THE available supply of condemnatory superlatives has been exhausted. There is no mitigation for the lurid emails which leave a stench of moral decomposition as the flies buzz around Downing Street. As Paul Anderson says on page 13, it is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to the Labour Party.
For many sharing the Prime Minister’s darkening morale inside Number 10 and down the road in the House of Commons, this is the last straw for the Government as far as the electorate is concerned. Any chance of re-establishing trust with the public has been despatched in the click of a keystrokd.
But viewing the sordid debacle through the prism of Labour’s fortunes is to miss the point. The mistake was profoundly not, as one minister put it this week – no doubt reflecting the view of a number of colleagues – that Damian McBride got caught. It was in stooping to such a level in the first place that debased the currency of politics.
To say that all parties get up to these sort of tricks, or that you can bet the Tories are squirreling away dirt on Labour for use in the next election is to embrace a corrosive cynicism that may be rife at Westminster but should play no part in the Labour Party’s vision and practice of politics and political discourse.
Nor is it a sufficient defence to cite, as some have, precedents such as Bernard Ingham’s career-wrecking description, under the cloak of Parliamentary Lobby rules anonymity, of Conservative Cabinet minister John Biffen as a “semi-detached member of the Government”.
The dark arts have always been there and always will be. Alastair Campbell, whose own condemnation was scathing, denies responsibility for the much-circulated description of Gordon Brown as “psychologically flawed” but without him it would not have gained currency.
The actions of Mr McBride and his toxic internet correspondent were not just puerile and juvenile – though they were both of these – they went furthr and were dangerous. That they even thought they might get away with it shames them and everybody else who knew about the content while demeaning all in the Government, Labour and British politics in the eyes of voters.
It reflects, too, on the Prime Minister who, like Caesar’s wife, must at all times be above suspicion. Even with his temperamental tendency to outbursts at Tory attacks, and his avowed desire to counter them, it is improbable that Mr Brown was aware of the detailed nature of the prototype contents of the proposed Red Rag site. Where Mr Brown is open to criticism is, by his appointments and encouragements, in setting up a culture in which such actions could conceivably be deemed acceptable.
The need to counter the Tories official and unofficially supportive internet face was and is without doubt imperative. The decision to do so was correct. But there are better, more honourable, people out there and a better purpose than the peddling of tawdry low-grade gossip and lies. However, it seems being a friend of Peter Mandelson is a better qualification for the post than even a meagre working knowledge of how to navigate the blogosphere.
Labour’s general secretary Ray Collins was right this week to send out a message distancing the party from Derek Draper, although with the Blairites having a vengeful field day, it remains to be seen in which dark corner he pitches up in next. The point is that Mr Collins should never have taken Mr Draper on as an advisor in the first place if he was judging the best interests of the party. He knows that now, if he didn’t already when he came under pressure to make the appointment.
Mr Brown will tell anybody who will listen that the Tories are there to be beaten, if only the agenda could somehow be switched back to real politics such as the National Health Serice public spending cuts and inheritance tax which exposes the Tories’ vision (19 out of 24 Shadow Cabinet members being millionaires) vision of “for the few not the many”. The public, he believes, quite like David Cameron, but they remain unconvinced that the Tory Party has changed that much.
A return to real politics is the way to beat them, not through sick propaganda and dirty tricks and anyone who believes otherwise has no place in the Labour Party.
