On Message

Since he has nothing better to do, Gordon's little Darling tries the statesman thing in a Guardian interview "conducted over two days at his family croft on the Isle of Lewis". Voters want frankness and gravitas; Gordon's little Darling can deliver. The times are "arguably the worst they've been in 60 years"; the recession is "going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought"; people being apparently Gordon's little Darling and the Glorious Successor himself. Voters want the common touch; Gordon's little Darling can deliver that, too. "People are pissed off with us". Voters like a bit of optimism to relieve the frankness; Gordon's little Darling does optimism as well: "the next 12 months are critical. It's still there to play for." What is there to play for? Perhaps not economic recovery or a sane energy policy or a coherent education policy or a non-criminal foreign policy or suchlike small things, but at least a fourth term in office. We did, after all, win all those Olympic medals.

"We really have to make our minds up; are we ready to try and persuade this country to support us for another term?" What if we are? "We've got to rediscover that zeal which won three elections, and that is a huge problem for us at the moment." The solution? New New Labour must adopt better public relations. The Glorious Successor and his tent-mates are "partly to blame for Labour's woes because they have 'patently' failed to explain the party's central mission to the country", leaving the country face to face with the evidence of its schools, hospitals, railways, wars, databases and bills, to say nothing of a long list of non-resignations - evidence from which the ignorant public inevitably leaps to the wrong conclusion with all the cynical alacrity of an asylum seeker jumping the queue to grab a British worker's non-inflationary British job. The trouble with New New Labour, according to Gordon's little Darling, is that it just doesn't do quite enough spin-doctoring.

Gordon's little Darling apparently does not believe that the Glorious Successor is about to sack him.