The end of Labour is in sight!

For those of you that have been looking on this site for my pearls of wisdom over the last month or so I apologise that I have not been active.

As we are now entering a general election campaign I will be even less noticeable as a blogger as I will be actively campaigning for the Conservatives in and around the area in which I live. I think this will be a better use of my time.

I hope you understand and join me in driving out this discredited and failed Labour government so that the Conservatives can begin to rebuild our country.

Labour: "This is not so much a government in crisis as a crisis pretending to be a government."

This must surely be the phrase that will epitomise the last days of this discredited Labour government.

Peter Watt, the ex-General Secretary of the Labour Party, who was sacked after the 'Donorgate' scandal a couple of years ago which involved dodgy financial transactions by the Labour Party (nothing new there) has written a book about his experiences in the job. Already he is being described as a man with a grudge just trying to get revenge on those who kicked him out. Maybe so.

However, the Mail on Sunday's serialisation is likely to make for very interesting reading. Read the first part HERE.

The (red) rug might yet be pulled out from under Brown!

Iain Dale is having some fun with this latest glimpse in the Times article which is entitled "Commons link to Damian McBride smear site is red rag to David Cameron".

It is reported that: "A bogus applicant using the name “Ollie Cromwell” paid £8.99 to set up The Red Rag as a campaign blog. The buyer had to provide only a name, address, telephone number and e-mail to create the site on November 4 last year. The address given was the House of Commons, The Times has been told. The site was registered for two years, ensuring that it would be in place throughout the general election campaign, which must be called by June next year."

Iain has also noted HERE that: "When Derek Draper was asked by Channel 4 News tonight if he had discussed the Red Rag website with the Prime Minister at their lunch at Chequers, he referred us to the Downing Street Press Office."

Tom Watson MP has instructed Carter Ruck Solicitors to write to the editors of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail "to complain about the publication of the false allegation that our client had knowledge of, and participated in, Mr McBride’s actions. We have made it clear that our client has confirmed to us that he was not copied in on any of the emails exchanged between Mr McBride and Mr Draper, nor was he aware of them or their content until their existence was first drawn to the attention of Downing Street by national newspapers, on Friday April 10...He still has not seen them. We have further made it clear that our client had no involvement in or knowledge of the ‘Red Rag’ website."

So what do we have here? "Ollie Cromwell" (an obvious pseudonym) registered the Red Rag site in November 2008; Derek Draper (the editor of LabourList) is unable to tell us if he mentioned this to Gordon Brown when he lunched with him only a few days later at Chequers; and Tom ("I feel smeared") Watson who shared an office with Damian McBride is "complaining" that he has been unfairly associated with the whole affair.

What do these idiots take us for? Please just give it up and go! We all feel smeared by you sad, stupid little men who like playing games with other peoples lives.

Just a bit of juvenile fun between mates

Brown is up to his neck in it

This article in the Guardian today by Jackie Ashley provides some even more interesting insights into "Smeargate". Note that Charlie Whelan is mentioned as the union man with the ability to finance whatever scam the group thought up.

And, of course, that arch-Brownite, Ed Balls is the chair of the "Wednesday afternoon group" that meets every week to plot the next move on the grid.

Ashley says: "The truth is that Brown has always been double-sided in his political personality and now the whole country knows it. The ideologically serious, morally driven statesman, whose steely determination was most recently on view in his successful handling of the G20, has lived his life with a sinister twin, spinning and dealing. McBride has been an extension of that other self."

There's lots more! Read it and feel that warm glow of satisfaction you get when your long-held suspicions have been confirmed. This bunch of charlatans are as bad as you thought!

Breaking news: Brown had aides!

Is this how you like your politics? No? Well, get used to it because this is what we are going to get over the next year.

What can David Cameron and his team do to counter THIS onslaught? One view might be that he doesn't have to do anything. (See this great Coffee House blog). The Labour Party is imploding on its own. All he has do is help them on their way by reminding the electorate that they are a failing and failed government that has wasted vast amounts of our money on useless social engineering experiments that will take years and years to reverse.

But, actually, the Conservatives' immediate problem is how to counter all the counter-spin that the left will churn out over the next few days as a result of "Smeargate".

So, he will have to watch out for that slimey git Liam Byrne and for the 'hidden hand' of Tom Watson in the counter-attack. Prescott and Campbell will be at it too. This has only just started to get nasty. It will get much worse as the left-leaning journos try to suggest that the Conservative Party have always run the same type of spin operation.

Batten down the hatches - we are in full general election mode!

What a mendacious lot!

I have been listening to various interviews with Dolly Draper during the day and I am amazed this deranged man was ever taken seriously. This is just one example.



Brown will, of course, remain above the fray. That's not "the right thing to do!"

Update: In the meantime, one Labour MP blogger has made the following comment on Twitter:

"tomharrismp Those who have read Stephen King's "The Langoliers" will have found tonight's "Doctor Who" very familiar." Well that's OK then!

Bye bye Redditch, thank you for paying for my mortgage

If this is the best that Jaqui Smith can do then she is doomed to be an ex Labour MP at the next general election. Hope so!

The "Two" Home Secretary?

Fascinating how these government ministers organise their home lives, isn't it? According to this piece in the Mail on Sunday Jacqui Smith has managed to find a wonderful compromise.

Whatever the outcome of the next general election, and even if Ms Smith loses her Redditch seat, she (and her sister?) has done rather well in financial terms out of the taxpayer.

What's to hide, Harriet?

As instructed by Iain Dale, I'm publishing this blog to show unity with all other right-minded people (and I don't mean right leaning people on this occasion) who abhor the action taken by Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons to prevent it being a requirement that MPs (and peers) should provide (and publish) receipts to back up their claims for expenses.

Frankly, I have always found it amazing that they are allowed to claim expenses for anything without a receipt. In the forty years or so of my working life I was never paid a penny by my employers unless I could substantiate it with a written record in some form or another. OK, sometimes there were occasions when it was possible to claim a standard subsistence rate for an over night stay and I stayed in a cheaper B&B or with friends. But I was not breaking any rules and it usually meant I spent the "profit" on a better meal or in the bar or buying my friends a take-away or a few bottles of wine.

It'll be interesting to see if the vote on Thursday supports the Harridan's view.

How to defend a wafer thin majority - Labour style

The Daily Telegraph reports that "A certain Richard Timney has taken to writing letters to his local newspaper, the Redditch Advertiser, extolling the virtues of the constituency MP, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary. Mr Timney's epistolary forays also extend to defending controversial policies such as ID cards and to launching vigorous attacks on the Conservatives. Well, it's a free country and lively political letters are meat and drink to local newspapers.

"It's just that Mr Timney also happens to be not only the Home Secretary's husband, but also her £40,000 a year 'senior researcher/parliamentary assistant'. What a perfect parable of New Labour. It combines jobs for the boys with taxpayer-funded party propaganda, all conducted in a not entirely transparent way. Alastair Campbell would approve."

Couldn't have put it better myself - although I did point out back in July that she is unlikely to get re-elected.

Oleg, Peter, Nat, George and I are just good friends - honest!

I am sorry to disappoint you all but there is no truth in the stories circulating in the media that I have ever had relations with Oleg, Peter, Nat or George.

I have never been to Corfu and I have never been on a yacht owned by a Russian and I have never solicited a donation to any political party.

Why don't you believe me? (See photo.)

Labour Tries To Counter-Attack On Tory "Sleaze"

There has been much scratching of heads and stroking of beards by Labour Party loyalists over the last few days and weeks who are struggling to come to terms with why they are so out of favour with the electorate. One of their notably smaller-brained "strategists" writing on Labourhome has come up with the totally unoriginal idea of attacking the Conservatives on their record on so-called "sleaze".

"We should ALL have Cameron on the ropes.... over the baker's dozen or so of his parliamentary groups in Westminster and Strasbourg who have not declared, declared late, tried to cover up etc embarrassing donations; or who have dipped way, way too deep in the gravy...... Leave Gordon alone. Go get Nanny Caroline and Oily Alan." (For those of you that don't subject yourself to the prolific and unmitigated drivel that Chris Paul writes on his blog, this is about par for the course.)

His point apparently is to exhort the head-scratchers and the beard-strokers to stop concentrating on why Labour is so bloody useless -" shift to the lefters claiming this proves we must shift to the left, Compassites calling for a headless-chicken of a seminar and yet another will-the-ends pamphlet, the triangulating roundheads getting their protractors out, the wannabe leaders' camps sharpening their knives, the "no strings" funders pulling stroke after stroke, and Progress concentrating on upsetting Shami Chakrabarti." (No, I don't know what he is talking about either but this seems to be the language that Nu-Labour use when they communicate between their various factions.)

So that's it - attack the Tories on "sleaze" and Labour will be back into the voters' favour - Gordon Brown will walk on water and go on to be Prime Minister for as long as Robert Mugabe will be President of Zimbabwe.

Ermm! What about the David Abrahams' case that is now being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service? Last year it emerged that Mr Abrahams had donated money to Labour using a series of conduits including his secretary and a builder. The property developer was one of the party's biggest backers and gave £670,000 but his identity had been kept secret. The police conducted a far more low-profile investigation into this case than that into the Labour cash-for-honours enquiry, although several key Labour figures have been interviewed under caution.

There was apparently a degree of murkiness about the Abrahams' donations (dodgy planning permission deals with Labour's North-East mafia?) but it is by no means certain that a prosecution will result under potential breaches of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 as a result of donations made through intermediaries. Time will tell.

If the Labour grass roots really think they can outflank the Conservatives by simply shouting "sleaze" then they are likely to be seriously disappointed. They need to look deeper and wider for their real problem. They have a leader who is not up to the job; they have a third-rate Cabinet; they have run out of ideas that inspire the voters; and they have a reputation for sleaze and incompetence which will not be forgotten by the wider electorate.

My advice to Labour supporters? Go back to your constituencies and prepare for non-government - for a very long time. And so say all of us!

Give Mick A Glasgow Kiss From Me!

Mike Granatt, spokesman for Gorbals Mick (aka Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House of Commons) has resigned because he misled the Mail on Sunday when refuting claims that Mrs Mick had spent £4,000 since 2004 on taxi fares to do her weekly grocery shopping at Waitrose or wherever she gets her petit fois - the details aren't that important. But his reason for resigning is very significant.

"I have stepped down from my post for ethical reasons, because I misled a journalist unwittingly," he said. "I learned on Friday that I had been led to mislead journalists over material facts in a story concerning the Speaker's household and the use of taxis."

Ethical reasons? A reason to resign? Since when has "ethical reasons" caused anybody associated with the Labour Party been a reason to resign? He was not pushed, he did not jump - he just left gracefully with his own integrity intact.

But Mr Granatt is not, in fact, a Labour Party apparatchik - he is a career civil servant with a very sound reputation earned over several decades. I smell a rat!

Apart from the fact that Michael Martin is one of the most ineffective Speakers in history (witness his obvious bias towards Brown's regular habit of asking the Leader of the Opposition questions instead of answering Prime Ministers Questions) he is woefully equipped to take even the most simple decision on how the business of our Parliament is conducted. Calls for him to step down are long overdue.

"No More Resignations" says a Brownite

No, not Gordon this time but his old mate Des Browne.

According to the BBC, Browne has said that there will be no more Cabinet Ministers resigning over the donations scandal.

Oh dear! I hope that means he knows that the revelations about Alan Johnson's problem are easily explained. But of course, that does very pointedly exclude Wendy Alexander who leads the Scottish Labour Party. Perhaps he's not so confident about her.

Unfortunately, it does include Harridan (sic) Harman. Let's hope Des is wrong on this one. After all, he is wrong about most things!

Conservatives should be further ahead in the polls

I gather from the Ben Brogan blog that David Cameron and Andy Coulson have "unleashed the attack dogs" on NuLabour - presumably to counter Brown's "new" offensive against them - look out for a lot of "evil Ashcroft-bashing" and personal accusations of Cameron being a "snob" - see the Coffee House blog - over the next few weeks.

A few days ago I posted this comment on one of the political blogs:

"....it's a bit concerning that David Cameron's team isn't going up in the polls. He should be in the mid-40s by now. I can't believe the little sideshow of Clegg and Huhne giving each other Chinese burns behind the bike sheds at Westminster have caused the LibDems to leap up the polls to over 20%........Andy Coulson and Co must push for a much higher profile of all the Conservative policy proposals....Unless of course they know of some even worse sleaze-related or other incompetent events for Brown and his woeful crew on the horizon?"

Despite the almost daily revelations about the increasing sleaze mountain that Labour has built for itself, my point still stands - the Conservatives should be going up in the polls in their own right.

They have to spear Labour in its heart on two or three big issues now to ensure that Brown and his incompetents just whither on the vine. We can't just rely on them scoring own goals which they will blame anyway on a junior member of staff and cite the resignations of a couple of incompetent officials in the Civil Service or their party machine as having solved their problems.

It appears this might be about to happen. Let's hope so!