Ouch. Members of what Private Eye brilliantly calls the “online community” can be, um, an outspoken bunch at the best of times. But I was surprised to find respondents to the high-class LabourList.org site so full of rage at a piece I submitted on the Labour leadership last night. For daring to suggest – with caveats, criticisms and an acknowledgment of Brown’s “dark side” – that strategically, the party has no option at this stage but to rally around the Prime Minister and turn its fire on the Tories, I am dismissed as “on drugs”, mad, and beyond help. At the time of writing there are 36 responses, every single one of which – vehemently – disagrees.
Equally ridiculed is my long-held assertion that – whisper it – Labour can still win the election. Admittedly, the active “blogosphere” is not always representative of its more cool-headed readers, but one is tempted to wonder how many of these people would prefer Labour to lose (perhaps they can tell us, so we know where we are). It also appears that even the sensible LabourList site seems to have been infiltrated by the ever-present, rightwing bloggers who devote large portions of their lives to Brown-bating (along with a sprinkling of pseudo left-wing opponents of what clever-clever bloggers insist on calling “Nu Labour”, whatever that is meant so drolly to expose).
Anyway, for those of you who do indeed despise Brown, I would urge you, as my colleague Mehdi Hasan has done, to take a glance at this video of him at his most earnest, talking about global poverty, just before unleashing your hatred below.
In the meantime, if there is anyone out there in the online community who actually likes the PM, please don’t be afraid to add your comment here too.
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