Saying something highly uncomplimentary about your own party is one thing. Saying it, denying it and then having a recording surface of you saying it is rather different though. Step forward, Hazel Blears and her “wicked and malicious” comment:
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5 Comments
Nailed.
My contempt for that woman just keeps going up and up.
The saga continues:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11444657
I have some sympathy for Blears, because as per usual Neil garbled the information (and continued garbling it after he’d heard the tape). Blears referred to “stuff that’s gone on in our party,” not the actions of the government, which was what Neil had asked her about. It’s fairly obvious that she was relating to infighting between party factions, not the actions of the government.
I’m no fan of Blears, but I have a little sympathy for her on this. It may have been naive to think she was speaking to a closed meeting, when she criticised her own party’s culture, but she was right to criticise it. And so my opinion of her has gone up.
Lovely. Whether one’s estimation of her goes up or down for admitting some of the things that were going on in the party were wicked and malicious and she disliked that, I do love it when politicians out and out lie about something they said and then can be shown to be lying. Not shading the truth, or obfuscating it, or making an honest mistake; an out and out untruth. Stephen Norris had an even more hilarious one I believe.
‘It’s fairly obvious that she was relating to infighting between party factions, not the actions of the government.’
She still lied about who she was talking about in order to score a minor political point about the coalition, which was a great big lie – she should have just admitted she, like many, was unhappy about the infighting that had been going on, but that they kept quiet about it, and in fact denied it ever took place at the time, in order to retain a stronger image for the food of the party – and I do not believe that she forgot who she was talking about in the slightest.