Jonathan Ashworth, once known as "Johnny Sparkle" because he was such a rising star, maintains that I was the one who was known as right-wing back in the day, and that no one ever laboured, so to speak, under any such misapprehension about him.
Be that as it may, he is now a Co-operative as well as a Labour MP, and he secured the latter nomination with the support of all three of Unite, Unison and the GMB. He was described as a key member of Ed Miliband's team on the day of Miliband's election as Leader.
Made a Whip almost immediately upon election, Jon used that position to castigate Departments of State for their failure to take the Morning Star. He was eased effortlessly into Tom Watson's seat on the National Executive Committee.
And yesterday, he gave the send-off speech that could not be given by Harriet Harman. Whose Political Secretary he used to be. Now, that's beautiful. Truly, brilliantly beautiful.
There is no shortage of strong candidates for the position of Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Sadly, those do not include that position's present occupant.
Harman's position is safe because she's both a woman and a feminist.
ReplyDeleteThere would be a godawful fuss about a "war on women" from the sisterhood, if anyone got rid of her, and certainly if she was replaced with a man.
Don't you believe it.
ReplyDeleteToday's edition of the newspaper closest to Ed Miliband, the only one to endorse him for Leader - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/paedophile-information-exchange-patricia-hewitt-3197939#ixzz2unXz8YPx
Well, he's defended her to the hilt up til now.
ReplyDeleteThe official leaks said he had "reached boiling point with the Daily Mail" but not, apparently, with members of his Cabinet who refuse to apologise for promoting child abuse.
You have to fight the Daily Mail. You just have to.
ReplyDeleteI remember us having fun winding up our liberal feminist Politics lecturer by defending the paper in her presence.
ReplyDeleteShe was disgusted.
Sometimes you just begin to love something, because of the kind of people who hate it.
It's why she's still there, nearly a fortnight later. It is the only newspaper that could have run this and not caused a resignation within 36 hours. Hardly something to be proud of.
ReplyDeleteThe Mail not only gives voice to strong anti-neocon opinions-Andrew Alexander, Stephen Glover, Peter Oborne (before he left) Hitchens and co- and first exposed Guantanamo Bay abuse, but it's also the only national that employs paleocons.
ReplyDeleteAnd the only national that realy represents public opinion on immigration-despite all the Leftist bile and hatred it attracts for doing so.
Long may it continue.
Your first paragraph has appeared on here many times. Like the Harman/Hewitt/PIE story, in fact.
ReplyDeleteBut it doesn't help itself.
Oh, and the Mail on Sunday, a staggeringly paleocon platform that even publishes John Laughland and Mark Almond, is not the Daily Mail.
Point taken, but it is its sister paper, with the same owners and most of the same views.
ReplyDeleteOr, to put it another way, the Mail On Sunday is hated by the same people who hate the Daily Mail.
And thank God it sacked Melanie Phillips for her mad pro-war nonsense.
The Mail on Sunday is really quite different in politics. Especially on the opinion page just before Peter Hitchens, it publishes the kind of articles that appear in The American Conservative, or even that we used to post on PostRight.
ReplyDelete