In an extraordinary confession, and despite earlier strong denials, Downing Street has admitted that the Prime Minister’s personal spokesman, Tom Kelly, had spun a story to several newspapers that Dr David Kelly, the UK government’s senior Iraq weapons inspector, was a ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasist. Dr David Kelly’s funeral is due to be held tomorrow.
Sorry Tom, when I first caught this story I totally misheard it. I thought when I heard the words ‘Walter Mitty’ and ‘Downing Street’, together, it could only be one person you were talking about. You know, that blokey bloke, the one with the hair and the smile, the one who fantasises about taking over the world, the one who tells the world of his standing on the terraces at the Gallowgate End, his stowing away to the Caribbean, and a host of other fibs to try to make us like him more. Not to mention the never-ending lies and spin from his corrupt government power-grab machine, which started off with the Bernie Ecclestone saga, worked through to the undisputed NHS achievements, and went gone on to include the threat of weapons of mass destruction, in Iraq, all primed and ready to go off in a measly forty-five minutes. Plus, of course, we won’t even mention the endless slippery associations with other puff serial merchants like Peter Mandelson, Stephen Byers, and the lugubrious Peter Foster.
And I promise to forget the biggest planned lie of all, the one where Alastair Campbell leaves the government, to miraculously clear out the Augean stables of New Labour mendacity, which then presents us with a fresh new Mr Blair, a cleaned-up Mr Blair, and an un-spun Mr Blair, representing all that is Herculean and noble about the way, the light, and the truth of your fabulous and continuing reign of New Labour glory.
Yes, I promise to forget all of the above, because I got it wrong. You weren’t speaking about the Dear Leader at all. What you were attempting to do was to deliberately destroy the name and reputation of a dead man who (probably) killed himself because you, or Tony, or Geoff, or Alastair, or all of you in Downing Street, hung him out to dry and let him twist in the wind, because he may have revealed one of the many Big Lies at the heart of your Big Lie government. Let me remind you of something Adolf Hitler once said:
The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one
You may have got away with the forty-five minutes lie, because it was such a Hitlerian whopper. But now you’ve been rumbled on the little lies, like the Walter Mitty one about Dr Kelly, it really is all over, bar the denials, for all of you there in Downing Street. Because nobody will believe any of the big ones any more. What’s really funny, however, is that the sun-blessed one really is in the Caribbean, for once, though this time one presumes he didn’t need to go as a stowaway. You should’ve listened to Adolf.
Andy
Please don’t hold back, let it all out. Now why don’t you take a stress pill and think things over?
It is the most appalling act of mendacity about the whole affair. Fist belittling him as a second grade researcher, while he was alive was one thing. But to blacken his reputation now, a couple of days before hios funeral. Despite everything we know about this government this really beggars belief.
If I were a press photographer at the funeral I would watch Mr Prescott’s right hand.
Gawain writes:
Andy Please don’t hold back, let it all out. Now why don’t you take a stress pill and think things over?
Come on Gawain, gimme some leeway? It’s going to take me years to build up to the standards of Richard Littlejohn, The Master (we are not worthy), but how can I ever win the title of ‘Britain’s Angriest Man’, if I take stress pills! 🙂
Here’s that Tom Kelly’s reply, given this morning, in full:
Or, in other words, ‘Sorry I got caught knocking out pre-planned spin, by a press which has finally rumbled us.’
I think it’s fair to say that you’ve said it all, Andy. Was there, though, even in your wildest dreams the delicious possibility that Blair, Blairism and all things Blairite would disappear so spectacularly up its own mendacious arse? I still find it difficult to believe.
Guessedworker writes:
Was there, though, even in your wildest dreams the delicious possibility that Blair, Blairism and all things Blairite would disappear so spectacularly up its own mendacious arse?
You’ve got to remember that I actually worked for Tony Blair’s victory, in 1997. So it’s been a helluva rollercoaster for me personally, in the last six years, lots of ups and downs, still going through lots of ups and downs, but I think I’m approaching a point of stability.
I can’t even believe I was a socialist, these days, though I understand the reasons why I was.
This spectacular collapse, from the 2001 general election onwards, has been incredible. But if you read your Rothbard, it does actually become inevitable and predictable, particularly the falling away in tax receipts, and the way the bureaucracy has swallowed all of the proceeds.
This thirsty need for cash, then gives rise to shortages (of whatever), and then you can either go one of two ways. You can either put your hands up, admit socialism doesn’t work, and face the truth.
Or you can deny reality, and tell lies to yourself (and everyone else) about it, giving rise to bigger lies, and then to even bigger lies until you reach a crack boom climax of lies (as we’ve had over David Kelly, or the Americans had over Watergate), and it all goes bang.
That is the point we have now reached.
Personal prediction. Blair goes (very soon) to be replaced by Brown. Brown gets a dead-cat bounce in the polls and goes for a snap election ‘to settle the issue’, and wins, but with a much reduced majority.
From then on its downhill fast for the UK as taxes and regulations, and borrowing rack up to replace the falling tax revenues, which leads to even faster decreasing tax revenues, and then a spectacular UK collapse. After that, who can tell, but we must watch out for the ‘We must get into the Euro to save ourselves from this’ Brownite response.
This should be easy to fight off. All we need to do is show videos of Norman Lamont on Black Wednesday’s ERM day, the last time that IDIOT John Major said we needed to enter the ERM to save the British economy. Poor old Maggie. Fancy giving in to the Currie-Bonker, on this.
Up the arse was the only route the Blair project was ever going to take, wasting all of the Thatcherite legacy in just six years. But remember, she only had 11 years to pick us up from the last statist 1979 low point, so thinking about it, six years was about tops before it started going wrong, when all the drinks bought in those 11 years, got drunk at the party.
It is now 2am, the last two cans have gone from the toilet cold water reservoir, and all the pretty girls and boys have been picked up, and been slipped away into the night by various lucky bastards. We’re down to the last two roll-ups, and a Lord of the Rings DVD, and four sweaty spotty blokes wearing Motorhead T-shirts.
Still, it could be worse. We could be down to a Die-Hard III DVD! 🙂
Whilst this off-the-cuff comment is fairly atrocious, the Blair government will survive the summer without too much damage. You have forgotten that Blair’s spin doctors have never proved themselves. They have been obvious and incompetent, often in a mendacious style.
From the Bernie Eccelstone affair, through the trivial constant restating of budgetary items, to having a ‘bad news day’ on September 11th: such events have only served to provide a steady erosion in public trust, without bringing down the government.
Why this latest statement on Kelly should be viewed as a clear and present danger to the government is unclear. The whole issue has already been kicked into the long grass with the Hutton inquiry.
Justified indignation is no match for a realistic analysis of the situation. We are in a long drawn out game.
Andy,
tell me, what got you to realize what a vicious lie socialism is? Did you all of a sudden read any of Rothbards books or? It would be interesting to know, if you don’t mind of course.
On the subject of Blair – let’s hope he has reached the finish line, for good. Is it even possible? Oh, I’m not familiar with what a ‘Walter Mitty’ is, could you please explain what it means by naming someone that?
Philip,
I don’t dispute your dispassionate assessment in any way. But we are past the tipping point.
The last time I commented along these lines some wise soul pointed out that 1 in 5 voters is a government employee, and the state machine could vote for itself en bloc. The two, maybe three years before the next GE are, therefore, necessary for the disparate to identify common, Tory ground.
Andy,
I understand the stresses of your conversion. I voted Labour in 1970 as a nineteen year old, the first time over-eighteen’s were permitted to vote. Over the next nine years I watched the left enfeeble its own government. Then I voted for Maggie Thatcher in 1979 to put an end to feebleness. Monetarism duly put me out of work but the alternative (which, of course, wasn’t) was to throw in with Foot or the Windbag.
I dare say a lot of politically interested folk have been around the houses. Indeed, I am suspicious of the mental stability of those of my generation who marched and sat-in, and have come to the present day complete with their liberal-left or even, most damningly, old marxist views still in tact.
Hi Johan,
What switched me, from socialism?
It’s been a long, long game.
I was a very, very, very angry young boy who grew up on north-of-england council estates, from a coal-mining family on one side, and railway navvies (construction workers) on the other.
I went to a series of dreadful state schools, where I thought most of the teachers were stupid drunken dullards (so no change there, really), and became the angriest most arrogant spottiest greasiest boy on God’s Earth. Ever. Or at least, this is how I remember it.
Oh, and did I mention the alcoholic/gambler father, who ran out on us, when I was about eleven, after he’d spent several years occasionally beating me up? It was a relief he went.
It meant we got even bigger state handouts, free school meals, school uniform clothing allowances, etc, and of course, didn’t have to walk around with various black eyes, and facial bruises.
Yep, that’s right. I had the childhood of a hero in a Polly Toynbee novel, God forbid that she should ever write one. Take the initial part of Billy Elliot, before he gets the big break at ballet school. Add in a lot more spots, and a lot less dancing talent, and you’re nearly there.
But hell, still better than growing up in Ethiopia.
Anyway, being an arrogant little tyke, who spent all his time reading books, my arrogant cleverness and my instinctive feeling that life had to be better than this, I fell into the trap of socialist envy, looking at all those happy people with cars, holidays, private housing, and yes, later…girlfriends! 🙂
And falling into this trap of envy, the natural route to relieve it was the appeal of socialism, though it was even better than that, Stalinism. So from about the age of 11 to 14, I was a full-blooded Stalinist, apologist for the Soviet Union, the full works. I even, though I don’t know how, managed to read Das Kapital, and believed every word.
Oh what a foolish boy.
But I was saved by George Orwell. At around 14 I read Nineteen-Eighty-Four, then Animal Farm, then every other George Orwell book (except Down and Out in Paris in London – I never liked that one, from the first page).
And then, bizarrely, in a bid to understand more about Mother Russia, I got into Solzhenytsin. In a confused state, all this readding drove me from Stalinism, into Trotskyism (a little bit ‘freer’)
(come on, I was only 15, and very, very stupid)
Essentially, I ended up in the position where idiot leftist libertarians are now. That is, they oppose ID cards, and the rest, and want love and peace in the world, but they still want total state control of any economic activity. How these fools can hold this position is even more strange, than pure Stalinists, but there I stayed for a few years.
Then University, more Marxism, fellow travelling with Militant Tendency, and hatred of “The Tories”, especially El Thatch.
However, while at Leeds University, in the mid-Eighties, there was a very strong Conservatives group there, what were they called? The Federation of Conservative Students, FCS, and even though a Militant, I overheard a meeting they had in a bar one day, and I felt strangely compelled to join in with the discussion.
Alas, I didn’t. If anybody out there remembers a particular one of their members, I’d be interested to hear who it is: Memory jogger: He once stood in front of all the students in a Leeds University students’ Union meeting (hundreds of people), with curly black long hair, and glasses, with a white T-shirt and jeans, and wrapped himself in the Stars-and-Stripes. This caused uproar amongst the assembled Maoists, Militants, Socialist Workers, Labourites, Trotskyites, and Communists. Except me. Once again, I had a sneaking admiration for him, and wanted to talk to him about politics, but couldn’t make myself do it.
And then, we Marxists realised we were never going to get power, so from the pages of Marxism Today, we took hold of the idea of “New Labour”, ie. an electable Labour. Flocks of us joined in, particularly once we’d left University. New Labour is a Marxist phenomenon. Just check the hidden political pasts of Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn, and even Randy Mandy, if you don’t believe me.
I then dropped out of Leeds, and went to do medicine at Sheffield, and found out all about the NHS from the inside.
Still a New Labourite, which was just becoming noticeable to the outside world by now, I had to leave this, as I found the whole medical profession far too oppressive (though it would be several years before I realised why it is so oppressive), and did Psychology instead. Perennial student, sponging off the state? You betcha.
Unfortunately though, the state’s investment in me went horribly wrong. I started up my own IT company, as a contractor, and discovered the joys of running my own business. But I still helped Blair out in 1997, although by then, I was rapidly moving further and further “right”, on economics, as well as retaining all of the social libertarianism from my “leftist libertarian” days.
And then Gordon Brown decided to attack me with his IR35 stealth tax, trying to rack me up to a 70% tax rate. And finally, when the state was trying to rob my pockets right there in front of my eyes, I realised something was deeply wrong with any form of socialism. I started reading up on it, Hayek, Adam Smith, and so on. A friend introduced me to Atlas Shrugged.
But still the penny hadn’t quite dropped. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the day my son was born (or should I say, the 5am morning). Quite literally the moment he was out, held in my arms in front of me, looking up at me with those big blue eyes (which he still has), that was it. The penny dropped into the slot.
There was no way in God’s Earth I was ever going to subject him to state education, unless the state kicks me into some kind of economic dungeon, and let them rot his mind with the same rot they’d tried to fill me with. And then I had to think through these consequences. I could not be a hypocrite like all these Guardian-reading socialists who send their children to private schools, while filled with guilt about it. I had to figure out why private schooling was guilt free. Hence, more Hayek, then Von Mises, then, very recently, Rothbard.
And now I think anyone who sends their children to state schools, who can afford not to, should be ashamed of themselves foisting their love of the state onto innocent children. It’s an outrage.
Just so they can have more holidays, and even fancier cars, and bigger houses. A double outrage.
And letting me subsidise their children’s education, to boot, no, insisting I subsidise their children’s education. A triple outrage! 🙂
And that’s about it, really.
And then I turned to the Tories, as a way to get rid of Labour, but I’m rapidly learning that they’re not really much better. And so that brings us right up to date 🙂
As to ‘Walter Mitty’, it was a character played by Danny Kaye in a Fifties film, about a man who lived in a fantasy dream world, making up stories to impress people and reaching the point where he actually believed these stories, ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, (so just like Blair, really).
It’s strange they used the expression ‘Walter Mitty’, as this is very American, and not even that well known by Brits. Maybe they’ve all been in Washington too much their the Dear Leader. A better expression, for Tom Kelly, would’ve been:
So incompetent to get caught out, and incompetent using the wrong bit of pre-planned spin. What a shower.
Walter Mitty was the creation of the American writer and humourist, James Thurber. In Thurber’s original short story, Walter Mitty is a hen pecked husband who daydreams to escape his rather ordinary life. In the 1950’s Danny Kaye film,
the story is changed slightly and expanded to make it more suitable for the cinema. Walter Mitty still daydreams and fantasizes (song “Beautiful Dreamer”) but his reasons for doing so are slightly different. The key notion in film and original story is that whatever difficulties life throws in his way, Walter Mitty is brave and defiant to the end.
Andy,
Good story. You are right – very, very right – about your son. I wrote a letter recently to Prospect magazine commending my favoured system for getting rid of the ignorant convention that state education = noble and good, private education = selfish and immoral. The plan was individual pupil funding by ability, determined at the outset by “g”testing and amended by subsequent performance. Of course, the funds could be attracted by any appropriate talent, not just academic ability.
In large measure I was trying to prove the case that my choice of an independent school for our offspring was one of inmvestment, not defence of middle class privilege. Obviously, the Prospect people saw a loonie looming over the horizon because they binned my letter and published something from an Indian bloke who knew zip.
Thank God I can get my rocks off at Sami and no bugger chucks me off – yet, anyway.
Good luck with the Tories. It’s got to be worth the effort.
Last month I got to know a Scotsman in his thirties from a working-class background who has gone much the same journey, though not all the way.
He talked about falling educational standards, bemoaning the disappearance of what some would call the Great Books or The Canon from state schooling in favour of averaging down. “There was an idea once, not so long ago” he said bitterly to me one night, “that state education should try to provide working-class children with the best that the ruling classes had for themselves – knowledge of the classics, Latin, Greek, an acquaintance at least with the great thinkers, an ability to reason….”
He was cheered that there was still a school in Manchester like mine where boys from poor families could learn Greek.
Andy,
fascination story! Indeed…I’m young and close to 18 but not a socialist so I guess I have, like that saying, “no heart”…
Oh, btw, go to your own blog and read my comment on the post “The Unbearable Lightness of Clots, Part II”, I have my own theory about socialism, which is not developed at all but just a concrete version of my intuition.