Quote of the Day
Comrade Hundal says…
“Class War remains an electorally viable strategy because … it highlights wedge issues Labour needs to advance to narrow their defeat…”
Comrade Hundal says…
“Class War remains an electorally viable strategy because … it highlights wedge issues Labour needs to advance to narrow their defeat…”
Sunny Hundal says the Left needs to
“…get dirty and partisan – I’d say that is exactly where we need to be.”
Mehdi Hasan is the New Statesman’s ‘Senior Politics Editor’. He gets a lot of flack from the Islamophobic Jihadis-Under-the-Bed crowd for being soft on Islamo-Fascism. They variously accuse him of wanting to sublimate the West to a new Caliphate and kill all non-believers or suchlike. Frankly Guido has lost track of the detail and suspects they might be slightly misrepresenting Mehdi’s actual beliefs.
Nevertheless Mehdi does hold some strange beliefs which he reveals to us in the Statesman, for example he claims the BBC has an institutionally right-wing bias. Have you noticed?
Today he writes of the Farage v Bercow election challenge that it is “a shame they can’t both lose.” It should hardly fall to Guido to educate the ‘Senior Politics Editor’ of Britain’s leading left-wing political publication. Nevertheless it is Guido’s understanding of the current system of British parliamentary democracy that there is in fact a way they could indeed “both lose”. If another candidate stands and gets “more votes” they would “both lose”. Hope that helps Mehdi…
Have just spoken with Alex Hilton (the blogger formally known as Recess Monkey). He seems to be optimistic he will be home for the weekend. Clearly Draper will have to smear him with something more lethal than bacterial meningitis.Alex Hilton wonders if inspiration can be drawn from drug and pain induced hallucinations.
Do you think perhaps the socialist simian will dream an opiate laden fantasy that Margaret Thatcher has died? Again.
Tax Justice campaigners had a small demonstration outside the Guardian’s offices today to protest at the hypocrisy of the Guardian campaigning for FTSE 100 companies to pay more corporation tax when, despite GMG making £300 million in profits last year, it paid none itself. GMG took advantage of a perfectly legal loophole to avoid paying taxes on the capital gains made on the sale of Auto Trader. Without exploiting the law they would have had to pay more than £50 million in tax!
The exact quote is
“Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession: on the contrary they will do well…”
Step forward friend of the down-trodden people, the Tuscan redistributionist, three house owning, multi-millionairess toff, yes, you guessed it, Polly Toynbee – here.
Guido is pretty certain that he did not dream hearing David Willetts this morning on Marr’s Radio 4 show Start the Week compare (in a positive light) the altruistic social behaviour of vampire bats to Tory thinking about human social behaviour. Stepping back from the point he was making, which was both interesting and valid, it seems to me that only Willetts would try to win people over to the Tory cause using vampire bats.
A co-conspirator called to draw Guido’s attention to a comment by Owen Barder, formerly Blair’s economic private secretary, latterly a mandarin at DFID and not a person unknown to the Miliblogger himself. He says of the Miliblog “..this is excellent value for money. People should be impressed that a Cabinet Minister is blogging at all, not whinging about the very reasonable costs.” Now that is sock-puppetry of the highest order…
UPDATE : A Whitehall satsuma tells me that Owen Barder actually worked for Miliband when he ran the No. 10 policy unit.

Comrade Brown, as Deluded as the East German Politburo – Telegraph
We Must Understand the Ancient World First - Boris
Sarah Must Have Watched SamCam and Gulped – Quentin Letts
LibDemVoice Ignores Party’s Censorious Illiberalism – Shane Frith
Election is a Battle for Hearts More than Minds – Matthew D’Ancona
Will MacShane Stop Writing for The Guardian? – Iain Dale
Speculators Are Doing God’s Work – Paul Murphy


Former Labour Party Chief Press Officer Colin Byrne said:
“What the hell is a strike mongering politically discredited nutter like Charlie Whelan doing at the heart of Labour’s election campaign?”

-Gilts (Mar)
As of 26 Feb 2010
Flat – No Positions
As of 23 Feb 2010 +30.81%
-Gilts (Mar)
As of 19 Feb 2010 +20.13%




