Demolition

[The Purple Cow]

I think I know why this hasn't appeared on OTF yet, attacking Hazel Blears is a bit like kicking a sick puppy, and George Monbiot can be an irritatingly self-righteous chap at times. But this is one of the best demolition jobs on a politician I have ever read.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/hazel-blears-george-monbiot

"It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians."

**

It probably helps if you've read the (vomit inducing) Blears article, he's responding to.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/06/response-hazel-blears-politics-monbiot

[hobbes]

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You know, that's quite beautiful.

[Guest]

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Yeah, I meant to put this up yesterday. Stirring stuff indeed. It's a tap-in, but it's a netbusting bicycle kick of a tap-in.

[NHH]

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Yeah. Moonboot is often a bit hit and miss, but he takes aim and scores a bullseye with that. Though apparently, he makes a mistake regarding her entry into the cabinet, which is par for the course for him.

[beak]

Demolition

hazel blears is an arsehole.

would it be churlish and point-missing of me to point out that the very street her office shares with my flat, is one of the worst i've ever seen for squandered potential and rampant ill-management? she is supposed to be secretary of state for communities after all.

at a guess, 40% of the buildings are unused, and she was recently in the paper beaming about the long-heralded redevelopment plans: they have finally knocked down an office building that hasn't been in use for 5-6 years and some old 19th century terraces that had at one point been converted into shops, but have never been empty and rotting for as long as i can remember.

occasionally plans are made to build things but they are either never started, never finished, or are built and left empty.

i mean, it's a tangent and all, and i may have lost the run of myself a bit there, and i may be betraying a profound lack of understanding when it comes to redevelopment, but it at least chimes with the thread title and the horrible politician it refers to.

[Guest]

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Ha. Letter in today's Granuiad:

There was a time when this newspaper stood out against the deeply personalised, offensive and ill-informed journalism which was ascribed to tabloid publications.

George Monbiot's scurrilous, unjustified and pathetically spiteful diatribe against Hazel Blears is the kind of lowest form of journalism that is dragging this country into the gutter. What has happened to the standards of journalism, the informed and researched commentary, on which the Guardian once proudly built its name?

David Blunkett MP
Lab, Sheffield, Brightside

[Wyatt Earp]

Demolition

I was less impressed than most of y'all. It looked like he'd trawled theyworkforyou.com and found, surprise surprise, a senior minister with a habit of voting for the government. He must know, man of his calibre, that that's how the whip system at Westminster works. Perhaps it shouldn't (though the point is arguable) but it does. And it's not Blears' fault that it does.

[ian.64]

Demolition

What has happened to the standards of journalism, the informed and researched commentary, on which the Guardian once proudly built its name?

They fucked it up by employing you, sunshine.

[Guest]

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He answers that in the piece, Wyatt. Blears claims to have gone into politics to uphold principles, but which ones? The whip system doesn't manage to make everyone as supine as she is.

[Wyatt Earp]

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The Horse wrote:

He answers that in the piece, Wyatt. Blears claims to have gone into politics to uphold principles, but which ones?

Well, I can't stand Blears either. But all her voting record shows is that so far she feels the game has been worth the candle as far as party discipline is concerned. As Monbiot points out, there are your Robin Cooks who've felt and acted differently, but the system depends on not everybody being like that, and the system itself is defensible.

[Guest]

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Wa ayat al Urbi wrote:

As Monbiot points out, there are your Robin Cooks who've felt and acted differently, but the system depends on not everybody being like that.

Which system?

[Wyatt Earp]

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Party discipline.

[Guest]

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How does that depend on some individuals always following the government line? Doesn't it depend on most people following it on any given issue?

[Wyatt Earp]

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Not really, no, not how it's practiced at Westminster. Backbenchers won't generally have the whip withdrawn unless it's a three-liner, but members of the government are expected to toe the line. The fact that they generally do says, I think, not all that much about them as individuals.

Now, Monbiot might have intended a general point against this system, which it's certainly legitimate to criticise. He may also have meant that all members of this particular government are intolerably morally compromised; that's a view with which I have a lot of sympathy too.

But those general points are lost when he has a personal go at Blears. Blears' voting record seems as near as dammit identical to that of my own MP David Lammy, for example. His focus on Blears looks like pique to me.

[Guest]

Demolition

But it's in response to claims for her own politics that, as a senior minister willingly operating within the system you describe, Blears was in no position to make. It's a criticism of the system framed as an attack on an individual who embodies that system's (lack of) principles.

[wingco]

Demolition

I thought the piece was great. If it was pique, then it's because Blears launched an attack on Monbiot as one of life's protestors from the sidelines, whereas she characterised herself as a principled person but someone who rolled her sleeves and actually did something practical.

It's no doubt true that Blears is not the only high ranking New Labourite with an unblemished record of support for the government and that this may merely be her playing the whip game, no doubt waiting to pounce and do something radical at some deferred and distant point in the future when the opportunity occurs.

However, Blears is a particularly egregious example of obdurate New Labour toadyism, I reckon. She's the one they send out when a particularly dirty job has to be done on, say, Question Time, in terms of mangling the language to defending the indefensible and stonewalling in the face of reasonable inquisition. She's fucking appalling. I remember being at a Guardian party, when such things were still heard of, overhearing Jon Snow (who I'd seen interview her earlier that day, when she first emerged on the scene) expressing his absolute disgust at Blears and effectively saying how she represented a new, more virulent strain of sycophantic public apologist for whatever the Government were up to that day.

[Wyatt Earp]

Demolition

wingco wrote:

It's no doubt true that Blears is not the only high ranking New Labourite with an unblemished record of support for the government and that this may merely be her playing the whip game, no doubt waiting to pounce and do something radical at some deferred and distant point in the future when the opportunity occurs.

I'm not saying that at all as well you know. I just read the piece and thought "He's had that off theyworkforyou.com, he has." I'd have been more impressed if he'd cited a bit more chapter and verse on instances of the kind of language-mangling etc that you're on about. Looking at her voting record on a website and going off on one, as if this makes her unusual in some way, doesn't strike me as all that George Orwell.

Mind, he's always annoyed me, Monbiot, so I may not be being entirely fair.

[Guest]

Demolition

I just read the piece and thought "He's had that off theyworkforyou.com, he has."

Oh yeah, totally. Not a problem for me, especially when it's done with such vim. Checking up on people on twfy is no less worthwhile for being very easy.

[N est à?]

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Since Monbiot himself points out that he's getting his information from TWFY, I don't see what the problem is. It's not as if any of the facts are in dispute, or anyone has suggested the site's assesment of Blears' record is unfair.

I'm sure such a shock-n-awe attack must be somewhat motivated by pique though. Perhaps old Moonboot decided the gloves were off after Blears' snide and irrelevant allusion to his family's involvement with the Tory party.

[Guest]

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I like Monbiot -- he's a pompous bollocks but I always enjoy reading his stuff.

John Harris has also written a fair bit about the career trajectory of Hazel Blears. He interviewed her in one of his books. She came across as a deeply inadequate figure with the brain of a daddy long legs.

[wingco]

Demolition

I was being sarky at Blears, Wyatt, not at yr goodself - she does strike me as one of those people who justifies her career trajectory, not just to others but to herself, as all for the best in the best of all possible worlds.