Which is Britain's real 'Nasty Party'?

Obviously there are multiple contenders and even if you restrict yourself to the biggest three (or the three wings of the biggest party, depending on your point of view) you could probably make a case for saying it's all of them. But for a long time the Labour Party, and until very recently the LibDems too, have been painting the Tories as the Britain's nasty party, and they've been successful in getting most of the country to believe it. Motes and beams, pots and kettles. True, there's a lot to dislike about the Tories but much of what really annoys me about them applies to Labour and the LibDems as well. However, you don't even need to be particularly libertarian to see that Labour is also very capable of being nasty, not to say downright spiteful, and that this goes from the top all the way down.

Exhibit A, via Leg-Iron and others, is that virtually the last thing Gordon Clown did before leaving office handing over the bat and ball for someone else to have a turn was to spoil it for the next boy at the crease by smashing the bat and throwing the ball away. I'm not just talking about the increased profligacy to further bankrupt the nation and poison the ground for the next government in the hope that they'd be blamed for the pain that had to follow. That was going on much earlier. No, this was something that would affect just his successor as PM, and hit him right in the wallet.

Mandrake hears that one of Brown's final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
On Brown's orders, the Prime Minister's remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to £150,000, but this was done with such stealth that no formal announcement was ever made.
Indeed, I am told that Cameron entered Downing Street blissfully unaware that he would, as Prime Minister, be earning only marginally more than he had as the leader of the Opposition.
One imagines that the poor chap must therefore have set about implementing his pre-election pledge of an across-the- board cut in ministerial salaries of five per cent with a heavy heart as this took his salary down to £142,000.

Okay, my heart doesn't bleed a great deal for The Elder Twin - for one I'm still not sure I like him much better than his predecessor, for another he's not exactly short of a bob or two and for a third I reckon I could get by on £142,000, especially when a car and a couple of houses plus associated staff come with the job. But the spitefulness of it just reinforces what I've long believed about the Cyclopean Nightmare of Drowning Street, and that is that Brown is a petty little prick consumed by envy and hate.* Frankly I'm surprised he didn't shit in the microwave and leave it turned on.

Exhibit B, via Dick Puddlecote, is John McDonnell, MP for Heys and Harlington and candidate for the Labour party leadership.

And weapons grade cunt.

John McDonnell, a Labour leadership candidate, was applauded loudly yesterday for telling a trade union audience that he wished to go back to the 1980s and assassinate Margaret Thatcher.

...

Describing himself as a victim of the former Tory Prime Minister’s policies because he worked for the Greater London Council and National Union of Mineworkers, Mr McDonnell said he would be glad to “go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher”.

This was apparently meant to be a joke but fucking hell, John, get some up to date material for Christ's sake. She's been gone for nearly two fucking decades - even fucking Ben Elton dropped the Thatcher gags ages ago, and saying "Missis Thatch... ooo, bit o' politics" five times each weekend on Saturday Night Live probably paid that bastard's mortgage for a few years.

I don't doubt that McDonut wasn't being serious, not really serious, when he said he'd like to go back in time and kill Maggie Thatcher, but the fact that he and many other in his party are still using her as a target for their hatred speaks volumes. I will always hold Gordon Brown in utter contempt, I will always despise Tony Blair, I will always feel that John Major was a useless tool who almost fell into the Prime Minister's job and I will always think that Maggie Thatcher was... well, let's just say I'm not a huge fan and leave the reasons for another time.** But they're gone, they're history, old news, yesterday's men. As much as I detest the bastard there's only so much scope for attacking Gordon Brown since I've just blogged on the last thing he did in office. Unless he says or does (or turns out to have done) something else his successors both in government and in his party are far more relevant. Similarly I can give the Tories credit for not spending the 1990s incessantly whining and sniping at Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson because they'd largely got it out of their system by then. But Labour... oh dear, even though she's now an octogenarian with dodgy bones and dementia they just can't let her go, can they? I have little doubt that there were first time voters last month who hadn't even been conceived when she left office but nevertheless feel an urge to spit on the floor if her name is mentioned, as if it was all just yesterday and their party hadn't had since 19fucking97 - longer if you count the period of Major's minority government - to fix everything they love to blame her for, and I'm sure more than a few were disappointed last November when the news of Thatcher's death turned out to refer to a Canadian cat.

They see me livin', they hatin'.

John McDonnell's "joke" is typical of this, and while I don't think he nor anyone else in his party would actually take action to shorten both Maggie Thatcher's entry in the history books and her entry to the next world I wouldn't be terribly shocked if one of them had prepared an application for outline planning permission to build a disco on her grave.

Oh, and remember that right at the start of this blog I said that Labour nastiness runs from top to bottom in the party? I feel I should justify that remark so I offer Exhibit C, also from the John McDonnell "kill Thatcher" story. Exhibit C is simply this:

His joke got a standing ovation.

* True, this blog is driven by no small amount of hatred mixed in with the anger and fear and the rest of the Dark Side of The Force (which hasn't made me able to switch the coffee machine on from across the room or destroy it with lightning bolts for not working, but can at least get me worked up enough to share it) and I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to feeling envy from time to time, just like everyone else. But while I might envy someone's Mercedes in itself it wouldn't be a reason to hate them and I wouldn't dream of dragging a key down the side of it.
** In fairness none of them was 100% awful - very few people are, though Gordon Brown probably deserves a gold star for effort.