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Watch Michael Portillo’s bodacious rap: ‘Straight Outta Westminster’

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Michael Portillo, Regent's University London, January 2008

Once tipped to be leader of the Conservatives and a potential prime minister, former defence secretary Michael Portillo now prefers to get in touch with the yoot through pastiches of N.W.A.

The, er, fruits of this can be seen below, but never unseen.

Whatever it is the folks at the Beeb’s This Week are on, it is most remiss of them not to pass it round…

Image Credit – Michael Portillo, Regent’s University London, January 2008

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Ed Balls’ spin doctor Alex Belardinelli is now joining taxi union’s nemesis Uber

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Alex Belardinelli, May 2015 on Daily Politics

A spin doctor for former Labour shadow chancellor Ed Balls is to continue his career in public relations for that nemesis of cabbies, the taxi-hailing service Uber.

Alex Belardinelli, head of comms for Balls in his failed leadership bid and later in his tenure as shadow chancellor, announced on Twitter that he would be spinning for the pioneering taxi service, which has been upsetting the taxi drivers’ union for some years.

The move will no doubt prove further to irate cabbies that the old elite of Labour is no friend to unions, taxi drivers having stormed London’s City Hall in September in protest at mayor Boris Johnson’s lax treatment of Uber.

The taxi-hailing service has been criticised for undercutting the old guard in the British capital, and is facing regulatory action around the world over complaints about passenger safety and the working rights of its drivers – including in London.

Earlier this month the Right Dishonourable also reported that Bob Roberts, one of the trio of spin doctors that plotted former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s attacks on “predatory capitalism”, would be joining the comms department of the City of London, the seat of British finance.

Taxi drivers will no doubt hope that Belardinelli is as successful in his new berth as he was in the last – Balls having lost his Morley and Outwood seat in West Yorkshire in a moment that epitomised the tragedy of Labour’s general election night in May.

Image Credit – Alex Belardinelli, May 2015 on Daily Politics

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Shadow chancellor John McDonnell thinks spitting can be legitimate form of protest

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
John McDonnell, November 2011 by Transition Heathrow

Anti-austerity protestors who gobbed on journalists at the recent Tory conference were condemned by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn quickly after it had happened.

A spokesman for Corby said: “Jeremy strongly agrees with [Trades Union Congress general secretary] Frances O’Grady, what has happened is inexcusable and journalists must be able to do their jobs.”

Yet footage has emerged that suggests not everyone in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet agrees that spitting can never be used as a form of protest, with shadow chancellor John McDonnell addressing an anti-austerity rally in April 2011 as follows:

“I always give the example of P&O, when I worked for RMT as well. In the P&O dispute we had some real difficulties and all the rest of it. People said: ‘Well, we lost.’ But the strike was difficult and the struggle went on.

There was one woman in all of that said: ‘I don’t care just we have to keep our heads up high and if we go back, we go back.’[Then] she said: ‘But I make the manager’s tea, and I spit in it everyday.’”

McDonnell went on to justify such “direct action” by saying it builds up a “climate of dissent” that could “bring this [coalition] government down”:

“And it’s that form of we’re not taking it any more, and we’re going to give it back, [that] I think builds up a climate of opinion, a climate of dissent. Which I actually think, when combined with industrial action, will produce a tipping point that will force this government out of office, and that’s got to be our objective.”

“This isn’t about mild-mannered debates or anything like that – we’re winning the argument. This isn’t about just tokenistic demonstrations. This is absolute determination that we’ve got to bring this government down.

McDonnell is presumably referring to the dispute between the National Union of Seamen (NUS) and the shipping company P&O in the late 80s, a history of which can be found in this document.

A considerable photo gallery of the strike can also be seen on the photographer Mik Critchlow’s website.

Image Credit – John McDonnell, November 2011 by Transition Heathrow

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Isabel Oakeshott: I could have slipped piggate into the Sunday Times

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Election UK, April 2010 by Alex Brown

Isabel Oakeshott, the co-author of the Call Me Dave biography of David Cameron that broke the infamous piggate story, has claimed she could have smuggled it into a Sunday Times diary so long as it was shrouded in euphemism.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the former political editor rebuffed claims that nobody on Fleet Street would have let her run the story with only one source, saying:

“Would I have got that story into The Sunday Times? Well, I reckon it probably could have been a diary story, expressed much more euphemistically.”

However, given how the original claim was phrased by Oakeshott and her fellow biographer Ashcroft it is hard to see how it could have been more delicately phrased:

“A distinguished Oxford contemporary claims Cameron once took part in an outrageous initiation ceremony at a Piers Gaveston event, involving a dead pig. His extraordinary suggestion is that the future PM inserted a private part of his anatomy into the animal’s mouth.”

Her suggestion that books require lower standards of proof than newspapers is also somewhat dubious, and given her experience as a journalist she must have known that Fleet Street would grab hold of the tale and run with it. She said:

“I think [the question about burden of proof] rests on a really false premise, which is that things that are written in books need to have the same standard — if you like to use that word — as things that are written in newspapers.”

She did, however, stand by her source, a Tory MP and Oxford University contemporary of Cameron:

“It’s my judgment that the MP was not making it up, although I accept there was a possibility he could have been slightly deranged.”

Oakeshott went on to say that she did not consider the claim an “allegation”, which may say something about her own, er, habits or the low expectations we have of politicians:

“In no way did we conceive of it as any kind of allegation against Cameron. I, frankly, don’t care what he did when he was drunk in university dining societies.”

This story was originally reported in the Sun.

Image Credit – Election UK, April 2010 by Alex Brown

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What you should know about Westminster’s Vote Leave, the rival to Leave.EU

Posted on by Jimmy Nicholls
Vote Leave screencap, October 2015

For the past few months there have been agitations from the “anti-establishment” eurosceptics about the emergence of a Westminster alternative to the Leave.EU coalition.

And on Thursday night Vote Leave officially launched with a slickly cut campaign video and the backing of MPs from Ukip, Labour and the Conservatives (the Lib Dem members being europhiles):

https://youtu.be/0tItgGcWVHw

That list of MPs includes Steve Baker (Conservative), Douglas Carswell (Ukip), Kate Hoey (Labour). Kelvin Hopkins (Labour), Bernard Jenkin (C), Owen Paterson (C), and Graham Stringer (Labour).

Prominent donors backing the campaign include the likes of Tory donor Peter Cruddas, Labour donor John Mills, and Ukip donor Stuart Wheeler, who has gifted the fringe party some £700,000 over the last five years.

All of this is the work of Matthew Elliott, founder of pressure group the TaxPayers’ Alliance and the man behind the No2AV campaign that thoroughly trounced attempts to reform Britain’s voting system in 2011.

His other group, Business for Britain, was recently hedging its bets on the European question, claiming that it was waiting for prime minister David Cameron’s negotiations to finish before it made a decision to setup Vote Leave.

Indeed in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today show, Jon Moynihan of Vote Leave said of the changes his group wanted:

“We’ve now reluctantly come to the conclusion that those changes are not going to take place…what we want to achieve is a common market, not a political union.”

Neither group has chosen to include Ukip leader Nigel Farage as their champion, many fearing that he is too divisive a figure and that he might scare off potential leavers in the debate.

Ultimately only one side will be chosen as the main campaign group for leaving the EU, giving it access to greater funding.

An ICM poll cited in Vote Leave’s press release has 44 percent opting to leave compared to 39 percent opting to stay, the “leave” side having only gained the upper hand in recent months.

Image Credit – Vote Leave screenshot, October 2015