James Purnell - brave or clever?

First an apology. I'm not sure I've mentioned it before but I met Purnell years ago and unknowingly passed up a golden opportunity to push a cunt down a flight of stairs. I didn't know and I'm very, very sorry. It doesn't seem likely that I'll have an opportunity to make up for that so I'll have to learn to live with it, and perhaps karma will sort it out and he'll be found buried under a pile of taxpayer funded books and fridge magnets.

But now I'm wondering about the guy. I think he was probably right in his resignation letter that Gordon Clown is a liability to the Labour Party - I'd have added that he's already proved a fucking liability to the whole fucking country - but was his "Gordon, go" message and his professed love of party genuine or did the ambitious little shit muncher want to ingratiate himself with fellow Blairites. If so it was risky and, as the Daily Mash said,would have been uncharacteristically ballsy for a spineless Labour politician, but there was also the usual denial of any interest in the leadership that's traditional among politicians who covet their party's leadership. I reckon he'd seen the writing on the wall and wanted to be the trigger, or at least part of it, for Broon's removal and a probable election in the near future. His seat isn't as marginal as many but it's not exactly a safe majority either, and possibly he thinks 8,000 or so votes is more defendable with Broon gone from 10 Drowning Street than with the deranged monocular twat still piling furniture against the door as the polling stations open, and if so I think he's almost certainly correct. With Broon still PM come the election only Labour's most loyal window lickers can possibly thing they're heading for anything other than virtual obliteration, and in those circumstances 8,000 doesn't seem very much at all. Would he want to go and work in the real world? Doubtful. Purnell has apparently always been a politician at heart. Just look at the guy's work history: a Blair bag carrier while still a student, IPPR researcher, BBC, special advisor at No. 10 till 2001, MP for a rotten borough safe seat since then. He's now thirty-fucking-nine and he's made nothing and done nothing in the private sector, or so it seems. Strike you as someone who'd choose a corporate life after politics? Nope, this is a career politician here, and I can't believe that he's not playing political chess games with his own career very much in mind. I imagine he'd rather chew his own cock off than give up being an MP. A principled stand? Perhaps an element of that, but if we could look inside his head (hmm, interesting thought after an afternoon's work with power tools) I'd bet we'd find another self obsessed prick maneuvering desperately to cling onto his political career.

Apart from not being as mad as bag of monkeys he's not so different from Gordon Clown.



UPDATE: If Guido and Old Holborn are right then it looks more and more like Purnell's resignation was indeed a career move rather than anything principled. We can still hope that the cunt loses his seat, but of course if he's successful (and if it happens at all, obviously) he'll no doubt be parachuted into a new, much safer seat. Loathsome little mutton chopped cunt.