The Wardman Wire

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Great North Pun

Steve “The New Murray Walker” Cram doing his usual witty and incisive commentary on the Great North Run, giving full value for his fee and simultaneously educating that athletic ignoramus Brendan Foster:

“The reason he has such a big lead, Brendan, is that he has been running very quickly indeed”.

Catflaps ‘R’ Us

Independent on Sunday Gossip (they call it “Comment”):

“Karl Lagerfeld: A weird old man in a ludicrous getup”.

said Janet Street-Porter, the walking, talking definition of “weird old woman in a ludicrous getup”. She’ll be moving into the Reliant Robin just as soon as the catflap has been fitted.

Mandy Pandy Pudding and Pie

David Cameron interview on the Politics Show yesterday.

Question: Is it not true that in the Conservative Party, a “Mandelson” is defined as the time interval between meeting Peter Mandelson, and him being rude about Gordon Brown?

David Cameron: “Yes”.

Ouch. It is worth noting that David Cameron avoided the question until the specific and direct statement. My opinion is that he needs to sharpen his claws, as Peter Mandelson’s firm reentry back into the tent means that New Labour’s box of dirty tricks is fully back with us and operational. They’ve never gone away, but the difference is that people who get in the way will now be shafted thoroughly and competently - journalists will be bullied, “plausibly deniable” briefings will “emerge”, and straight lies will become much more common - starting with Mandelson’s denial of the statements made to George Osborne and so many other people.

Derek Draper is the leader of Labour’s new rebuttal unit. I went looking for his blog and couldn’t find it. Anyone who can’t engage in conversation and is dealing with blogs is likely to end up with a case of “Japanese students on bikes for the first time in their lives going round a traffic island the wrong way looking like Martians” syndrome.

Not having a blog, Dolly cannot engage in conversation and rebut this post in blog-fashion, nor can I tell him it exists because there is nowhere to ping. Ah, well.

Derek, if you find this post and want to rebut it as you do have a blog - or even post-prebut it with a changed story on an earlier timestamp somewhere else after the fact (we learnt some lessons the first time round !) - please leave a comment below under your real name from Labour HQ, and I’ll be delighted to update my article to be a self-post-buttal of my pre-emptive-butt-all due to your after the fact post-prebuttal.

If you switch the focus from one-way rebuttal to two-way debate and dialogue, you’ll get an enthusiastic welcome (nearly) everywhere - and you are welcome to Guest Post here.

OK?

Cleggover with an Iain Dale tie (then) plays Much Better (now)

The Independent on Sunday has an interview with the Editor of Tribune.

Independent on Sunday, Today, page 87.

In its heyday, after the Labour election landslide of 1945, Tribune boasted a circulation of 40,000. A typical week might have seen Michael Foot denouncing Ernest Bevin’s pro-US foreign policy, or Barbara Castle arguing for decolonisation. Major political decisions within the Labour party would be thrashed out in its pages and the magazine became a training ground for left-leaning politicians and journalists. But since the Sixties the readership has dwindled to a mere 3,000, although the website, relaunched last year, draws a further 2,500 unique users per week.

So what happened? “The Left has always been bad at promoting itself through journalism – they just don’t put the investment in,” says Seddon. “This is a great lost opportunity for the unions. If they really want to get people thinking about the issues they’ve been discussing at conference, they need something like Tribune. What could be better? But it means putting some serious money into it.”

If the unions decide to adopt his strategy, they will have to continue stumping up the cash, although, relative to their revenues, the cost of keeping Tribune going is small. Producing 49 issues per year costs £270,000, or £22,000 per month. Advertising revenue used to account for about £7,500 per month, but that has fallen sharply since May, when Boris Johnson replaced Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. Under Livingstone, the Greater London Authority and the Mayor’s office ran weekly ads in Tribune, and the loss of these two advertisers has left Tribune extraordinarily thin on ads: an August edition was entirely ad-free.

I have a few comments.

From the BBC:

The Labour Party has moved to see off an attempt by 12 rebel MPs to force a challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership.

Its ruling National Executive Committee has rejected calls to get nomination forms sent out to all Labour MPs before next week’s party conference.

Whoever is trying to prevent any prospect of a Labour Leadership Challenge has decided that they are not even willing to give a show of allowing MPs to raise the question.

I have read Alan Watkins since the 1970s - first in the Observer, and then the Independent, and he has commented at length over many years on the rules for replacing the Labour leader. The current set make it - to put it mildly - incredibly difficult. These rules were put in place in the mid-1990s as part of a gradual centralisation of power within Labour carried out by the Blair-Brown-Mandelson axis to make it difficult for anybody but “Us” to assert themselves against “The Project”.

If Mr Brown and his friends are seriously looking for a renewed Labour Party, then relying on this rulebook from the past to shush the dissenters is not the way to do it.

This is massively in advance (or not), but these things usually work like snails. Now that the Wardman Wire has a decent front-page video showcase, I’m looking at the possibility of publishing Party Conference Video (and text) Blogs this autumn. I’ve not been a conference habitué, so if anyone has any useful hints, tips or offers to participate I’d be interested to hear them.