The Genial Thug

Quote of the day:

“Blair’s great skill was personal charisma - what used to be called bullshit. Merde de beouf. Whereas with Brown, there’s been nothing of that whatsoever. He’s got a very good brain - better than Blair’s - and a very good sense of direction, which I think Blair didn’t really have. Blair, in the end, was rather like Wilson: bullshit and nothing else, whereas Brown has a very solid understanding of what he’s up to.” [Denis Healey interviewed in last Saturday's Guardian.]

Hat tip to Neil at the Drink Sots.

Bill was right . . . sort of.

It's taken years for me to utter those words, but, there, I have - I've said it now.

I am genuinely surprised by this result. Flummoxed would perhaps be a better term. Harman, the most uninspiring and vapid of the deputy leadership candidates, was also the choice of the Brownite Camp.

What happens to the long terms plans of Cruddas now? Does he see himself as a possible leadership contender if and when Brown loses the next General Election, and does he continue in the same vein with his leftward move?

Whinge of the Day

'These times demands the New York Times' is the ad slogan on every other bus or yellow cab in New York. A snappy wee ad line* for an oh so smug newspaper.

I'd like to borrow - and paraphrase - the slogan just for a moment: 'These times demands that the Labour Left Briefing webmaster gets his or her arse in gear' and gets their bloody website into shape.

I know, I know - my copywriting skills need a bit of work.

With their chap possibly challenging Brown for the Labour Party leadership - less David and Goliath, more a case of Arbroath versus Bon Accord circa 1885 - their moment in the sun has finally arrived, and yet it looks like that their website** is one step above a geocities site that has been knocked together in the time it takes to draw up a composite resolution at a local GMC meeting.

I thought it was us ultra-lefties who were supposed to be the dilettantish amateurs?

*The radical New York free paper, The Indypendent, recently took the New York Times to task for the smugness and doubletalk of its advertising slogan.

**Yep, I know that John McDonnell's own website, John4leader, is much more easy on the eye, but no excuse should be necessary to poke the LLB bods with a sharpened stick. They've got it coming for that awful excuse of a website.