Tim Worstall

April 12, 2009

The great political story from over the water this weekend is, well, I’ll spare you all of the names and details because they bore even me and it was one of my friends who broke the story in the first place.

In essence the current ruling Labour party were going to launch a blog containing all sorts of gossip and tittle tattle aimed at the opposition Conservative party. Not pretty stuff either: that David Cameron (likely to be the next Prime Minister) has or had a sexually transmitted disease, that the wife of the likely next Chancellor (think Treasury Secretary) was mentally flakey, that one famously morally upright MP (think congresswoman) had had a night of unbridled passion with a married man…one not married to her.

All part of the rough and tumble of politics you might think, certainly it’s not unusual for people to float these sorts of accusations. However, they normally come from fairly low level operatives and these ideas had come from the current Prime Minister’s most senior communications strategist. He has now resigned of course (the strategist, not the Prime Minister unfortunately).

But that’s not the really fun part. The man who was to be running the blog is now complaining that the only way these discussions could have been discovered is if his email system had been hacked. This complaint coming in the week that a new law came into force: one that says that the government he supports now has the right to hack into anyone’s email, anytime, without a warrant.

He then signs off his week with the statement, live on national television, that “I wasn’t lying on purpose”.

Who needs satire when you’ve got politicians to play with?