The Rest is Politics…

[CurlewKate]

I know this podcast divides opinion-but this week’s is so interesting on Mandelson/Epstein..https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-politics/id1611374685

Listen to ACs follow-on podcast where he talks very passionately and movingly about what he feels about Mandelson and the recent revelations. It sounded sincere to me.

Ha ha ha. Of course it did.

I'll give it a listen. I am sure that the poor naive ingenue Campbell was totally duped by the multiple resigner Mandelson.

I listened to the RS-AC episode where they first discussed Epstein and Mandelson. It was clear AC was choosing his words carefully and of course wondered why. Then I listened to the 15min scripted soliloquy by AC a few days later, which I think he intended to be a deeper dive into his thoughts and feelings about such a betrayal by such a friend. Unfortunately he came across as having even more to hide. Yes I’m sure it’s complicated when you find out that someone (friend? close colleague? hybrid of the two?) who you thought you knew well turns out to have a proven, treacherous/treasonous side to them (I’m willing to assume AC didn’t know the details about this side of Mandy’s dark arts, but am aware I might be doing him a huge favour). But I’m sure there’s much more to this still for AC than he’s letting on and he’d do well to drop it now if he wants to not prompt more and more questions. (I don’t believe AC is implicated in the Epstein stuff directly, btw. Just saying that that world is one that the likes of AC mastered, at one point, and I’m pretty sure still has a decent place in it so any digging into it is bound to raise accusations of hypocrisy and standing).

The whole saga goes to show how stupid they all must think the people who do the good and right thing are. Stupid, or patronisingly “decent”. They really do cock a snook at the poor plebs paying their PAYE taxes and abiding by laws. Eventually the clouds part and something happens to them and they calm down (the episode on child sex abuse streamed on demand was shocking and so, so important). He was bemoaning the risk of being besmirched by association. Yes, it is a real risk that if you lie with dogs you will get fleas, and nobody could ever tell me that none of them knew or at least suspected the shadiness they were lying with. No point crying about it now. You rode the peaks, now suffer the troughs. Just like the rest of us plebs.

Alistair Campbell is one of the meanest, most bullying men who ever worked in modern politics - probably the most bullying.

His career since then has been him trying to whitewash himself, including his self-serving diaries.

He and Mandelson built New Labour by chucking out anyone that was inconvenient or unnecessary to them. They created the era of spin, and of making MPs and journalists answerable to them.

I will not hear a word of Campbell being all "Poor me! Who knew that Mandelson was such a wrong 'un!" from him. He's still spinning, but because a few years have gone by, people have forgotten, or don't know, what he was like.

Sweary Malcolm Tucker in 'The Thick Of It' was basically Campbell.