As well as singing about “Wrinkled, Crinkled, Wadded Dollar Bill … Somebody“, Johnny Cash once said that “success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money“. By that token, Douglas Alexander is doing very well indeed: his worries are mounting by the day and it seems for all the world that neither he, nor his party, gives a tuppence toss about the economy.
Let’s start with those worries. It looked like Wee Dougie had enough on his plate with producing a strategy for getting this Labour lot into power and polishing the assorted turds required to implement his plan. But now that plate his been topped with thick, brown, smelly gravy.
According to polling research carried out and gleefully released this week by Lord Ashcroft, Labour will join confectionary in getting battered north of the border with senior figures like Dougie losing their seats. Ashcroft’s research, which despite its origin is broadly accepted to be accurate, suggests that Dougie will lose his Paisley and Renfrewshire South constituency with a swing to the SNP of 25 per cent.
His seat’s not looked this endangered since the Park Mains High School Great Wedgie Week of 1983.
All of this begs two questions. First, why did Labour choose an election strategist who’s in serious danger of losing his own seat? It’s a bit like a 40-year-old virgin taking lessons in pulling women from … well, Douglas Alexander.
The second question is: what’s Dougie going to do about it? Will he be given compassionate leave to head north and persuade his constituents that he’s not the drabbest thing in Paisley since my grandmother’s curtains.
This seems unlikely as, for now, he’s busier than a cucumber in a women’s prison as he tries to put out the fires his shadow cabinet colleagues are lighting like a posse of pyromaniacs.
Earlier in the week, Dougie had to sit Ed Miliband down and explain to him why normal people don’t think “working for a government department” or “lecturing on government” count as experience “outside of politics“. Having sorted out Number One, he then had to turn his attention to Number Two – or Ed Balls as he’s sometimes known – who dropped one of his namesakes on Tuesday night.
For those who missed it, here’s what led to the latest car crash.
1. On Sunday, Boots’ acting chief executive, Stefano Pessina, claims that a Labour government would be a catastrophe.
2. Miliband takes this to heart and responds by shouting: “LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU. WAIT … YOU’RE FOREIGN. SO YOU PROBABLY DON’T PAY YOUR TAXES! THIEF! THIEF! YOU MUST PAY TAXES OR YOUR VIEWS DON’T COUNT AND THE PAPERS CAN’T PRINT THEM SO THERE! LA LA LA“.
3. Assorted business leaders pile in to support Mr Pessina and criticise Labour’s apparent anti-business agenda.
4. Labour sends Ed Balls onto Newsnight to limit the damage. Yes, that’s right. The man who David Cameron named as “the most annoying person in modern politics“. The man who Russell Brand called a “clicky-wristed, snidey c*nt“. The man who a fantastic Daily Mash article referred to as a “bumptious little tw*t“. The man who remains the only person in Britain that could become Chancellor and make the current incumbent look like a national treasure. The man who could cause wall paint in an empty room to liquify, reform on his skin and suffocate him. That man.
Sure enough, things didn’t go too well as Mr Balls got lost trying to locate some charm to turn on with Emily Maitlis, fresh from making ‘Dapper Laughs’ squirm like the little toad that he is.
Ms Maitlis asked Mr Balls why so few prominent business figures back Labour compared to 2005. Balls replied that there were actually loads. He’d just had dinner with some of them.
Maitlis saw her chance and pounced with a steely gaze and persistence not seen since Tommy DeVito gave Henry Hill the runaround in Goodfellas.
“Who?”
“Huh?”
“Who? Name them.”
“Well, em. B-Bill.”
“Bill f*cking who?” she pressed Balls, summoning her inner Joe Pesci and waiting for the punchline to a bad knock knock joke.
“It’s gone from my head, which is a bit annoying at this time of night,” Balls grinned nervously, tossing a line he’d fed to Yvette Cooper a couple of times. But Maitlis ain’t the sort of girl to forgive early arrival.
“Ok. So you’ve got Bill somebody. Bill? Is that the best you can do? Bill? F*cking Bill?”
I’m paraphrasing slightly, but you get the gist. It later emerged that Balls was thinking of Bill Thomas, the former Executive Vice-President of EDS EMEA. Embarassingly, he’s also been Chair of Labour’s Small Business Taskforce since 2012.
Having overseen $12billion in annual revenue at EDS, Bill is certainly wadded but judge for yourselves whether he’s wrinkled and crinkled.
When this week’s shenanigans are stacked alongside Miliband’s recent rhetoric about corporate “predators” and his party’s plans to create a ‘mansion tax’ and reintroduce the 50p top rate of income tax, it’s easy to see why many consider Labour in its current guise to be anti-business.
However, respected commentators, such as Philip Collins of The Times, deny this is actually the case. They also make a decent argument that Labour has a better answer than the Tories to economic recovery: a “supply-side revolution” involving higher spending on infrastructure, a greater emphasis on science and more focus on training Britain’s workforce.
Even if this is true, Miliband’s making a ham-fisted effort at informing the voters. His mediocre message this week led one former Labour minister, Geoffrey Robinson, to urge him to win back business quickly as he’s allowed the wrong “mood music” to play.
If Robinson’s right, and it’s the mood music preventing Labour from getting into the voter’s pants, this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s what happens when you take lessons in pulling from Douglas Alexander.
Project Refuse 