Loving Hattie

The Coffee House blog has a great piece today about the sheer pluck and good value you always gets from Labour's Deputy Leader & Acting Leader of the Opposition, Harriet Harman. I agree. You can never say that Harman doesn't give it everything, even when she faced an assured and dominant Cameron. The PM battered Harman all over the ring today and even at her lowest point, Harman managed to bounce back to try another swipe. She failed miserably, but some on the party backbenches must admire her courage. Compared to the rather pisspoor efforts from the Labour Leadership candidates, they must be pleased that she'll stay on as Deputy Leader no matetr what happens.

It includes this wonderful passage:

The unthinkable has happened. I’ve started to admire Batty Hattie’s performances at PMQs. Her career may be over, her party may be trashed, her movement may drift leaderless, and her colleagues’ reputation may have been shot to pieces but Hattie always turns up and gives it everything. Nature has not overburdened her with talent. She can’t count. She can hardly speak. She reacts to events about as quickly as a self-timing oven but she has epic quantities of pluck. Every week she pounds out into the surf, like a battleship equipped for the last war but two, and heads for the centre of the fray where she refuses to sink under the heaviest fire.

Anybody else noticed ...

That Harriet Harman has backed Diane Abbott as new Labour Leader!! Her nomination signatures are here.

Actually I assume she wanted to ensure a woman was on the ballot paper, but given David Milliband's pledge to give his signature to any candidate who needed it, it would be an interesting situation for both the Acting Leader and Shadow Foreign Secretary "supporting" Ms Abbott.

Another interesting thought is if MPs can switch their nominations. Currently Ms Abbott has 11 backers, whilst Hayes (where I was born) MP John McDonnell has 16. So would they both lose out or could they swap nominations to ensure at least one of them got on the ballot?

Labour's General Secretary Resigns

This started as one of those stories that was very very simple. A rich but slightly controversial businessman wants to give shedloads of cash to Labour and uses friends and employees to do so without being named personally. Labour's General Secretary - the most important paid official in the party - knew of this very dodgy and illegal practice. He resigned. Simple? Well, no...

Now it is claimed that these friends-of-Ambrahams have also donated to the funds of cabinet ministers including Deputy Leader of the Party, Harriet Harman, who is also married to the Labour Patry Treasurer. Now it also seems the the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, may also have benefitted. Yet nobody within either camp bothered to check who these donors were because, if they did, they would discover that such people were unlikely to be able to donate such four figure sums.

And to make it worse, poor Justice Secretary Jack Straw (who is becoming Gordon Brown's lightening-rod-in-Chief) went on Channel 4 to say that no cabinet minister knew of this.

Oh dear...

Cameron's First Question

Brown's First PMQs:
Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP (Con, Witney): "Does the Prime Minister agree with his new Party Chairman and Party Deputy Leader when she says that if she knew then what she knew now, she wouldn't vote voted for the war?"

Or maybe he'll go for Trident, or tax, or any one of the other desperate gaffes she used to win in the first place!

As somebody once said, "I'm enjoying this..!"

Ha Ha Ha Harman

I am absolutely thrilled that the person Blair sacked for incompetence has been ressurected as Labour's new Deputy Leader. Who on earth voted for her? I'm stunned.

Apart from being totally useless and institutionally sexist herself, she is one of the few politicans who causes people to switch off after less than 5 milliseconds. Labour think that because she's a woman and because she represents a London seat (I think she's Del Boy's MP) that she'll connect with key swing voters in those all-important South East marginals. I think differently - she is exactly the kind of hauty left-wing nanny that makes people vote Tory. Her personal majority may rise but I can see a swath of marginals in Kent falling one-by-one.

So as far as I can see, Labour have made the perfect choice! And Brown's first stupid mistake is to put this woman in the public eye as Party Chairman.