(Really Rather Long) Quote of the Day

Matthew Norman powerfully dismissing Gordon Brown's vengeful anti-NI appearance in the Commons:

And still he cannot see his complicity. "This is an issue about the abuse of political power..." he said of Murdoch's news-gathering tactics. Well, duh!, you might say. But oddly enough it isn't, or not as he meant it. At its core, it is an issue of the abuse of political power not by Murdoch, but by Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, David Cameron and every other elected quisling who supped with the devil not with a long spoon but from the devil's own satanic hands. "I came to the conclusion," Mr Brown went on of his urge for a judicial inquiry, "that the evidence was becoming so overwhelming about the underhand tactics of News International to trawl through people's lives, particularly the lives of people who were completely defenceless." Sweet Lord Jesus, isn't the point of a Labour prime minister to defend the defenceless? "I'm genuinely shocked to find that this happened," added the Captain Renault of Kirkcaldy. "If I – with all the protection and defences that a chancellor or prime minister has – can be so vulnerable to unscrupulous and unlawful tactics, what about the ordinary citizen?"

Frankly, it's a struggle to continue parsing this statement, because it feels like bullying a simpleton for being a simpleton. So it's worth recalling that Gordon Brown was the most fearsome juggernaut of a machine politician Britain has ever known – and here he is courting sympathy as the impotent victim whose "senior officials" overruled his request for an inquiry. The senior official to whom he refers, if subconsciously, is the ringer for Davros ("My vision is impaired," as his daleks often croaked, "I cannot see") who flew in on Sunday to smile at the cameras as he squired Mrs Brooks to dinner in Mayfair.

Makes the point perfectly, as far as I am concerned. Gordon was at the heart of government for 13 years, including a stint as a Prime Minister with a healthy majority. At any point he could have taken on News International; he could have tried to stop them at any time. It would have been a brutal battle and he would not have emerged unscathed. But had he taken on that fight, perhaps he would have made a real positive difference in Britain. However, his bleating at the moment is simply the angry revenge of a jilted man who cannot come to terms with the fact that News International stitched him up at a party conference by withdrawing support for him just after his big speech. He had his chance to take on News International in his 13 years at the top of government in this country. He didn't take it. So right now he'd be best off shutting the fuck up because all this sort of speech does is highlight what an inveterate coward he is since he did not, despite being on of the most important politicians in this country, take on News International when they came to fuck around with his family. Brown remains what he has always been - a spineless little weed of a man.