Any politics wonks out there?

[swee'pea99]

If anyone's interested, I've just stumbled across one of the most savage hatchet jobs it's ever been my delight to read: Andrew Rawnsley's evisceration of Damian McBride, in last Saturday's Guardian Review. For example:

McBride isn't an idiot and, when sober, he has a sophisticated mind and can turn a phrase. So in both the book and the interviews he has given to promote it, he has acknowledged how destructive he was. He seems to think that if he calls himself a "nasty bastard" often enough we will somehow find that redeeming. Some commentators have fallen for it. "At least he's honest," they have said of his confessions to practising "the dark arts of political spin" – itself a dishonest euphemism that semi-glorifies what should be called lying and smearing. Damian, the sinner repentant? I am not buying it. What about penance? Forgiveness is not found by trousering a large cheque from a rightwing newspaper so that it can serialise your repellent activities to coincide with the Labour conference. Most disgusting of all is his attempt to gain our understanding for his amoral behaviour by insinuating that the fundamental fault lies not with him, but with the "cut-throat" world of politics into which he fell, "sucked in like a concubine at a Roman orgy". Thus he seeks to present himself as some sort of victim. Pass the sickbag. It is just another of his dirty spins to try to tar everyone else in politics with his shitty brush.

There's a further reason why his claimed regrets stink of insincerity. He still sounds terrifically pleased with himself. It is with bragging relish that he details how ruthlessly he stitched up this minister or how artfully he manipulated that journalist. He tries to tempt us to admire him despite ourselves. I may have been a bad boy – this is his line – but you've got to admit I was terribly good at being wicked.

Truth to tell, he wasn't. ​

...and so on. (Isn't that en passant 'when sober' aside just toooo delicious!')

The full mugging is at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/26/power-trip-damian-mcbride-review

 

[vernon]

Damian who?

 

[swee'pea99]

Damian McBride - Gordon's Brown's Alastair Campbell. Kind of like Goebbels without the charm.

 

[Boris Bajic]

Andrew Rawnsley has a fiercely good brain and is an excellent observer and commentator.

I'm amused (a little) by the line that McBride of Frankenstein is pleased with himself... Rawnsley gives the impression of having been born pleased with himself and of remaining true to that priciple ever since.

But that's just me being acid. You are right @swee'pea99, that is a delicious and accurate paragraph and it makes a point one rarely reads.

The current (ex-Brownite) members of the opposition front bench are getting very good at looking and sounding surprised by and disapproving of the actions of a man to whom they probably fed their own damaging filth and sewer-scum dirt. I suspect that they will succeed in reinventing themselves rather better than McBride will.

Thank you for posting the quote. I'd missed it.