Tom Harris’s sacking as Labour’s new media tsar illustrates exactly what’s wrong with modern politics. Basically, anyone who displays a sense of humour has to be got rid of.
Yesterday, Tom posted a Downfall spoof poking fun at Alex Salmond and one of his advisers, Joan McAlpine. Downfall spoofs are two a penny and it wasn’t the first one Tom had created. And it was quite funny. But Tom has enemies in the Scottish Labour Party and they saw an opportunity to do him in and took it.
So we now have the ludicrous situation where a senior Labour frontbencher (Diane Abbott) kept her job for making a racist comment about white people, while Tom Harris loses his for making a jokey video. The hypocrisy of it should amaze me, but it doesn’t. Some are pointing out that Tom Harris was a prominent supporter of David Miliband, and maybe that didn’t help him. Who knows.
All I know is that the Labour Party can’t afford to lose people like Tom Harris. Or Luke Bozier for that matter.The reaction from Labour supporters last night on Twitter to the defection of their former E Campaigns Director to the Tories was astonishing. “He’s no one”, they trilled. “Good riddance,” shrieked others. The bile and venom displayed towards someone who apparently didn’t matter had to be seen to be believed.
How bizarre that it is the Conservatives who were once dubbed the ‘nasty party’. I think that accolade deserves to go elsewhere now.
