The Torygraph has made up its mind on all things Cameroonie. The ferret will have to be reversed soon or the official line involves UKIPping.
Peter Oborne today has a go at Theresa May, comparing her get-put-of-gaol card (the black spot decrying Brodie Clark as the “rogue operator”) with the honourable tradition of ministerial resignations:
It is almost 30 years since a British politician last resigned on a matter of honour. That was Lord Carrington, who insisted on taking the responsibility for British unpreparedness ahead of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands…
Compare and contrast the exemplary conduct of Lord Carrington with the wretched, self-serving and disreputable behaviour of Theresa May. For the past week, Mrs May has had only one objective: survival. In her desperate and apparently unscrupulous concern to save her own skin, she has tried to pass the blame on to more vulnerable people.
Fair enough: that was then; this is now.
Then Oborne swings his cudgel another way:
One of the reasons why Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, was so weak in the House of Commons yesterday is that she is in no position to attack Mrs May. Her husband, Ed Balls, sought to get himself out of trouble after the very shocking Baby P case by ordering that Haringey’s director of social services, Sharon Shoesmith, be sacked. Mrs Shoesmith was able in due course to extract a huge compensation payment.
The first part of that makes no sense: both Cooper and Balls are adults, able practitioners of the darkest arts in a dirty trade. Neither needs the other to stand up for her/him.
The second part overlooks a truly loathsome exercise of precisely the political corruption Oborne attacks.
Sharon Shoesmith was a capable officer of Haringey Council, who was hustled to the guillotine in the need for a high-profile scapegoat. Foremost among les tricoteuses, wielding her knitting-needles to hurry the victim towards the scaffold, was the LibDem MP for Hornsey and Wood Green.
The Honourable Lynne Featherstone MP — for it was she with the sharpened stainless steel Knit Pros — earned her reward, and is now a junior minister in Mrs May’s Department.
Yet, for all her venality, Featherstone was merely pandering to the self-appointed, irresponsibly-potent Committee of Public Safety of the tabloid columnists. Greater love hath no MP, knowing an election is in the offing, than to have her name favourably featured in a front-page crusade! Oh, to be associated, however loosely, in the public consciousness, on the side of the angels trumpeting saucy stuff like:
As a nation, we became obsessed with the case of Baby P. We winced at the details of his unbelievably cruel death at the hands of his mother and her vicious boyfriend.
We were angered by the failure of social services to protect this innocent little boy from harm.
etc., etc.
Let’s milk this for all it’s worth, fellow harlots. So who authored that little bit of sensationalist poison? Guess! In your heart, you know …
Of course, it’s the rent-boy Oborne, now trolling his stuff a bit further up-market with the Telegraph, but then being pimped by the Daily Mail.
