A Bad Day on Mount Olympus

What an amazing Friday. Shadow Chancellor resigns yesterday and the personal stuff starts coming out. Tony Blair being grilled on his little evasions and lies to the Iraq Inquiry, and now Andy Coulson, David Cameron's criminal press advisor resigns - he says it's because he's become the story, but I suspect it's really because his fingerprints are all over the News of the World's illegal phone-hacking. You don't, as an editor, receive scoops week after week without wondering if there's any connection between them and the large amounts of money you're paying an expert in phone-hacking. To put it mildly.

The only problem with all this is that there won't be proper coverage of all of them, especially Blair, whose Messianic Manichaeanism deserves the full glare of public contempt. No doubt the principals of all these stories are very relieved. Nobody looks very good this morning.

PS. I nicked the title of this post from the excellent Marilyn Todd short story. Highly recommended.

Just when things were looking up for Labour

Alan Johnson, their Shadow Chancellor, has resigned out of the blue, citing 'family reasons'.

Presumably this means that the tabloid press has got something juicy to spend the weekend splashing over multiple pages with breathtaking hypocrisy. It may, of course, be a genuine family tragedy.

Either way, it's a shame. There's been a whispering campaign against Johnson because he's slipped up a couple of times and isn't an economist, but I thought making him shadow George Osborne was a very smart move: Johnson's a relaxed, personable working-class man who's done manual work for a living - everything George Osborne isn't. Labour desperately needs good communicators who've lived normal lives, and it needs some stability.

I wonder if Ed Miliband knew this when I saw him earlier - he seemed very relaxed, so it must be a complete surprise to him too.

Update: it appears that Johnson's bodyguard had an affair with his wife and other sources claim he had an affair with a civil servant, and the story was leaked by Ed Balls' special adviser. Obviously all relationships are complicated and we should resist tabloid-style moralising, but I think a period of leaving them alone would be in order. Poisonous.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha bye bye Blears

Maybe this makes me sound bitter, but Hazel Blears' resignation is one of the happiest days of my life - like all my graduations rolled into one - because I'm a socialist and a Labour Party member (I know, these things are mutually exclusive, but I exist in a state of cognitive dissonance). I hope that my constant acid attacks on her has helped foster in her the sense that the people don't really like her - but I doubt it.

True to form, she's resigned in a way designed to make herself look good and Brown look useless. He is, of course, but she's a deserting rat keen to inflict as much damage as possible. He should have sacked her a long time ago: it would have been good for the government of this country, good for the party and good for his reputation: he'd have looked decisive.

She said that she wants to

"help the Labour party to reconnect with the British people, to remind them that our values are their values, that their hopes and dreams are ours too".

But the Guardian is, thankfully, less impressed by her low cunning:

In a move that seemed deliberately hostile, Blears confirmed her departure publicly 90 minutes before prime minister's questions.

Obviously she's talking total bollocks. She represents nobody except careerist rightwing political obsessive class traitors, despite her incessant whinging that she's working class (because her brother drives a bus). Let's hope she's consigned to the dustbin of history for ever, and that New Labour goes with her.

As to the leadership, I maintain my record of opposing every Labour leader since Clement Atlee (and he drifted sharply to the right). I hated Blair when he was Home Office shadow minister and saw Gordon as his capitalist fixer - and a man who betrayed his Maxtonite roots. I see no reason to re-evaluate that position. I'd like John McDonnell to take the leadership, out of romantic socialism. If not, Alan Johnson would appeal to the electorate but not to me. Perhaps Rhodri Morgan (or in English) should be invited in: he's the leader of Wales's 'Classic Labour', which has made that country a socialist paradise, he's a heavyweight intellectual and a populist speaker and organiser. Michael Foot's still alive too.

I almost forgot: meanwhile, Labour HQ has dumped Dr Ian Gibson, for selling his flat to his daughter. Ridiculous: most of the cabinet have behaved corruptly, whereas he hasn't. Of course, it couldn't be because he's a sane, rational, thoughtful and occasionally rebellious independent thinker. He's particularly good on science. The country will certainly miss his contribution to public life.

Twatter - twitter for Map Twats

Cynical Ben is a bit annoyed by Twitter. He's absolutely right. It's been around for quite a while, but it first came to my attention in 2007 when Alan Johnson MP used it for his doomed campaign for the Labour Deputy Leadership - though John Edwards also used it for his (also doomed) presidential campaign, starting in 2007. The idea is that you're closely entwined with the daily lives of distant individuals - which is close to Sartre's idea (in Huis Clos) that hell is other people. Check out these guys' Twitter feeds: 'Spending the day in the department having meetings with Ministerial colleagues and officials'. This isn't empowerment, education or building an informed electorate - it's utterly banal. It is, in fact, perfectly Baudrillardian: the simulation of exchange rather than the symbolic exchange which constitutes true communication. It's too short for meaningful communication and it's unidirectional and linear - it's a fraud. 

OK, some of the better-informed amongst you will whinge, didn't Twitterers beat the media when that plane ditched in the Hudson the other day? So? I'm pretty certain that plenty of journalists noticed a massive plane go for a dip, and I'm not bothered about immediacy anyway. New journalism is about informed analysis. Any moron can text their friends about an event - it takes training and a brain to contextualise and discuss the significance of an event. Sure, Twitter might announce a death or a story first - but that's just data - it's not communication or wisdom (although it is what my university seems to care about).

Health fascists ruin a little boy's fun

Poor kid. The Welsh three-year-old's only joy in life (like most of the working class, according to Health Secretary Alan Johnson MP) was the occasional cigarette with his mother, and now she's been convicted of child cruelty because a so-called friend filmed the little tyke sparking up! It's political correctness gone mad! In earlier days he'd have been down a mine or up a chimney anyway, so no doubt his Cambrian little lungs are adapted to huge amounts of poisonous particles anyway.

Twits…

Apparently, @tonybenn who has been Twittering all week isn't really Tony Benn. As if anybody could seriously think that the great man would fall for such inconsequential nonsense. Benn is (as the video clip demonstrates) is a fan of Youtube and web journalism as ways of 'speaking truth to power', but the idea that someone who has sat down with tea, pipe and tape recorder for fifty years would suddenly decide that SMS-length updates is appropriate is laughable. Though he does have his own very outdated website.

To me, Twitter is the triumph of medium over message - the fetishisation of technology. Does anybody remember Alan Johnson's Labour deputy leadership campaign Twittering? Never was a noun so apt. Tony Benn, love him or loathe him, is a thinker - and few things in life are so simple that they can be reduced to a text-message (perhaps 'I love you' or 'You're dumped'). What you get when people like Johnson Twitter is 'Visited primary school. Proves triumph of socialism. Had rice pudding' (I exaggerate slightly). Perhaps a few skilled poets can distil meaning into few words, but most people expose the superficiality of their thoughts… and that's what blogging is for!