A brief comment on Peter Hain
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Peter Hain spending £185,000 on coming fifth out of six contenders for the Labour party Deputy Leader post is that I can't remember who won. Can any readers remember who actually got this frightful non-job, and if so, do you think they gave had roughly fifteen grand's worth of fun out of it so far?
Wasn't it Harman? Please don't try and make me think about Harman and fun at the same time - it's bad for my brain.
ReplyDeleteIt was Harriet Harman if my memory serves, as some unkind people suggested that she was under the impression it was the Deputy Prime Minister job.
ReplyDeleteSurely more interesting though is that it costs £487,000 to keep George Osborne going for a year.
The commodity boom must be more widespread than I'd realised.
Finding the "donate" button on Labour's homepage is easy. Finding information about the party's organisation - not so.
ReplyDeleteBut eventually it emerged that Harriet Harman is the deputy chairman of the outfit.
£500,000 worth of George Osborne! The mind fucking boggles.
ReplyDeleteAs a Labour Party member who subscribes to too many periodicals, there was a brief period when my house was deluged with Hain 4 Deputy propaganda: leaflets falling out of copies of the New Statesman or Tribune, and coming through the letter-box with the regular mail, too. It was quite annoying.
ReplyDeleteHarriet Harman wrote to me twice -- I think the first time she misspelled my name, and so sent an identical follow-up letter that corrected the typo -- but those were the only two candidates (I think) who wasted their money on direct mail-shots to all party members, which is probably quite expensive.
Still: Hain didn't come last, so perhaps his money bought him something. Or maybe not, as it'd have been really really hard to finish lower than Hazel Blears, even if you were trying quite hard (and spending a lot of money with that end in view). When my local Party gave over part of their GC meeting to having local members speak on behalf of the various candidates for Deputy Leader, they couldn't find anyone willing to serve as a spokesperson to channel the wisdom of Blears.
£500,000 worth of George Osbourne is at least eight George Osbournes.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad someone else had to struggle to remember who won the Deputy Leadership contest. I guessed Harman too, though I can't recall what she's done in the post.
ReplyDeleteThe whole Hain thing is too bizarre. He spent a lot of money he didn't have on a campaign pretty much guaranteed to annoy the Labour party rank-and-file, and his weak showing can't have done him any favours with Brown (who now knows who's NOT popular - Hain and Blears). If this doesn't turn out to be a set-up by the South African secret service, I'll want to know why not.
The finniest part of Harman's victory was that she was given Blears' old job and not Prescott's.
ReplyDelete'funniest', dammit
ReplyDelete