Diary: don't look back in anger, they say. Someone tell David Miliband
22 Jul 2013:
Hugh Muir: He forgets nothing, forgives even less
He forgets nothing, forgives even less
David and Ed Miliband
during the 2010 Labour leadership challenge contest. ‘Soon he will be
gone, but he can't yet forgive. And he won't forget.' Photograph: Tim
Hales/AP
• The last event in David Miliband's long goodbye to these
shores is apparently next weekend's party, when he may prove once again
how much his defeat in the Labour leadership election continues to
rankle by raising objections to any guests remotely suspected of having
voted for Ed. As the farewell dinners have rolled by, hosts have been
made aware of objections to proposed guests on the grounds of their
disloyalty. One dinner arranged for a dozen or more ended up as a party
of five after objections were raised to successive names. Time may heal,
but he'll need a fair bit of it. In the green room after last week's Andrew Marr show
D Mili apparently perturbed onlookers by launching into a tirade about
his misfortunes and the consequences for the party he loves. Soon he
will be gone, but he can't yet forgive. And he won't forget.
• Attack, attack! seems to be the modus operandi of Tory strategist Lynton Crosby, and it's a philosophy we see in his business partner, Mark Textor. But wrongly directed, these attacks occasionally backfire. Textor doesn't like the Guardian: he reportedly describes us as a "vile" newspaper, and apparently doesn't much like the Mirror, either. Today he crossed swords on Twitter with James Lyons, the Mirror's deputy political editor, dismissing the Mirror as a lowbrow rag and linking, via Twitter, to alleged evidence of that. Unfortunate that Textor's link was to a page from the Daily Mail.
• We continue, meanwhile, to enjoy a ringside seat in the unedifying legal battle between the Tory party and rightwing activist Claire Khaw. She was thrown out of the party earlier this year when officials were alerted to her past and comments she made on Radio 5 Live about the rights of the disabled. Khaw has had an interesting political career. From legal documents lodged with the high court we now see that she was a member of the Conservative party between 2005 and 2009, when her membership lapsed. In 2010, keen to make new friends, perhaps, she acted as an election agent for a BNP candidate. But she and the BNP fell out, and last September she rejoined the Tories. Having dismissed warnings about her scant chances of victory, Khaw risks liability for costs should she lose. Just over £2,000 so far, but it's early days.
• Against a backdrop of the Socialist Workers party in turmoil and much sniping between its adherents and those of the Socialist party, reader Alasdair Buchan reminds us that there is precedent for harsh exchanges on the far left, particularly in his native Scotland. "Ah yes, those balmy Glasgow summers in the 60s when the Labour party Young Socialists and the Workers Revolutionary party fought their ideological battle out in a pugnacious form," writes Alasdair. "The Workers Revolutionary party had infiltrated the YS and managed – by holding meetings at unannounced times – to become the office bearers. The rest of us held an all-Glasgow meeting of about 100 members to plan action for ousting them." Word spread. "Midway though, the doors burst open and the 'chairman' and 'secretary' from the WRP marched in, took the stage and started reading a prepared condemnation of our anti-socialist faction." Do you want to hear any more of this? asked the meeting's chair, a hardy steelworker. Not really, came the response. So he threw the interlopers off the 4ft-high stage. "At which point the doors burst open and 20 or so members of the Tiny Partick Cross, a Glasgow street gang then linked to the WRP, rushed in. Battle commenced; frightening and brutal, but in its way quite comradely. One of our supporters – a roofer from Partick – was sitting on top of a gang member, trying to throttle him. 'If I wasn't a socialist, I'd fucking kill you,' he said."
• Finally, royal baby fever grips the nation, a fillip for those who love or loathe the monarchy. And what will be the view in republican France? Sniffy, if one considers the verdict of Le Soir on the new King of Brussels. "He's a Saxe-Coburg," the paper says. "The Coburgs are far from stupid, but they are not very intelligent." Still, even that shows a softening in the way the French have treated monarchy in the past.
Twitter: @hugh_muir
• Attack, attack! seems to be the modus operandi of Tory strategist Lynton Crosby, and it's a philosophy we see in his business partner, Mark Textor. But wrongly directed, these attacks occasionally backfire. Textor doesn't like the Guardian: he reportedly describes us as a "vile" newspaper, and apparently doesn't much like the Mirror, either. Today he crossed swords on Twitter with James Lyons, the Mirror's deputy political editor, dismissing the Mirror as a lowbrow rag and linking, via Twitter, to alleged evidence of that. Unfortunate that Textor's link was to a page from the Daily Mail.
• We continue, meanwhile, to enjoy a ringside seat in the unedifying legal battle between the Tory party and rightwing activist Claire Khaw. She was thrown out of the party earlier this year when officials were alerted to her past and comments she made on Radio 5 Live about the rights of the disabled. Khaw has had an interesting political career. From legal documents lodged with the high court we now see that she was a member of the Conservative party between 2005 and 2009, when her membership lapsed. In 2010, keen to make new friends, perhaps, she acted as an election agent for a BNP candidate. But she and the BNP fell out, and last September she rejoined the Tories. Having dismissed warnings about her scant chances of victory, Khaw risks liability for costs should she lose. Just over £2,000 so far, but it's early days.
• Against a backdrop of the Socialist Workers party in turmoil and much sniping between its adherents and those of the Socialist party, reader Alasdair Buchan reminds us that there is precedent for harsh exchanges on the far left, particularly in his native Scotland. "Ah yes, those balmy Glasgow summers in the 60s when the Labour party Young Socialists and the Workers Revolutionary party fought their ideological battle out in a pugnacious form," writes Alasdair. "The Workers Revolutionary party had infiltrated the YS and managed – by holding meetings at unannounced times – to become the office bearers. The rest of us held an all-Glasgow meeting of about 100 members to plan action for ousting them." Word spread. "Midway though, the doors burst open and the 'chairman' and 'secretary' from the WRP marched in, took the stage and started reading a prepared condemnation of our anti-socialist faction." Do you want to hear any more of this? asked the meeting's chair, a hardy steelworker. Not really, came the response. So he threw the interlopers off the 4ft-high stage. "At which point the doors burst open and 20 or so members of the Tiny Partick Cross, a Glasgow street gang then linked to the WRP, rushed in. Battle commenced; frightening and brutal, but in its way quite comradely. One of our supporters – a roofer from Partick – was sitting on top of a gang member, trying to throttle him. 'If I wasn't a socialist, I'd fucking kill you,' he said."
• Finally, royal baby fever grips the nation, a fillip for those who love or loathe the monarchy. And what will be the view in republican France? Sniffy, if one considers the verdict of Le Soir on the new King of Brussels. "He's a Saxe-Coburg," the paper says. "The Coburgs are far from stupid, but they are not very intelligent." Still, even that shows a softening in the way the French have treated monarchy in the past.
Twitter: @hugh_muir
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