem at Mandy's Victoria Street briefing. Kevin clearly stated that these Bills will be put to Cameron to accept in the campaign. Labour are fighting like an desperate opposition, the government is trying to make the opposition dance to their tune, a sign of how far they have sunk. They know the game is up. They are exhausted, they have no real new ideas.
Dizzy looks
at each measure in his ever erudite style. Cameron must stay strong and not play their game.
Fingers crossed that the Telegraph's Andrew Pierce is right. His repsonse to Maguire was to suggest this will be the last Labour Queen's Speech for a "very very long time."
OK so not really, but the day has arrived commie friends. This is the moment we have been waiting for proles and dolls. When we fight, we win!
That's right, today is the the day the inaccurate socialist lies will be peddled on national television. After the
absolute pasting
the Against the Odds video has received by an army of freelance fact checkers online, across the political spectrum, it is of no surprise it had to be sent back to the editing room before it could be aired tonight.
TB predicts the Bevin/Bevan epic cock up will be gone, as will JK "Give us a mill"Rowling and probably the outrageous claim to have freed Mandela. TB gave the vid his two cents here but for a more comprehensive savaging, check out this
no holds barred fisk
:
"“They said that working people were not fit to govern - so we formed the Labour Party” A party where the intellect, stimulus and money was supplied by the decidedly middle-class Fabians and their friends.
“They said that women didn’t deserve the vote” This glosses carefully over the fact that Emmeline Pankhurst, founder of the main suffragette movement, WSPU, was refused membership of the Independent Labour Party after she was encouraged to do so by her friend Keir Hardie. The refusal was on account of her gender. Several years before her death, Emmaline became concerned by socialism and joined the Conservative Party. We are of course still waiting for a woman to be elected leader of the Labour party, let alone become a Labour Prime Minister. The legislation to extend an equal franchise to women was brought in by Baldwin’s Conservative government in 1928."
Etc.
TB's favourite comment so far has to be one of the ones left on youtube:
"After toppling apartheid, building the NHS, bringing peace to Northern Ireland and winning the second world war.. isn't it hard to stifle a giggle when Gordon Brown suddenly pops up @1.24 with... (drum roll)... Sure Start :-)
But I mock, GB is clearly a great man - just look! he walks with Barack Obama, at 2:12."
The
Labour PR machine
has gone into overdrive over this nonsense. "LOOK AT US WE LISTEN TO ONLINE TYPES!" It's weird to think that if the party is that broke, to the extent they have to recycle their amateurish videos to broadcast on TV, how/why are they paying for private polling about it? Kerry let the cat out of the bag on that one:
Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s strategists had noted the campaign. It’s clear the video appeals to Labour supporters, but then they tested it in focus groups of swing voters and it was going down well. And so the decision to update it and run it as the Queen’s Speech PPB was taken.
This decision is a victory for Labour’s thriving online community. It’s a victory for everyone who understands the power that new forms of communication are now giving us. And it’s a victory for the Labour Party who should be congratulated for acting so quickly to embrace the opportunity here.
Ugh, pass the trough. The left are rattled and they are shoring up their core base, simple as. This isn't about engagement online this is about clocking that some over excited kiddies gurgled and clapped their hands a lot when they saw something they liked. We are still months from an election and already Labour are being made to dance a merry tune by their out of touch and amateur membership, in a desperate bid to shore up votes. Role on 17.55 BBC 2.
TB will have a spring in his step and whistle on his lips this morning.
could be set to make moves against Gordon. In a sure sign that No10 is somewhat rattled by this, just look at their aggressive reaction to the news:
Criticism of Brown's leadership will anger No 10 as it seeks to build on small progress in the opinion polls and a strong byelection performance in Glasgow North East. It insists that the 4,000-strong Compass has little traction in the parliamentary party.
Senior figures in Compass, however, point to a database of 30,000 supporters. They think they could back the home secretary in return for a pledge from him that a referendum on electoral reform would be held, possibly on the day of the general election, or the foreign secretary in exchange for movement on measures to tackle inequality.
A shift to the left would be the final nail in the coffin, and while might firm up some of the Labour core, it would seal the deal for Cameron as the sensible floating voters come to the blue camp in terrified droves. Why did Labour change in the first place?
If Compass do start operations this could get bloody very quickly.
the other day about the Labour council candidate who described the Queen as vermin in a foul treasonous diatribe. Well WTC has managed to dig out a photo of said traitor and guess who is posing happily with him:
TB has a full on day but will be back later. He also had a rather sore head thanks to those nice people at ComRes. Their charity awards bash was great fun though sadly Ed Balls did a runner before TB could get a photo. No doubt he clocked his opponent Antony Calvert in the audience.
Quote the evening had to come from Nick Hurd while presenting an award:
"Such a pleasure to be here presenting Campaigner of the Year, and following on from Ken Livingstone, who clearly wasn't."
TB laughed a little too loudly as the rest of the room had a sharp intake of breath.
TB lost a drunken bet with Kerry McCarthy last night that the Against the Odds vid would never get an airing on TV. Ironically Sister Bear has a
piece in today's Standard
that made TB chuckle - it's all about hasty tweeting. Ben Bradshaw and darling Kerry come under particular scrutiny...
Late-night or ill-thought-out tweets are the cyber equivalent of drunken dialling.
Despite the inherent risk, the Labour party now has a "twitter tsar", Kerry McCarthy MP.
Her tag denotes the seriousness with which politicians have embraced Twitter's 24/7 opportunity to listen the sound of their own tweets and engage with voters.
Over at the Tory party, The Spectator's diary of a Notting Hill nobody, the satirical diary of a Conservative minion, reports that all MPs are supposed to spend three hours a day on Facebook and a further three on Twitter.
Parties might want us to see their tweeting members as spontaneous and modern, but the freedom allowed by constant tweeting can be disastrous.
McCarthy reacted to news that the Sun would be supporting Cameron with the following tweet: "Labour doesn't need The Sun. We've got Twitter ..." only to backtrack furiously.
The most regretted tweet of all made a front-page political row. Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw gave a kneejerk twitter response to David Cameron's conference speech.
Within minutes he tweeted about his attack on "big government", seeming to imply that Cameron and his family had big government to thank for the care their late son Ivan received in the hands of the NHS.
The times of Bradshaw's tweets, too (a veritable dawn chorus), are extraordinary. He regularly tweets at midnight, one, two and five, from his mobile.
So the chat this morning in geekdom has been about the apparently successful campaign by one Ellie Gellard, or
@bevaniteellie
to her friends, to have some socialist porn shown on television.
Miss "Polly Toynbee's columns make me cry" Gellard, a calm and tempered young lady, prone to reasoned and well thought out debate has been campaigning to get the Against The Odds, a video knocked together on Windows Movie Maker to introduce Gordon Brown to his ill-fated last conference speech, shown as a Party Election Broadcast. While it no doubt was rabble rousing in the hall, a video to get the hacks going, the overexcited Bevanite decided, probably because it had the word "Nye" in it, that it needed to be taken further.
In an impressive campaign for someone living in a different country to pull off alone, she enlisted the support of comedians Alastair Campell and Eddie "Gimme a peerage" Izzard to back it. The petition also had some
interesting signatories
on it, they include 13 Richard Cuntlethworpe, 15 Patrick Arsehead, 17 Jim Bollocks, 18 Neville Cockworth, 20 Kevin Stalin, and finally, 127 Daniel Fuck. Interesting too that Kerry McCarthy MP, Gellards one time boss and Labour Twitter Tsar had inside information on the decision hours before it was
leaked
to James Macintyre at the New Statesman.
So about the video. The fact that Victoria St are even considering showing it on television proves a lot of key points. Firstly, things are more desperate than imagined. For the Labour Party who have spent the last twelve years denying their forefathers and refusing to acknowledge, out of pure sense, their socialist routes, to turn round and produce this vomit inducing montage beggars belief. Brown, Blair and Mandy chopped this baggage away with a blunt axe and now have the audacity to attempt to use Old Labour as a lifeline. Oh and did you know President Obama is in the Labour Party? He features up there with Foot and Kinnock and Brown - all the fighters together. Smirk.
Brown a fighter? Yeah ok, because he's never ducked a fight before eh. Why no Callaghan either? Surely he should be included in that loser montage towards the end. And it's good to know what a million pounds can buy you in this devalued age. Yes that's right donate a million quid to Labour and you get a chance to plug your books and snivelling fairytale on television.
Joking apart the JK Rowling section will have to go if this video is ever actually broadcast on TV, such shameless product placement is unacceptable and given the donation could be a potential headache. The historical inaccuracies are appalling too. Since when can the Labour Party claim victory for votes for women given Lloyd George's government passed the Bill after WWI, not anything the Labour Party did? How about defeating fascism when Churchill won the war, or taking credit for freeing Nelson Mandela. As for Nye Bevan, well TB is still hunting down the name, but he certainly wasn't the first working class minister. Oh and TB has said it before and will say it again - Barack Obama is not in the Labour Party. He thinks Gordon is a toxic loser, hence why he won't meet privately with him and such shameless attempts at stealing some stardust look as pathetic and they do desperate.
Amusingly there also seems to be a massive cock up 32 seconds in. While discussing Nye Bevan, the footage is of Ernest Bevin:
What is Ellie's favourite word for describing perceived tory cock ups? Was it fail?
Labour are playing this as a "look at us all down with the techno kids" move. Showing how caring and chummy they are with their still lacklustre online community. Those TB has spoken to privately are anything but enthused and while they liked the little campaign, they are slightly bemused it has been taken seriously. Already some have spoken out publicly, against the video being shown on television. Perhaps most surprisingly, the uber-loyal NUS President Wes Streeting
slammed the idea.
If anything TB is pleased that Labour have had to sink this low. Clearly they are so broke they can't afford a new PEB so will rehash this tripe. It shows desperate times really do call for desperate measures. If Brown wants to invoke a history of socialist extremes, and a string of bonkers losing leaders to try and save his ass then let him.
The sensible voter will reject this cynical nonsense.
UPDATE 13.21: The ever sharp
Working Class Tory
has sorted out the miner innaccuracy:
"But no-one told Nye Bevan
When did they say that? They didn't, because it obviously wasn't true. Miners had been ministers in several Labour governments before Attlee's. The Labour Secretary for Scotland, William Adamson, was an ACTUAL MINER, not just the son of one. So Nye Bevan is completely irrelevant in this."
True to form, Gordon Brown announced last week that he would be attending the Copenhagen Climate Change summit. The curse kicked in, and this collective hysterical waste of time has accepted it is
doomed to failure
:
"The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December has been billed as the world’s last chance to stop global warming. But negotiations soon broke down because the US refused to sign up to targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The deadlock has forced world leaders at a summit in Singapore to step in and admit that any deal this year will be little more than a “political agreement”."
Ever a fan of swanning around the world stage rather than trying to sort out the messes he has created at home, in light of the fact Copenhagen has now failed, why does Brown still have to go? The whole thing was a waste of time to begin with, now that has been accepted will the Prime Minister please not piss away taxpayers money on this junket.
, What!? An independent grassroots movement!? EVIL! Burn the witch!It must be a Tory front, LIARS!!ARRRRGHetc.
Ok enough of that. The Taxpayers' Alliance have today released this cinema ad that will be hopefully get some popcorn munchers thinking:
Cinema ads are definitely the way to go to reach new audiences and it is no surprise that a little birdy told the bear the Tories have block booked various slots next spring.
Is Alastair Campbell back on the sauce or has he just lost it finally? His shameless hypocrisy last week when slagging off The Sun and Murdoch despite been on his knees to them for ten years was one thing but check out this gem from
his blog
today:
Context - He is slagging off private schools and defending comps:
"despite the swirls of middle class angst about (vastly improved) State schools that so pollute this debate, so dominated in the media by editors and journalists who have chosen the private sector for their own kids, and distort their coverage to justify their choice."
What a moron, no wonder said editors and journalists still think he is an absolute...
, What!? An independent grassroots movement!? EVIL! Burn the witch!It must be a Tory front, LIARS!!ARRRRGHetc.
Sorry let's try that again,
The Taxpayers' Alliance
are running a debate on Europe and have this stunning contribution from Hannan. In his articulate and calm manner he destroys all the arguments against an independent Britain put forward by the Euro-extremists:
if you are a Tory. Actually do, it makes for some scary reading but the truth hurts:
Indeed, according to John Maloney of Exeter University, the Tories must secure a 10 per cent lead over Labour to win an overall majority of just one seat at the next election. In other words David Cameron faces a very high mountain to climb. The most astute Conservative strategists are keenly aware of this problem, as is Cameron himself.
An internal Tory Party document sets out the scale of the problem, stating baldly: 'The Conservatives have never won a General Election from a starting point as weak as they face now.'
The paper calculates that to win a majority, the Conservatives must hold every seat they won in 2005, plus an additional 117 constituencies. To put that in perspective, Margaret Thatcher notched up an additional 63 seats in 1979 for the Tories, while Edward Heath made 69 gains in 1970.
The Tory briefing note sums up the problem as follows: 'To become Prime Minister, David Cameron must surpass the electoral achievements of both Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.'
Only once before have Conservatives made gains of the scale that Cameron requires to obtain an overall majority after the election. But that was in the exceptional circumstances of the National Government of 1931, when the Labour Party had split in two.
But most crucially, Cameron is well aware that a simple overall majority would not be enough for him to govern effectively. Instead, he needs a working majority of at least 30 seats (which means a majority of 15 per cent over Labour on election day).
Mandelson was crowned Politician of the Year by the Spectator yesterday. His return from the wilderness and accumulation of power quicker than anyone could say "mortgage loan" was truly stunning. If you ever doubt Mandelson's snakelike charm and silver tongue, just read his dangerously disarming, self-deprecating, but ultimately hard hitting acceptance speech yesterday via
Left Food Forward
:
“Thank you Fraser.
It is a great honour to be the first winner of this prestigious award to come from outside the ranks of the Bullingdon Club since 2006.
I am not sure what the collective noun for Bullingdon Club members is – I am looking for the word. I know its not chumps.
Anyway, I am sure it will come to me. On which subject, I am pleased to be following in the footsteps of last year’s winner, the Mayor of London.
Winning this award is another thing to add to the list of things I have in common with Boris.
Both of us have spent happy years working in Brussels. Both of us have come back from very public resignations. And, of course, both of us share a driving ambition to do all we can to undermine David Cameron.
And while we are on the Bullingdon Club theme, I must say it does feel odd being up here this year without George. I missed him on holiday this year as well. Was it something I did?
I have reason to be doubly grateful to The Spectator after they so kindly welcomed me back last year with the Newcomer of the Year Award.
And who would have thought a year on – I would still be in the Cabinet? So it is with as much relief as pride that I receive the Politician of the Year award today.
I haven’t actually accumulated a new title for at least a few weeks so this is particularly welcome.
Of course, you know me. I am happy to serve in whatever capacity I can be of most use – as I was saying when I just happened to be in Brussels last Friday. A long planned engagement.
Before I go I want to pay tribute to Matthew D’Ancona for his transformation of The Spectator. And he has a ferociously intelligent – not to say increasingly ubiquitous – successor in Fraser Nelson who I have no doubt will keep all of us on our reforming toes.
Boris and I are testament to the fact that political comebacks are possible. Which is why I look forward to handing this award over to Gordon Brown next year rather than handing it over to yet another member of the Bullingdon Club.
Once again, many thanks. It is always good to be recognised by my friends on the centre right.”
TB hates him, but damn it, you got to respect him.
Given the revelations that surfaced yesterday, TB was interested to see Chris Grayling was having a very quiet drink in the Slug and Lettuce on Victoria Street with Liam Fox's former Chief of Staff last night. Seems competition to get on "The List" is hotting up. Ben Brogan is
chasing
this one too, but get in touch with the bear with what you know.
The Liberal Democrats like to pretend that the eclectic mix of fruitcakes they have speaking on certain policy areas are a "Shadow Cabinet". They like to pretend that they are an actual opposition when in reality the whole thing smacks of "go back to your constituencies and prepare for government."
As much as they ham this shad cab thing up, it's good to see that at least the Lib Dem IT department have a dose of reality. For a laugh google "
Lib Dem Shadow Cabinet
":Click on the
top result
:
Oh dear, there it is from the horses mouth. The Liberal Democrats do not have a shadow cabinet. They have spokesmen on policy areas.
The people of Glasgow sent a clear message to Westminster last night. They didn't want to vote Labour, their natural providers, so they didn't bother voting. Labour are spinning that they got sixty percent of the vote. Don't fall for it, they got sixty percent of the turnout which was a shocking 33.2%. So in reality only just under 20% of one of Labour's safest seats in the country could be bothered to come out for them. Not looking good for the general.
The Tories were never going to win this one, but an interesting set of results. The BNP do well in places where Labour have abandoned their working class core. (see 2009 European Elections, The.) Glasgow is another prime example of this. Both the BNP and SNP were standing noticeably to the left of Labour. Disenfranchised and angry voters had two clear left-wing nationalist choices in this by-election, but it seems an alarming number of those who bothered to protest vote were less willing to vote SNP over their more extremist cousins. This is not good.
The BBC are being blamed, slightly unfairly, for all this BNP on the rise hoohaa. Apparently it's all on the back of their legally binding decision to have the BNP on Question Time. The only people to blame, however, are the ones that gave that decision such ridiculous levels of coverage. He should have been on, and the hysterical reaction to it was the real outrage. The result of that oxygen of publicity given to the lunatic Griffin was seen last night. A lesson to be learnt there.
The smug reaction of Labour last night was pathetic. The disgustingly on message drone candidate couldn't hide his lying eyes as he spouted the "people have put their faith in Gordon Brown" mumbo jumbo. If they couldn't even hold this seat then they wouldn't have a single seat left in the country. This is Labour heartland - trade unionists and unemployed teeters. These people don't want change, they get cash handed to them on a plate with Labour. Willie Bain, probably the only MP to still live with his mum and dad age 36, said it was a ringing endorsement for Gordon Brown. What absolute twaddle. Why then was his face not put on a single leaflet?
This is no comeback for Brown or Labour, if they can't keep the voters they bribe with benefits and handouts then they are in even more trouble than anyone thought. Beyond the spin this should have been a walk in the park for them, but instead they had to throw the negative kitchen sink at their nationalist rival to defend one of their safest seats in the UK. Also errh... what happened to the Lib Dems? They were briefing that they had beaten the Tories all evening... sixth. Nice! Seriously, what is the point lads?
So Labour live to fight another day, poor night for the SNP, scarily good result for the BNP, shocking night for the Lib Dems. Pretty much what was expected for the Tories, up slightly which was nice but hey, tough crowd.
P.S. This cock up from the BBC did make TB chuckle:
The two problems TB has with yoof politics is the lack of accountability and a lack of humour - TB intends to kill, or at least wound these two birds with one stone. editor@torybear.com
Click on the 
Oh dear, there it is from the horses mouth. The Liberal Democrats do not have a shadow cabinet. They have spokesmen on policy areas.
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