Trust Labour once again? Hmm – do they trust each other?


It wasn’t the elevation of the younger Milliband which surprised me. Given the choice between Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, the extra-parliamentary party, smarting from years during which powerful leaders had been out of its control, opted perhaps inevitably for the more manipulable of the brothers.
No – what stopped me short was a line on the radio in the run-up to the coronation.
We were told that the five candidates, before being placed in purdah and told who’d won, had been obliged to surrender all Blackberries, mobiles, pagers and any other electronic means of communication.
The precaution – if this commentary was true – must have been taken in case one or more of them chose to leak the news.
Aren’t decency and trustworthiness necessary qualities if one is to be eligible to lead a party, a parliament, and a country?
In other words, shouldn’t it have been sufficient to say, “look, we don’t want to rob our lady chairperson, the conference, the media and the country of their moment of theatre, so would you mind keeping the result under your hat until it’s revealed from the platform?”
Doesn’t this IT confiscation betray the running flaw at the heart of Labour’s approach to people management –disable people just in case they behave irresponsibly; don’t believe in innocence until guilt is proven; in extremis, shoot first and ask questions later?
Saturday’s cameo in which the five candidates were electronically disabled was a miniature version of the last Labour government’s policy of imprisonment without trial, the trial in this case being whether they would be honourable enough to wait in the room and resist an itch to pull out the mobile and phone a friend.
As I write this, Radio 5 is discussing the leadership aftermath. Someone has just said that Labour’s “default mode is to unite.”
Ah yes, as it did for all those years under Tony and Gordon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Westward, TSW and the Cadbury ghost

Image
[Archaeology: Westward/TSW complex, Derry’s Cross, Plymouth, 2011. Rubble covers the old studio and transmission areas; I used to work in an office by the four windows at the back; the canteen and bar ended where two vehicles are parked; new executives arrived triumphant and departed bruised just beyond the upturned tray, old drink can and squashed plastic bottle] It annoys me that I never met Peter Cadbury. I arrived at Westward TV shortly after his final defenestration, which was rather like going on an exchange to a foreign family who’d just concluded a vicious divorce. On one side were the remaining and new management: the parent left in possession of the home. On the other, the staff: his orphaned children. Enmities. Flashes of inexplicable anger. Sarcasm. False smiles and denial. I’d never before experienced anything like this (nor have I since). What was it about? “There is, I suppose,” I’d said to Ronnie Perry, the MD, at my interview, “no chance that you’re going to lose this
Read more

Leveson: Billy Bunter to testify?

Image
“I say you fellows, budge up, what? Room for another posterior on the old Chesterfield, I’d say.” Harry Wharton groaned. The former Captain of the Remove, now Director General of the BBC, couldn’t work out how William George Bunter, aka the Fat Owl, had wangled himself membership of the Garrick Club. “But that,” he’d murmured to Bob Cherry, when Bunter’s name was first posted, “is just damn’ symptomatic of the way the world’s gone.” Cherry, ever the loyal Patroclus to Wharton’s Achilles, was beside him now, sipping a green chartreuse. The friends had lunched on Dover Sole with minted peas, fondant potatoes and an icy Chablis, chewing over matters of weighty media portent – for Bob had become editor of The Guardian , and the old pals therefore now held between them the principal engines of bien pensant news manufacture and the shaping of enlightened popular opinion. Bunter, the aforesaid posterior straining his pinstripe to such a width that the vertical line of stitches between his b
Read more

It was nineteen years ago today...

Image
The wooden eggs are still there on the roof, a perch for seagulls and an enigma for the young. The vertical metal lettering at the front of the building, however, has been obscured by four fat blue discs. Lorraine Kelly and Mike – Mike who, for heaven’s sake? I sat with him at lunch in the Camden Bistro while he raged, close to tears, I thought, at the injustice of the auction in which TVAM had been stripped of its franchise. Now I’ve forgotten his name. Nineteen years ago today, October 16, I was in Plymouth, sitting in an office with Nick Smith, Pete Colebrook and Tom Goodison. It was a grim morning, soot-coloured clouds rolling down from the Hoe. We were watching the internal TV service. Harry Turner, our MD, stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve lost,” said Tom, before Harry said a word. And we had. TSW was history. So were Thames, TVS and TVAM. We went to a pub called The Bank and got drunk on Mr Bass’s bitter and Mr Bell’s whisky. Mike Morris. Thank you, Google. Apparently he we
Read more