Defensive interview by Harriet Harman (Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) on the Today programme this morning. Defensive in a different way to Rachel Reeves - Ms Harman was more skilled at stepping sideways, more reasonable in refusing to answer, more sympathetic and helpful in tone while all the time stalling and stonewalling. But when asked about HS2 she didn't say yes and she didn't say no; when asked about public versus private housebuilding she said on the one hand this but on the other hand that; and nothing (absolutely nothing at all) passed her lips on the subject of Damian McBride so that one wonders if she had told the interviewer she was not answering questions on such a divisive figure.
However the Daily Mail today does have quotes from the Damian McBride memoirs that mention Harriet Harman: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430226/Damian-McBride-reveals-spread-poison-Harriet-Harman-bottler-David-Miliband.html
The question one is bound to ask is: was Damian McBride a uniquely bad person, a rotten apple that somehow fell among the wholesome and sweetly aromatic political fruit that was the Labour offering to the public under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? Or did the Blair/Brown environment create the conditions in which such evil was able to flourish and if it hadn't been Mr McBride spreading the poison it would have been someone equally as bad? Indeed, one speculates whether they were all at it - all of them fighting and hating and doing each other down, and Mr McBride just happened to be slightly better at it than all the rest.
There is a serious point to all this.
Damian McBride was not just having a go at Gordon's enemies in the rough and tumble of the political round.
He was undermining Ministers of the Crown, including Secretaries of State and the Prime Minister.
How could they have been doing their jobs properly if they had to fight off internal attacks from the likes of Damian McBride? Did this inferno of in-fighting have any impact on the efficiency of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments? Did this screaming, screeching, hate-filled war between the factions directly contribute to the economic collapse the United Kingdom experienced in 2008? (Rachel Reeves said on Newsnight yesterday that the banks were not being monitored properly, and she was gracious enough to apologise for this).
Is it not the case that Damian McBride was guilty (by words from his own mouth) of sedition? (still an offence when Mr McBride was operating - it was not removed from the statute book until 2009).
In a less forgiving age Mr McBride would not be sitting shameless and defiant in a Newsnight studio.
He would have been carted off to Tower Hill and his head would be on the chopping block (perhaps one of the quality newspapers might ask Hilary Mantel to assess Damian McBride from the perspective of the political thugs of the early Tudor period - and I look forward to the London Dungeon including a McBride tableau among their torture scenes and disembowellings).
However the Daily Mail today does have quotes from the Damian McBride memoirs that mention Harriet Harman: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430226/Damian-McBride-reveals-spread-poison-Harriet-Harman-bottler-David-Miliband.html
The question one is bound to ask is: was Damian McBride a uniquely bad person, a rotten apple that somehow fell among the wholesome and sweetly aromatic political fruit that was the Labour offering to the public under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? Or did the Blair/Brown environment create the conditions in which such evil was able to flourish and if it hadn't been Mr McBride spreading the poison it would have been someone equally as bad? Indeed, one speculates whether they were all at it - all of them fighting and hating and doing each other down, and Mr McBride just happened to be slightly better at it than all the rest.
There is a serious point to all this.
Damian McBride was not just having a go at Gordon's enemies in the rough and tumble of the political round.
He was undermining Ministers of the Crown, including Secretaries of State and the Prime Minister.
How could they have been doing their jobs properly if they had to fight off internal attacks from the likes of Damian McBride? Did this inferno of in-fighting have any impact on the efficiency of the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments? Did this screaming, screeching, hate-filled war between the factions directly contribute to the economic collapse the United Kingdom experienced in 2008? (Rachel Reeves said on Newsnight yesterday that the banks were not being monitored properly, and she was gracious enough to apologise for this).
Is it not the case that Damian McBride was guilty (by words from his own mouth) of sedition? (still an offence when Mr McBride was operating - it was not removed from the statute book until 2009).
In a less forgiving age Mr McBride would not be sitting shameless and defiant in a Newsnight studio.
He would have been carted off to Tower Hill and his head would be on the chopping block (perhaps one of the quality newspapers might ask Hilary Mantel to assess Damian McBride from the perspective of the political thugs of the early Tudor period - and I look forward to the London Dungeon including a McBride tableau among their torture scenes and disembowellings).
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