How Labour works
Peter Black and Jonathan Calder (Liberal England) have already made reference to Richard Gibbs expose of how newLabour campaigning works in the Sunday Mail. None of it should come as much of a surprise to anyone who has seen newLabour clones in action during walkabouts and leader's visits.
But to me Gibbs is not just some character who'll probably not make the footnotes of history, but who stood as one of the Labour candidates in Bournville, and who occassionally turned up to District Committee meetings on behalf of Selly Oak labour (not difficult to spot as the public attendance never got above ~10). So it is interesting to read a bit more about him, and to discover that he has actually completed a volte-face by returning to the Tories (although he claims not to actually be paid up yet). And that the story in the Sunday Mail is also probably an extract from a book that he's written since not being re-employed by the Labour party. I can only presume he's looking to get it published during the first week of May. Unfortunately I'll probably put off reading it until 5 May...
posted by Radders @ 17:40
1 comments
1 Comments:
Frankly, the whole story is a bit silly. I suspect anyone who has worked for any of the three main parties can come up with similar bits of silly (and not very clever) media managemnet - remmeber the rows from Tories about Lib Dem MPs 'do nutting' Paddy Ashdown in the House, to make it look as if people were actually listening to him in debates?
The only allegation of any seriousness is that HoC mail was misused by a regional office which, frankly, would be a bit surprising as they would be foolish to take the risk. (And again, it's an allegation that the Lib Dems are not wholly unfamiliar with .... nor any other MPs).
It would seem that the Labour party showed their good sense by not reemploying Mr Gibbs and he has vented his spleen in a childish way which should not boost his future political prospects!
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