02-04-2010, 07:08 PM
In his scabrous roman a clef, Greasing the Pole* (London: Anthony Gland, 2003), Sir Reginald Pike-Darkness offered a forensic portrait of New Labour eminence grise Minty Feltch.
Throughout the novel, Pike-Darkness drops progressively less subtle hints that Feltch is an MI6 asset; and that MI6 has an entirely healthy fascination with fascism. In the book’s dramatic closing scenes, Feltch is forced to chose between his Pole, his party and his spooks. I won’t spoil the denouement - for those lucky enough to have acquired the book before it was injuncted; or else from Underthecounter, the specialist Soho antiquarian bookshop (turn right on the landing of the London Rubber Emporium) – by reproducing the explanatory diagram which marks the book’s politico-erotic terminus.
I wish to make it abundantly clear that all the above has absolutely no relevance whatever to the article instanced below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...-mandelson
* The Pole in question, Radek Towiański, the Harvard-educated mystic and arms dealer, subsequently became Polish defence minister, with special emphasis on the nation’s uniformed youth. He is currently President of the lay organisation, Poles for the Papacy.
Throughout the novel, Pike-Darkness drops progressively less subtle hints that Feltch is an MI6 asset; and that MI6 has an entirely healthy fascination with fascism. In the book’s dramatic closing scenes, Feltch is forced to chose between his Pole, his party and his spooks. I won’t spoil the denouement - for those lucky enough to have acquired the book before it was injuncted; or else from Underthecounter, the specialist Soho antiquarian bookshop (turn right on the landing of the London Rubber Emporium) – by reproducing the explanatory diagram which marks the book’s politico-erotic terminus.
I wish to make it abundantly clear that all the above has absolutely no relevance whatever to the article instanced below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...-mandelson
Quote:Has Labour handed Stoke to the BNP?
By Mark Seddon
With the BNP on the march in Stoke-on-Trent, why has Lord Mandelson parachuted in his chosen Labour candidate?
When New Labour was in its pomp and Peter Mandelson memorably remarked that those Labour supporters who didn't much like the new order would still back Labour because they "would have nowhere else to go", I wonder if he had the good city of Stoke-on-Trent in mind?
Somehow, I doubt it, for in recent years many working-class Labour voters in Stoke have been going somewhere else – notably to the British National party. Before a local defection this week, the BNP had eight councillors. Ten years ago, Labour held the city with 60 councillors. Today there are barely 13 – and only two of them in the cauldron that is the Stoke Central constituency.
Now, with an election barely weeks away, the BNP are standing their deputy leader, Simon Darby, in the constituency. Flush with European parliament money and smarter in his campaign techniques, the city is a key target for Darby, who not so long ago was pictured taking the fascist salute in Italy.
So what has been Labour's answer to the serried ranks of the far right? Why, it has been to hand them a gift they can only have dreamed of – a gerrymandered selection of a new Labour candidate, the TV historian Tristram Hunt. For when the respected local MP, Mark Fisher, decided to step down on health grounds a few weeks ago, instead of drawing up a broad-based list of candidates for local Labour members to choose from, Lord Mandelson, ever the plutocrat, simply made the choice for them
* The Pole in question, Radek Towiański, the Harvard-educated mystic and arms dealer, subsequently became Polish defence minister, with special emphasis on the nation’s uniformed youth. He is currently President of the lay organisation, Poles for the Papacy.