Bright Ideas

As regular commenter Organic Cheeseboard pointed out, Nick Cohen has said on his Standpoint blog (6th comment) that he "will vote Labour - but only because of Iraq". His friend, Martin Bright, will vote Labour too. (He's said so a few times on his Spectator blog.) Presumably, then, they want Labour to win the election. They should write 'DIVIDE AND CONQUER' in the largest font they have on a sheet of A4 and stick it on the walls facing their desks. Guys, this is not the way to win.

First Nick has a long post on Sunday Gordon Brown: the Fear and the Filth (same post as the one the comment above is on) which pretty much does what it says in the title, and yet again re-opens the wound of Martin Bright's exit from the New Statesman. NC quotes from Private Eye, naturally anonymous, but very likely by Nick himself. The only reason for believing it's not Nick is this: presumably Nick writes on a PC like everyone else, and he presumably keeps his work (for later reference, books, and so on), so all he'd need to do would be to copy and paste his original article. However, there appears to be a transcription error. The story in the Eye clearly lacks some detail.

Instead of congratulating her, Whelan's face darkened. Geoffrey Robinson, the wealthy Labour MP and one of Brown's oldest friends, bankrolls the Staggers. Next to its office, is the Robinson-funded Smith Institute, a think tank that so blatantly provided jobs and favours for Brown's allies, the Charity Commission investigated it.

Brown's aides expect Robinson and everyone he employs to follow the party line. They hate Bright because in a documentary for Channel 4, he investigated the corruption allegations against Ken Livingstone's cronies, the London Mayor's use of public money for political purposes and his alliances with ultra-reactionary Islamists. He then compounded the offence, by writing articles for the Statesman that were insufficiently adulatory about the Great Helmsman.

Immediately after the Livingstone documentary, Neal Lawson the Brownite lobbyist was telling anyone who would listen that Bright had to be punished.

Whelan followed up by giving Thorpe and listening hacks a rambling monologue in which he asked her to agree that her husband and father of her two children should be fired.

What did Whelan follow up? A sentence seems to be missing after 'darkened'. I can only assume that this is because Nick hates typing up someone else's prose as much as I do. I'm no fan of Charlie Whelan, whose only purpose in life, as far as I can tell, is to make Alastair Campbell look like a reasonable human being. But I do think Whelan had a point. The New Statesman is supposed to be a Labour magazine. It seems unusual for it to employ an editor who attacks Labour candidates and writes polemics against them. Bright puts his side very well in Gordon Brown, Charlie Whelan and Me in the Spectator. I accept that Geoffrey Robinson doesn't like Bright, but I still don't see any evidence that Gordon Brown was behind his firing. Editor deviates from owner's political line. Editor gets fired. Also, dogs bite people, the Pope is not a secular humanist, and bears defecate among trees.

Finally, Nick updated his blog with a quote from Harry's Place attacking the new editor of the Staggers, and one from Guido Fawkes, the "I'm a libertarian not a Tory" Tory.

...Gordon Brown is a malevolent, deeply damaged and unpleasant human being. ...

Does the Guinness Book of Records have an entry on suicide note length?

PS Nick also cites Andrew Rawnsley. I think there's a difference between NC and Rawnsley (but you may disagree, so I'll articulate my position as best I can). NC seems to me to be a partisan in the Blair-Brown struggle, and he's one-sidedly reporting dirt on Gordon Brown. Rawnsley, I think, is a journalist who found a good story, and is reporting it because he believes it to be true. Both show Brown in a bad light, but one is writing journalism, the other not.