A cold, cold heart
An emission from Paul Staines’ French second home which sums up ‘the cynical view’:
If Hague had kept an experienced press handler like William Littlejohn as his SpAd he wouldn’t be in this situation would he? He wouldn’t haven’t released that stupid statement on Monday, which brought him more unwanted press attention. He wouldn’t have released that cynical, Aitkenesque, “sword of fidelity” statement yesterday. All in all, he has only himself to blame for being ill-advised and has shown a staggering lack of judgement.
There comes a time when we all have to be a little human. It really takes a cold, cold heart to cast aside a tale of two people struggling for a child, suffering miscarriages including a recent one, and make such a cynical statement such as that above.
William Hague is a good foreign secretary. He is a politician of integrity and honesty, but he displays occasionally poor judgment.
Appointing a close colleague to a special adviser role at £30,000 is not a big deal. Special advisers are often close political allies – that’s what they are there for – to provide the political advice of a close ally.
You really don’t have to write more than a 300 word synopsis of the qualifications of a Durham university history graduate to justifiy them being selected to do a £30,000 job (which for a graduate of such a good university could justifiably be described as “two-bit”).
Give the man a break.
By the way, Staines is flattering himself by alluding to the Jonathan Aitken affair via the “sword of fidelity” reference.
While both cases come down, by bizarre coincidence, to hotel arrangements, there is no real comparison between employing a £30K adviser and the Aitken case, which involved possible/alleged imprioriety by the Defence Procurement minister in a contract worth hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money.
If we are now going to spend the next few months going through the fine nuances of Hague’s statement and coming up with stories about holidays, hotel rooms etc, then I despair. If that happens, I think we can rightly conclude that British blogging (or at least one blogger) and the British media have finally “jumped the shark” and landed head first in the gutter.
And, yes, I never thought I’d end up defending William Hague!
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2 Responses to “A cold, cold heart”
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Burbler-in-chief
Yes, I’m finding myself defending William Hague and I never thought it would happen.
To me, he made a very courageous statement and it staggers me that bullies like the one you mention cannot leave him and his wife alone to just be together.
With pseudo scandals like this, we’re in danger of becoming like the US eg Obama is a Muslim, Ground Zero Mosque, etc. We must oppose these people.
@Bob W.:
With pseudo scandals like this, we’re in danger of becoming like the US eg Obama is a Muslim, Ground Zero Mosque, etc. We must oppose these people.
Amen to that!