The Policy Blender

Mowlam: dead

From half past eight this morning every news channel was eulogising Mo Mowlam. New Labour Minsters who had not so long ago been spreading vicious rumours about her ability to do her job since beating cancer - rumours that eventually forced her out of Government - where hastily bundled into studios to deliver insincere platitudes.

Their ambidextrous adoration of a woman whose popularity was born of her greatest political asset, her integrity, again shines the torchlight on the mendacious emotional leverage our masters apply over us. The cult of New Labour has created an emotional dictatorship where disingenuous grief association has an almost Orwellian control on the political climate.

Cook and Mowlam, primo amongst their New Labour brethren who will now claim political capital from their deaths, were seen outsiders in Government due to their unwillingness to play Blair's game. Blair, having sacked Cook from the Foreign Office for his insistence on thinking for himself (a characteristic his successor has never even hinted at) was enraged by being upstaged by Mowlam during a speech at the Labour Party conference. The Prime Minister had been blowing his own trumpet as a statesman and in boasting of progress in Ulster mentioned Mowlam: the mid-speech standing ovation for the MP who had recently voiced opposition to the Iraq war left Blair reportedly furious. The New Labour spin machine was kicked into gear and by the end of the week rumours that Mo was losing her marbles were rife in Westminster.

Cook, though, played the game once and was burnt by the ruthlessness of New Labour's spin. He was having an affair, news of which had reached the newspapers via his then diary secretary. Alistair Campbell was tipped to the story before it broke in a usual shady deal with the press. Campbell called Cook, who was in a car with his wife on their way to the airport for a family holiday and gave him an ultimatum to help spin the story - Cook leaves his wife and keeps his job; or keeps his wife and loses his job. Cook played the game. He dumped her in the departure lounge.

Cook's railroading and Mowlam's political demise at the hands of vindictive gossip should point us to the real legacy of these likable politicians: the undoing of the immoral and poisonous glue that binds the Blair administration together. The fact that their deaths, such as that of the former wife to the heir to the throne, should be spun to increase popularity by grief association shows how low this Government will go. The treatment of Cook and Mowlam whilst they were alive shows that Blair and his cohorts didn't care about these individuals when they were alive, the hypocrisy of the faux-grief they now show cannot disguise the soulless core of New Labour.

Blair leads tributes to Mo Mowlam

Posted by Ben on Friday, August 19, 2005 at 10:46 am | Permalink