"Uncle Bobby, what do I sing now?"

Torturous I know, but I have to make use of my encyclopedic knowledge of Dallas somehow:

'We are all Keireerists now.'

The Labour Party: bending the fucking knee since 1906:

When those Pabloites commit themselves to deep entryism, they don't piss about. They go all in.

Hinterland by Chris Mullin (Profile Books 2016)

It was some time before I had any further contact with Blair. Then, in November 1994, he invited me to his office and asked if I would be willing to go on the front bench. This was not the first time I had been asked (I was by now very respectable). As long ago as 1992 John Smith had asked me to be housing spokesman and I had declined in favour of remaining on the Home Affairs Select Committee. Blair talked of ‘pepping up’ the front bench and giving it a radical edge. ‘So many of the left are …’

‘Impossibilists,’ I said.

‘I was going to say “conservative”. Their idea of being radical is to defend the status quo.’ An astute observation and one that was hard to deny. The Labour left at this time had few new ideas beyond repealing the Tory trade union laws (some of which were sensible and popular) and reversing all changes in the management of the NHS, regardless of whether or not they made sense.

Waiting for the great leap forward

Via a Facebook thread, one of those anecdotes you wish were true, if only to see Tom Watson and Nick Cohen's heads explode in indignation:

 "The competing Trot sects in 1980s Islington North CLP voted for Jeremy as their compromise candidate because each of them couldn’t accept that a member of a rival 4th International would be the MP".

The Inglorious Nine.

No, not a reference to the Labour splitters. It's me hitting three treble 1s. I didn't even have the nous to adjust my feet after the first two went in.

Michael van Gerwen, your crown is still safe  . . . for now.

"Dad, I went on a School Trip to London and all I brought back was this book on the Millies . . . "

Via Facebook:

A follow up to the album challenge.

Day #10
With no explanations, post ten books that have made their mark on your life. Once a day, post the book cover and nominate a new person.

PDH (The Tractor Millie)

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.