DID YOU FEEL SLIGHTLY DIRTY?

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How has Gordcasting House been coping with the bad news (for it) following the election, when its man went down to just 29% and was subsequently prized out of Downing Street? Not that well by the sounds of it.
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The programme obsessed about the Lib Dems &, as I would expect from BH, ignored the Tories - in much the same way that Today has been ignoring the feelings of Tories. Paddy O'Connell right away emphasized the importance of Charles Kennedy's having "sounded alarm at the new coalition" and went on to recall Roy Jenkins: "He left the Labour Party to co-found the SDP and for some that was an act of betrayal, for others a sign of one of the sharpest minds of the political landscape." (I strongly suspect that Paddy thinks that Nick Clegg has committed an act of betrayal too).
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Paddy talked to Jenkin's biographer John Campbell, who thought that though, were he still alive, Jenkins would have been pleased at the "crack in the ice" of "sterile" left-right politics, he would have preferred it if there had been a "progressive" re-alignment of the Left beginning with a Lib-Lab coalition.
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Next, it was off to Birmingham to talk to the Lib Dem deputy leader of the Con-Lib council there, Paul Tilsley. Paddy asked him: "And would you kindly be blunt? In your heart, when you shook hands with the Conservatives, were you scared and did you feel slightly dirty?" What a question! Can you imagine him asking that question (with appropriate amendments) to the Conservative leader of Birmingham City Council - in the unlikely situation of Paddy O'Connell ever talking to such a person? Mr Tilsley was "blunt", bluntly saying "No" to both questions. Sorry Paddy, it wasn't to be.
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His next question began "And you're making cuts." He didn't follow this up, just made it as a statement (just as if he were a Labour Party politician, reminding the voters of something they ought to know) and then moved straight on, without giving Mr Tilsley the right to reply, saying "So let's get to the heart of this matter again. There's a tug between the head and the heart of your party and Charles Kennedy, the popular (word emphasized by Paddy) former leader, has implied that he can't see it working." That was the question. Having broadened the question beyond Brum, Paddy found that Mr Tilsley gave an answer he didn't want. The Lib Dem sighed and brilliantly called the alternative (i.e. the 'rainbow coalition') "the Dagenham solution - it's two stops from Barking." Paddy intervened to say "OK, let me just...forgive me...we would just like on another day your analysis of the national picture, but please stay in Brum because what I want to say is...". At which Mr Tilsley interrupted him and protested (good-naturedly) "But you were trying to get me out of Brum!" "Fair enough", said Paddy, and moved on.
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From the Lib Dems, the programme moved on to Labour and the Miliband Brothers. (It was time for Paddy to look on the bright side, cross his fingers and wish upon a lucky star. ) We heard from "two friends and colleagues of their late father, the Marxist intellectual and international socialist Ralph Miliband, and also from one of his sons." Ah, it wouldn't be BH, would it, without either a Labour politician or a far-Leftist (or two)?! The friends of the old commie were "the activist co-editor of of Red Pepper magazine" Hilary Wainwright and "the historian and writer" Tariq Ali.
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Paddy also went along to that 'Ed Miliband for leader' meeting we saw on the BBC a couple of days ago, making sure we heard the cheers and someone shouting out loudly "We love you Ed". (I don't think it was Paddy O'Connell himself.) He asked Ed a few questions, and here they are in all their challenging glory:
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- "How's it going?"
- "It's early days?"
- "Did you know there's an event here, 'My Dear Brother'?"
- "How will you stand out from the rest of the candidates?"
- "What would Ralph Miliband have made of the candidate?"
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Both Hilary Wainright and Tariq Ali - and the Milibands' mum by the sounds of it - want Labour to stop being Thatcherite opportunists and become a true socialist party again (and we all know what they mean by 'socialist' in this context). The intelligence of the Brothers was praised however.
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Paddy O'Connell sounded happy with these people.