Thursday 28 June 2007

Brown Involved in Political Spin Already, That didn't last long

After claiming to no longer adhere to the Blair doctorate of Political Spin, Brown's Spin Doctors follow in Blair's footsteps as Ed Balls, a key aide to Gordon Brown boasted to a reception that Quentin Davies would not be the last to cross the floor of the House of Commons. Mr Balls, a Treasury minister, sought to panic the Tories into fearing more desertions but the Tories have seen it for what it is, a pathetic attempt to promote Brown's new government which will "cross the political divide," supposedly.

Davies has also jumped on this spouting last night that he is not alone in his views. From the telegraph, "Mr Davies himself told The Daily Telegraph that concerns about Mr Cameron's leadership were "very widely shared" among the party across the country and specifically at West-minster. Speaking on BBC2's Newsnight on Tuesday, he hinted that although there were a "very large number of Conservative MPs" who thought like him, they did not want to go public now"

Perhaps they think if they say it enough it will come true. I doubt it. Davies is a extremely pro European loner who I for one will not miss. Privately, Brownite MPs who were well aware of Mr Davies defection a couple of days ago were admitting that they knew of no other Tory MPs posed to make the leap. This pretty much sums it up.

Labour got a very welcome surprise when Davies defected and are trying to make far more of this than it actually is. Even John Bercow, the Bucking-ham MP who launched a blistering attack on Mr Cameron in the 2005 leadership contest and gave one of the more enthusiastic standing ovations for Tony Blair at the end of Prime Minister's Questions, made clear that he had no intention of jumping ship.

In his first statement as Prime Minister, Mr Brown - who last week controversially offered ministerial jobs to the Liberal Democrats pledged again to reach out across the political divide in the formation of his government.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Lib Dem leader, insisted there would be no defections from his own parliamentary party.

The short version is Brown, in an effort to promote himself as leader, attempted to poach the other parties' MPs. He was successful with one loner, Davies, and is now attempting to make this defection appear to begin the beginning of many more. So much for ending political spin. New PM same games.

3 comments:

Dorker Vibes said...

hi,

Please forgive the intrusion, I've been following your blog for some time and wonder if you would mind answering a few questions. I'm a PhD student from the University of Aberdeen and I'm doing some research on online news work, particularly the social forces that are reshaping the public’s relationship to news media, the opportunities that the web has provided for innovation and new news management, and the ways in which news work and news-workers are affected by technological change. Would be fantastic if you (or anyone else reading!) could contact me at b.gotts@abdn.ac.uk

thanks,
Ben

Rose said...

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