Labour and their apologists still don’t get the enormity of the McBride affair.
The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire decided, rather injudiciously, to pop his head above the parapet on his blog yesterday evening. Under the unfortunate title Spare us the Hypocrisy, he pronounced the people of South Shields, or at any rate the habitués of the Steamboat, Alum House and Riverside pubs, unmoved by the effete metropolitan brouhaha that had broken out in the blogosphere.
Expanding on his dodgy theme, Kevin went on to laud McBride as “formidably bright” and to slag off Guido, Iain Dale and Andy Coulson. He concluded with a comment of such astonishingly bad taste as to beggar belief that he has spent the last few years as associate editor of a national newspaper, as opposed to making the occasional contribution to a student rag-mag.
Kevin has clearly never heard the old adage: “Speak softly of the crocodile’s mother when crossing the river”. He has been torn to shreds by his readers. I suggest you take a look at his post pretty quickly, before he decides that, on reflection, it’s not his most successful piece of commentary ever and takes it down.
This morning, Alan Johnson appeared on BBC Breakfast, protesting remarkably stridently that it wasn’t appropriate for Gordon Brown to apologise for the affair “because you only apologise for things you are responsible for”.
Alan Johnson is a senior cabinet minister, in charge of the National Health Service, the world’s biggest employer after the Chinese army and Indian State Railways. He was able to understand the need for him to issue an apology for the failings at Stafford hospital; he knew it was the right thing to do.
If Alan Johnson considered it right to apologise for something that happened 150 miles away from his office in Richmond House, Whitehall, why can’t he see that Gordon Brown must – yes, must – apologise for the grubby activities of his right hand man just a few doors down the corridor from his own office in 10 Downing Street?
The only thing Labour GET is large helpings of taxpayers money to pay for their inflated lifestyles and second, third and even in some cases, fourth homes.
The sooner we’re shot of them the better.