Leadership in the Labour Party's darkest days

"Crisis: what crisis?"—The British Bullshit Corporation's* Politics front page as of 2.17am on Monday 11 January 2010.

A few days ago I berated Tom Harris MP for his ludicrous assertion that "even in its darkest days, Labour was never short of leadership material at the top of the party."

It was a fucking stupid thing to say then, but it looks almost unbelievably facile in the light of the last few days' shenanigans.

First, of course, we had the ludicrous coup attempt by Geoff "what a total fucking Hoon" Hoon and Patricia "The World's Most Patronising Woman™" Hewitt. As my peripatetic Greek friend pointed out, this was a pathetic pair of would-be assassins.

Imagine being told that you were an incompetent and unpopular liability by Patsy "Best ever year for the NHS" Hewitt and Geoff "Buff" Hoon. Really, this is the state to which the Labour Party is now reduced? As attempted coups go, it's rather as if Operation Valkyrie had been mounted by Hale and Pace.

It's a measure of the Nemo-like depths to which Cyclops has sunk that even this superannuated comedy duo have a chance, albeit a vanishingly slim one, of actually scuttling the ship once and for all. Needless to say, all the hacks are furiously hedging their bets - not surprising, given the way Nick Robinson was made to look like a prize turnip on the box earlier, dutifully proclaiming that there was nothing going on even as the gruesome twosome were executing their painfully incompetent masterful plan.

Indeed, so incompetent was Hoon that it took three—three!—emails to get the damn letter out: this man used to be the bloody Defence Secretary, for fuck's sake!

We were then treated to the unedifying sight of Labour ministers scrambling to be the last to endorse Gordon "Cyclops" Brown—wee Davey Miliband took over six hours to sort out his endorsement. But then, what would one expect from a speccy little coward like Dave?—he bottled the last chance that he had, and he bottled it again this time.

How's that for leadership, Tom?

But all of this is nothing compared to the shit-storm that is being engendered by Peter "Loyalty is a two way street" Watt's memoirs.

As you'll remember, Watt was the General Secretary of the Labour Party when the Donorgate scandal broke; Brown promised to stand by him, then threw Watt to the wolves—and Watt has, through Iain Dale's Biteback Publishing (how apt does that name seem now?) returned the favour.

Some of the juiciest bits have been serialised in the Sunday Mail, and they taste very delightful in my mouth—I imagine that Gordon can taste only ashes (and Polly's cunt juice). And the beauty of it is that the revelations are so very quotable—not least by Guido…

• Mr Brown’s Cabinet ally Douglas Alexander said the PM’s inner circle wanted an early Election partly because even they didn’t like him–and they feared the British public would soon form the same view.


• The day Mr Brown called off the 2007 Election, denying he had ever intended to hold one, Labour chiefs had a fleet of limousines circling Parliament Square ready to take Ministers on the campaign trail, and had 1.5million leaflets ready to be posted. Brown brazenly lied about the planned election to an incredulous press conference.


• No. 10 is ‘completely dysfunctional’ under Mr Brown, who runs the country ‘by making it up as he goes along’.


• After witnessing Brown behave bizarrely at a dinner, Watt's wife told him “he’s bonkers”.

The Labour Party apparently spunked at least £1.2 million up the wall on the election that never was.

As a taxpayer, how do you feel about a party that would so happily waste £1.2 million—a sum that, as an average worker, you are unlikely to earn in your entire lifetime—on absolutely fuck all?

As a Labour donor, how do you feel about the Labour Party so eagerly pissing away your hard-earned cash? Yes, J.K. Rowling—that million pounds that you gave to help "poor and vulnerable families" might as well have been burned in a big fucking fire.

Feel like giving more?

At the very least, these revelations cast serious aspersions on the Gobblin' King's leadership style. In fact, they rather show that there is no leadership at the top of the Labour Party at all. [Emphasis mine.]

Peter Watt, who resigned over the 2007 donations scandal, has written a deeply unflattering portrait of Mr Brown’s preparations for the poll in his memoirs. “Downing Street was a shambles,” he writes. “There was no vision, no strategy, no co-ordination. It was completely dysfunctional.”

Mr Watt says Mr Alexander had said that Cabinet ministers had wanted a general election in autumn 2007 because they felt that the public would grow to dislike Mr Brown. He quotes the minister as saying: “The truth is, Peter, we have spent years working with this guy and we don’t actually like him. We have always thought that the longer the public had to get to know him, the less they would like him as well.”

All of this is pretty damning—not that you would know about any of it if you got your news solely from the British Bullshit Corporation* (see picture above)—even for the most ardent Brown supporter.

It's pretty damning for enthusiastic Labour supporters too: wake up, you fucking sheep! Your leader has been publicly accused of being a useless, treacherous, fuck-wit, lack-wit, bumbling, incompetent, dislikable, "bonkers" cunt by the ex-General Secretary of your own party, and...

... oh, and nothing. Your so-called leader can't lead, and no one else in your party has the balls—the sheer fucking gumption—even to attempt to depose him (apart from Patsy and Hoon—the Beeb's new sitcom?—who don't count: not because they are completely fucking useless (though they are) but because I don't consider them part of the human race (I'm an optimist)).

So, Tom Harris MP, would you like to tell me who, precisely is going to lead this fucking rabble into the land of milk and honey?

Come on, Tom: you said that "even in its darkest days, Labour was never short of leadership material at the top of the party." So, where the fuck is this leadership material, eh?

Let's face it: at the moment, the most credible leadership material anywhere near the Labour Party is the fluff under the House of Commons benches.

* Blame the wife again.

UPDATE: the Spectator Coffee House seems to agree, via The Scary Fucking Clown.

The Gorgon may be a weapons-grade nasty cunt, but so is any other politician. And the reason that Gorgon has outfaced his plotters is not that he is strong, but that they are even weaker than he is.

He doesn't bestride the ground like a colossus, it's just that he's surrounded by microbes.

So I'll ask again, Tommy-boy: where's the fucking leadership material, big man? Will you, perhaps, tak' yer fuckin' knackers in yer hands and ga'an sort the fucking shite out...?

Or will you, in fact, just slump down in the corner and blot it all out—as so many of your constituents do—with Buckfast and smack?

Cancerous bollocks

The Telegraph is reporting that we all need to watch our diets to avoid dying hideously.

Millions of people are at risk of getting cancer unless they slash levels of alcohol and red meat in their diets, medical experts have warned in a landmark study.

The most comprehensive review of the evidence linking obesity, diet and physical activity to the chances of developing cancer recommends sweeping changes to our lifestyles if we are to combat rising cancer rates.

Current guidelines on the intake of alcohol and red meat should be nearly halved while people should try to be at the slimmer end of the recommended weight limits in order to lower their risk of developing the disease.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers, there's no way I'm cutting down on booze and red meat. Although, if everyone else wants to, that's fine: all the more for me.

Anyway, according to The Englishman, it's all absolute crap.

I have actually downloaded the report, all 537 pages of it. It is a vast data dredge. I have failed to spot any Relative Risks which approach 2 - (an increase of 100%) - In epidemiologic research, [increases in risk of less than 100 percent] are considered small and are usually difficult to interpret. Such increases may be due to chance, statistical bias, or the effects of confounding factors that are sometimes not evident. [Source: National Cancer Institute, Press Release, October 26, 1994.]

However, as he points out, there is a way in which we could cut significant numbers of deaths from cancer.

Of course if we want to really save "10,000 deaths a year from cancer" according to a report four years ago by Professor Karol Sikora we just have to improve our healthcare to the European average for cancer treatment. That is 10,000 that die because of the NHS and the unique way it is run.

The abysmal oncology service in the NHS is one of the reasons that Andrew Ian Dodge is so glad to be in the US at present.

Some of pondered that my illness is down to unhealthy living; even family members. However my surgeon is keen to let me know that its family history or genes that are the reason I have colon cancer at 39. I like to think that the reason I have it at 39 instead of in my 40s because, as always, I am an early achiever. Lets hope that we can manage to get rid of the little bastard, Red Ken, in early November.

If I recall correctly from our chat the other night, he is under the knife in the next few days (if not today) so let's hope that he gets better quickly.

However, it is worth noting that the elapsed time—from the incident that let to the colonoscopy through diagnosis to operating—has been less than two weeks. As such, his prognosis is excellent.

I doubt that those whose only option our envy-of-the-world health system would have have such a quick process. Or such a good prognosis. I was only half-joking when I put this answer into Patsy Hewitt's mouth a few months ago...

DK: So, the deficit next year is likely to be even higher, isn't it, than this year? Because you have simply delayed these treatments until next year; and that means that you have only deferred the loss; not eliminated it.

Patsy: Ah, yes, but by that time, many of those waiting to be treated will either have died or gone private—which is becoming ever more affordable, you know—and so will, one way or another, not be needing treatment on the NHS.

As Andrew said, it's going to be expensive in the US but, let's face it, money's no use to you if you're dead.

UPDATE: the Daily Mash has its own take.

HEALTH experts were last night told to 'go fuck themselves' after advising consumers to give up bacon.

Fuck yeah!

UPDATE 2: Timmy points out not only that being teetotal is unhealthy but also that cancer levels aren't really rising anyway.

Difficult to reconcile this with the fact that with alcohol, just as an example, you need to consume 63 units of alcohol a wek to get to the same health risks as teetotallers.

Further, it’s very difficult to reconcile this with the fact that we don’t actually have "rising cancer rates". What we have is increasing life spans, meaning that we’re not all dying of things other than cancer and are staying alive long enough to get it. Age adjusted cancer rates (which are the true measure) are falling.

We'll just chlk this story up to the usual scare-mongering then, shall we?

In news that has delighted Drs Rant and Crippen, as well as myself and my impecunious Athenian pal, Patsy Hewitt resigned last night. Good—fuck off, Patsy, you lying shitbag.

My fourth post for 18DS is little more than a final, valedictory swipe at Darling Patsy, written for no other reason than that I can.

A Fairytale

Here is a heart-warming fairytale, cribbed from Dr Rant.

There was a young queen called Queen Most Irritating Voice who ruled over all all the land. This country had a health system called the La La Land Health Service that enitled everyone to a good standard of health care based on their clinical need. Queen Most Irritating Voice was not very popular as throughout her rule she kept trying to sell off the LLLHS to her royal buddies.

One day one of Queen Most Irritating Voice's friends was diagnosed with a particularly nasty cancer that needed surgical removal. The operation was booked but there was a slight problem; her friend needed a special bed for after the operation,however all the special beds were full come the day of her friend's surgery.

So Queen Most Irritating Voice rang up the head of the particular hospital and ordered him to free up one of the special beds so that her friend could have the necessary surgery without delay. So scared at this order from on high was the head of the hospital, that he immediately made sure that a special bed was cleared for Queen Most Irritating Voice's friend.

In this way Queen Most Irritating Voice exploited her position of power to benefit her friend. Some might say that this action was deeply unethical, while others may even go so far as to say that it was a matter that should force her immediate abdication.

I wonder where this fairytale could possibly have come from? It really could couldn't be an allegory, eh?

Tweety pie

Patricia Hewitt gave a speech to the London School of Economics outlining her brave vision of the future for the NHS, she started with:

'The NHS is under attack.'

Indeed the NHS has been under attack for the last ten years, thanks to her and her incompetent party's over controlling meddling. Frankly the rest of her speech doesn't even deserve a nice glob of purulent lobbed at it, it is beneath contempt and even puts Polly Toynbee to shame with its malignant dishonesty.

Hewitt is living in a fantasy land if she thinks that she has 'reversed the decline'. New Labour have frittered away billions on grandiose schemes which provide bugger all benefit to anyone except to the brain dead bureaucrats who are employed to shuffle the glossy bog roll around. Productivity and efficiency have been on the decline for years, despite endless meaningless statistics manufactured by the government that prove just how much better everything is.

Importantly Hewitt and the government's illogical denial of the rationing that is already commonplace in the NHS today borders on the insane. Are they not aware that standard surgical procedures and diagnostic tests are simply not allowed on Stalin's good old NHS, even when they are clinically indicated? This culture of top down idiocy has led to a state of affairs where doctors are left completely demoralised as their managers treat them as useless obstructions that only get in the way of never ending stream of utopian quango-created protocols. This is Hewitt's trademark management style, to empower committee dwelling mincers while disempowering the autonomous professionals who actually do the hard work on the ground.

Hewitt and New Labour have made a habit of doing exactly the opposite of what they claim. Their 'patient choice' equates to no choice and a dumbed down non-consultant led service, their 'market forces' equate to a top heavy centralised fuck up which only responds to the politician's meddling and not the demands of the individual; while their 'pursuit of excellence' really means fostering a culture of utter mediocrity which forces any excellence to emigrate. The words of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon sum up Hewitt and New Labour's philosophy pretty damn well:

“A common danger tends to concord. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.”

P.S. I never imagined that Dr Rant was the kind to be a bird watcher, let alone a bird listener. However it does appear that this little birdy did have something rather interesting to say.