All the talk of bullying vindicates a central insight of Marxism - that people have developed mechanisms, maybe inadvertently, which prevent them from seeing the reality of inequality....
What makes a bully? Opportunity, that’s what. The overwhelming majority of cases of bullying arise from inequalities of power. It is bosses who bully underlings - rarely vice versa.
Writes Chris Dillow.
Probably the most fascinating side detail, at least to me, about the extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's book serialised in yesterday's Observer, is that this is the work of a man who can be described as more than sympathetic towards the Labour party, including Gordon Brown himself.
Notes Scepticisle, going on to add:
Amid all this, there was also a prime minister portrayed who still appears admirable: a passionate, deeply committed individual who has despite the depths to which he has sunk during the last three years still gotten crucial decisions right, such as the bailing out of the banks ... and who is by no means an irredeemable, let alone terrible holder of the ultimate office of state. This makes the response from Downing Street to the revelations all the more risible, if not actively counter-productive: to deny almost everything and also to rubbish Rawnsley himself....
David Cameron would have likely made hay with it on Wednesday, and compared Brown's character with his own, despite his acting as the bag man of an apparently far worse bully while working in PR for Carlton, but the story would have soon lost its lustre. Instead we've had Labour plumbing its usual depths, with claims of Tory plotting, as if Rawnsley was somehow part of a conspiracy dedicated to further damaging Gordon Brown, as well as hysterical claims from the likes of John Prescott that it's all lies.
As far as the Flying Rodent's concerned, there are more important things to worry about:
Me, I'm looking forward to the YouTube clips of the PM freaking out and throwing desks around his office, roaring and bellowing like a pissed-up Tyrannosaurus.
Of course, I'm kidding - this isn't interesting news at all. As far as bullshit political scandals go, this one ranks a good bit below Clinton getting blown, John Major's balls-deep dalliances with Edwina Currie and Barack Obama's secret Allah-worship. I'd say that it's about on a par with David Cameron saying "Twat" to a journalist, which at the time set the standard for tedious, apolitical horseshit in our national discourse.
It'd be interesting if any of our politicians came up with a plan to get two and a half million citizens back into work, or to get some of those doomed megabillions back off the banks. Hell, I'd settle for one of them just quietly admitting that we don't have any sane strategy for victory in Afghanistan, without even so much as proposing the withdrawal of a single soldier.
Meanwhile, in the blue corner, Mr Eugenides is left wondering which part of the word "confidential" the aptly-named Mrs Pratt doesn't understand:
Since when did confidential telephone calls to a charity helpline become material for the public domain? By what possible rationale did Pratt think that she had the right to disseminate the identities of her service users' employer on national TV? Unless there is something we don't know - and, of course, there may be - this is just a shocking breach of ethics. What was this woman thinking?
I am pretty sure I don't have to spell out for even casual readers my loathing of Gordon Brown, and my settled belief that he is unfit for the great office he holds. He will be gone by summer anyway, but in any other walk of life he would already have been suspended and under investigation. Christine Pratt, for her part, should in any sane world be out of a job by the weekend.
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