Jowellings

“Jamie Kenny”:http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/ and “Backword Dave”:http://backword.me.uk/ have been keeping up commentary on the Mills/Jowell affair (scroll down for their various posts). Meanwhile, their friends in the meeja have been doing their best with the exculpatory smokescreens. Notable today is “Peter Preston in the Guardian”:http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/comment/0,,1724395,00.html (the newspaper most compromised by gourmet dinners and rounds of golf):

bq. Let’s all get off our high horses. David Mills is the Inspector Clouseau of global capitalism. He doesn’t lurch from hedge fund to hedge fund and pillar to post in order to grow fabulously rich; just to stay one stumbling step away from the knacker’s yard. Silvio Berlusconi (joyous news!) chooses back-to-front men, more naff than Mafia. Old Labour should remember Lord Gannex and John Stonehouse among too many others before it starts casting New Labour stones.

Some of us (including Preston it must be said) are old enough to remember the “Kagan”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kagan%2C_Baron_Kagan and “Stonehouse”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stonehouse affairs. One of the things about “New Labour” was its rehabilitation of Harold Wilson & Co. as against their post-79 detractors, and among the things that the detractors detracted was precisely the association of Labour grandees with the likes of Kagan. So playing the Old Labour/New Labour card here just reeks of bad faith.

The Jowell/Mills business also reminds me — though the parallels are superficial — to recommend the recent Danish political thriller “King’s Game”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378215/ , which centres on dodgy politicians with cosy insider relationships in a leading newspaper.