Brown back-stabber Harman's blundering has blown any chance of her leadership out of the water after telling a barefaced lie to parliament and getting a pummelling from both Thatcher boy Hague and Cable the economic oracle.
With the illustrious leaders out of sight of the commons cameras it was the battle of the deputies over the dispatch box. But deputy party leader, Harriet Harman, had the most to lose.
The Labour leadership contest and general election campaign are well underway, all rolled into one big melting pot, with Hattie the favourite to usurp the throne from beleaguered Brown.
But holding your own in the cut and thrust of the battle of commons sound-bites is one thing. Telling porkies is quite another.
That came in a commons question about Sir Fred the Shred's knighthood which Harman told the commons was for his 'charity work'.
Now any fool knows what most of Brown's banking buddies were given their Ks and Ps for. And Harman is no fool. This was a disgraceful attempt at New Labour spin which is forever tarring the government.
Later Harman issued a statement saying she made a mistake. The BBC tried to explain away the whole thing as a bit of a 'gaffe':
"It was, in fact, the case that he received his honour for services to banking".
Just an honest mistake gov. Not a sordid way to worm her way out of answering an awkward question. Even accepting the gaff line, in one fell swoop, the so-called wonder woman turned into blunder woman.
Elsewhere Hague showed his mettle as the accomplished afternoon dinner speaker and useless shadow foreign secretary he is, as he jibed about how he was now "a modest deputy leader, but a loyal one".
How the Tories cheered at that one. And how young pretender Miliband looked on, barley able to disguise his relish.
Cable had a chance to speak without the hand of Clegg, up his back. He had a good line: "Will there be a Harriet’s Law about clawing back pensions?" Nice one Vince, if a tad old hat. Stick to the day job teaching us economics.
It is Brown's stubborn refusal to accept some, any responsibility for the global economic mess that should have been a gift to Hague and Cable, thanks to chancellor Darling, willing to try on the hair-shirt over who is to blame for the economic disaster.
The Downing Street narrative on that one is changing as the battle for the Labour leadership and the next general election get well and truly underway. But Brown seems to be stubbornly digging in his heels and digging his own grave. That one will not go away, no matter how hard McCavity Brown tries to hide.
Writing in The Times, Alice Miles today described Brown as: "Humiliated, hopeless, paralysed. Time to go".
With Harman now a dead-duck and the despised Mandelson pulling the strings behind Brown's back, most members of the parliamentary Labour Party and the cabinet just want to be put out of their misery.
The sooner Cameron gets back the better. Commons politics is really quite boring without him.
No comments:
Post a Comment