Jeremy Corbyn: The more they attack him, the stronger he becomes

One of the most pivotal moments of the General Election in 2015 came when Ed Miliband made the utterly bizarre assertion during the leaders' debate that he'd rather see the Tories form the next government than try to form a progressive alliance with the SNP.

If he thought that taking such a viscerally anti-SNP stance was going to help Scottish Labour avoid a catastrophic defeat, he was utterly wrong (they lost 40 of their 41 seats to the SNP), and if he thought that such a stance would play well with the English electorate, he was wrong again because it simply reinforced the right-wing media narrative that the SNP are far too evil and dangerous to be allowed any authority in Westminster, which massively bolstered the Tory election campaign. It's inconceivable that taking such a visible anti-progressive stance attracted anyone to the Labour Party, and in all likelihood it drove hundreds of thousands of progressive people away.

The sad thing is that many in the Labour Party don't seem to have learned any lessons whatever from their defeat. In fact Tony Blair even repeated Miliband's absurd stance when he said he'd prefer the Tories to win in 2020 than see a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Another thing that so many Labour Party politicians have utterly failed to understand is that offering a watered down version of Tory ideological austerity cost them dear too. I mean how many people other than die-hard Labour Party tribalists could have been enthused by the policy of promoting exactly the same failing pseudo-economic ideology as the Tories, just not quite as nasty about it?

The fact that so many Labour Party politicians are incapable of understanding where they went wrong is abundantly clear from the way that so many of them have queued up to slag off Jeremy Corbyn, and provide the Tories and the right-wing press with a huge supply of ammunition should he actually win the contest (which seems likely given that he's the only one who isn't bitterly slagging off his opponents and sticking instead to clearly explaining his policies and offering a message of party unity).

It's absolutely clear from the terrified rambling of so many right-wing Labour Party politicians that they really rather would see the Tories win in 2020 than be part of a government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Here are just some of the most egregious examples of these kinds of self-destructive attacks on one of their own MPs.

Liz Kendall (Labour leadership candidate): "[A Jeremy Corbyn win] would be disastrous for the party and disastrous for the country and we would be out of power for a generation" - Not only has she attacked the potential future leader of her party as unelectable, she's also stated that she wouldn't serve in his cabinet.

Yvette Cooper (Labour leadership candidate): "[If Jeremy Corbyn wins] we will be condemning our world to a Tory future."  - Yvette Cooper predicts a win for the Tories if Jeremy Corbyn is elected Labour leader and she too has declared that she wouldn't serve in his cabinet.

Andy Burnham (Labour leadership candidate): "[If Jeremy Corbyn wins] there's a real risk that the party could split." - The bizarre thing about this claim is that just a few days after talking up the prospect of the Labour Party disintegrating if Corbyn wins, Burnham then tried to rephrase his own fearmongering rhetoric about the future of the party as an accusation against Jeremy Corbyn's supporters! To his credit though, he's the only one of Corbyn's rivals not to have ruled out serving in the cabinet should Corbyn win.

Tony Blair (Former Labour Party leader, alleged war criminal): "Let me be absolutely clear: I wouldn't want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn't take it." - An explicit admission that he would rather see the Tories win in 2020 than a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. If this isn't evidence that Tony Blair is an enemy of the Labour movement, I don't know what is.

Chuka Umunna (the kind of toxic self-serving careerist that has completely infested Westminster politics): Accused the Labour Party of  "petulance" and"screaming at the electorate" then went on to arrogantly presuppose the intentions of the electorate by describing Corbyn's policies as "not a politics that can win". As I said at the time, if anyone is guilty of petulance it's clearly Chuka Umunna as he throws his toys out of his pram as he sees his career prospects dwindle by the day (unless he crosses the floor to join the Tories of course). Another one to rule themself out of serving in a Corbyn led Labour cabinet.

Jack Straw (Corrupt "cash for access" guy and Blair's biggest cheerleader for the invasion and occupation of Iraq): "Overall his policies are not policies that can conceivably win an election." -  Yet another arrogant presupposition of what the electorate might or might not want. Who knows what the political landscape will look like in 2020? Jack Straw may consider himself a great futurologist, but given how he utterly failed to predict the sectarian violence culminating in the rise of ISIS that came about as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq that he pushed for so vehemently, I'll be taking his futurological predictions with a massive heap of salt.

Chris Leslie (Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and the guy who helped formulate Ed Miliband's woeful austerity-lite economic policy and then took over as Shadow Chancellor after Ed Balls lost his seat) - decided to launch a furious attack on Jeremy Corbyn's economic policy of using quantitative easing to fund infrastructure investment and public services, instead of using it to prop up the insolvent financial sector and enrich the wealthiest people in society (as was the case with the £375 billion in QE that's already been done). Chris Leslie's argument that investing in infrastructure and services is bad because it would cause inflation is laughable, as is his petulant decision to say that he'd refuse to serve as a minister in a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.

John Woodcock (Labour MP and Liz Kendall supporter): "If you want to have a debate, it is absolutely essential that if you don’t agree with the ideas that he’s putting forward then you say why and you say why they wouldn’t work and why your alternative is better" - This is a quite extraordinary assertion from the MP for Barrow and Furness in defence of his decision to publicly attack Jeremy Corbyn's economic policies. It's extraordinary because it shows that he understands the importance of not accepting your opponents proposition, yet in January 2015 John Woodcock actually voted in favour of the continuation of George Osborne's socially and economically destructive ideological austerity agenda. This shows that John Woodcock clearly considers George Osborne more of an ally than Jeremy Corbyn when it comes to economic matters. Maybe he should just cross the floor and join the conservatives?

John McTernan (The electoral strategist who oversaw Labour losing 40 of their 41 Scottish MPs): This guy should be an absolute laughing stock after overseeing the most catastrophic collapse in support in UK political history, yet the mainstream press tend to treat him as some kind of sage expert on Labour Party politics (presumably because he comes out with the furious anti-Corbyn bile they want him to). Not only is McTernan so delusional that he thinks Labour can actually win in 2020 with his prescription of even more Blairite Tory-lite rubbish that has lost two consecutive General Elections and completely annihilated the traditional Labour heartland of Scotland (because the SNP outflanked them on the left with a clear anti-Tory anti-austerity narrative), he also thinks it's acceptable to go around publicly declaring people "morons" for supporting Jeremy Corbyn (as if mental health based slurs are an acceptable form of political discourse).

Kezia Dugdale (The favourite to take the poisoned chalice of leading Scottish Labour into another catastrophic defeat in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections): Yet another Labour politician to presuppose what the electorate want by declaring Jeremy Corbyn would be unelectable and leave Labour "carping from the sidelines". Not only is this kind of attack on a potential future leader of the Labour Party really counter-productive, it's also an illustration of how crazily out of touch the Scottish Labour Party are with their own electorate. One of the most oft repeated messages I've heard from people on the Scottish left is that Jeremy Corbyn is Labour's only hope of trying to win back some of the 300,000+ supporters they've lost over the last five years. Her comments would also carry more weight if she hadn't been such an appallingly ineffective deputy leader of Scottish Labour, and not had her own "carping from the sidelines" embarrassingly torn to shreds by Nicola Sturgeon so often in the Scottish parliament.

If only they attacked the Tories with such gusto

It is astonishing to see so many Labour politicians launching such visceral attacks on one of their own. Where was this passion in the last five years? Why didn't these people attack the malice and incompetence of the Tory led coalition government with such determination.

The only answer seems to be that these people are ideologically much closer to the likes of David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne, Michael Gove and Theresa May, than they are to Jeremy Corbyn and the huge number of grass roots Labour supporters who are backing his campaign to become the next Labour Party leader.

The fact that so many of these people have said they would refuse to participate as ministers in a Corbyn government is a good thing. Yet another reason for people to get behind Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bis is that his Labour front bench would definitely not feature people like Liz Kendall (the most right-wing labour leadership candidate ever), Yvette Cooper (horribly tainted by her association with Blairism, her pompous fool of a husband and the bizarre expenses scams they concocted together), Chuka Umunna (the living embodiment of the self-serving career politician) and Chris Leslie (one of the guys who helped devise Ed Miliband's inept election losing "austerity-lite" policy).

David Cameron's useful idiots

The Daily Mirror columnist Kevin Maguire referred to the Labour Party politicians making these attacks as "David Cameron's useful idiots" and he's absolutely right. Every piece of fearmongering rhetoric about Corbyn now will be ammunition for the Tories to use against him for the next five years should he actually win. Instead of confronting Corbyn with arguments about why their favoured candidate might be better, they've gone for the kind of feamongering muck-raking political attacks that can only harm the Labour Party in the long-run.

It's easy to imagine Darth Blair saying "your powers are weak old man", to which Obi Wan Corbyn replies "You can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine".

Corbyn the anti-politician

There is a case to be made that attacks on Corbyn from despised and discredited individuals like Tony Blair, Ed Balls and Jack Straw actually come across as ringing endorsements in the ears of millions of people who are utterly sick of the unprincipled, expenses scamming, cash-for-access offering, self-serving careerist class of politician who have come to completely dominate Westminster politics.

It seems likely that the more of these despised people who come out of the woodwork to condemn Jeremy Corbyn's brand of conviction politics, the more everyday people are going to see him as the anti-politician who is going to ride in and rescue us from the self-serving careerists who have ruined politics with their greed and self-interest.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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How Ed Balls' austerity-lite agenda ruined Labour's election chances
           
Anti-austerity = Epic Win / Austerity-lite = Massive Fail
                     
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How you can help Jeremy Corbyn become Labour leader

Why Jeremy Corbyn?

Regular AAV readers will know that I'm not a member of any political party and that I don't explicitly endorse particular parties either.

I consider myself a natural Labour voter because I believe in things like social justice, the NHS, social ownership of vital national infrastructure, the provision of welfare to people who are sick/disabled/elderly/down on their luck ... but unfortunately the Labour Party was usurped in the 1990s by the right-wing element of the party who restructured it to provide a Rupert Murdoch approved brand of Thatcherite economic policy disguised with a few dollops of pseudo-socialist window dressing.

These red Thatcherites have ruled the roost over the Labour Party for two decades now, and in my opinion their time is up. Blairism won three general elections in a row, but just think about the hopelessness of the opposition at the time. Tony Blair beat John Major's tired and sleaze ridden Tory government, then he beat William "Billy Fizz" Hague's Tories with a smaller majority in 2001, then his majority shrank again when the Tories inexplicably chose Michael "something of the night" Howard as their leader for the 2005 General election. It's now ten years since Blairism won a General Election, yet the Blairites keep insisting that Labour needs to move even further to the right, and even deeper into Tory territory in order to win again.

The Blairites are completely wrong. The Labour Party lost the last election because they abjectly failed to present a coherent anti-austerity counter narrative, not because they weren't quite similar enough to the Tories.

Anyone who thinks this is all wrong, and that there is no public appetite for anti-auaterity politics should have a think about what happened in Scotland (Labour and the Lib-Dems were all but wiped out by the SNP's clear anti-austerity message), and also what has been happening in other countries like Greece and Spain.

In my view Jeremy Corbyn is the only hope for the Labour Party because he's the only candidate in the leadership election to actually understand that the problem with the Labour Party is that it aligned itself too closely with the Tories, not that it needs to move even closer to them.

Corbyn is the best candidate of the four by such a distance it would be a travesty if he failed to win. I'm certainly not saying that I'd become a Labour Party supporter if he did win because I prefer to judge people on their actions, not their fine intentions, however I'm pretty sure that many thousands of natural Labour Party supporters would come back to the party were he to win and wrest control of the party off the Blairites,

The most important reason that I think Corbyn needs to win is because it is vital that there is some kind of clear and coherent opposition to the malice and incompetence of the Tory government, and none of the other three candidates will be able to offer this clear and coherent opposition by positioning themselves in on the centre-right, just slightly to the left of the Tories.

How to register to vote

There are three different ways to register to vote in the Labour leadership election in order to vote for Jeremy Corbyn (or one of the other three if you must). I will detail these methods in the following sections, but before I do I'd like to say that if you are a member of another political party, you shouldn't interfere in the Labour leadership election. You may think it's a good idea to support Jeremy Corbyn because he's a good candidate, but if he wins and then it turns out that he was heavily supported by paid up members of other political parties, this would be powerful ammunition for the right-wing factions of the Labour Party to attack him with, or even attempt to depose him as leader. So unless you're prepared to cancel your membership of your other political party, it's definitely for the best that you don't vote in the Labour leadership election.

Join the Labour Party

The most obvious way to register yourself to vote in the Labour leadership election is to actually join the Labour Party. In my view this is not the best option because there's always the possibility that one of the three Blairite candidates could beat Jeremy Corbyn, meaning that you'll have boosted the membership numbers and made a financial contribution towards a centre-right political party. By all means feel free to join the party, but at least consider the other options first.

Register via an affiliated trade union/organisation

If you are a member of any of the following Labour Party affiliated trade unions, you are entitled to register to vote in the leadership election as a party supporter, which you can do here: 

ASLEF, BECTU, BFAWU, Community, CWU, GMB, MU, NUM, TSSA, UCATT, UNISON, Unite, Unity, USDAW

It is also possible to vote in the Labour leadership election if you are a member of an affiliated political group, the full list of which can be found on the party supporter registration page.

Become a registered supporter

If you are not a member of a Labour Party affiliated organisation and you don't want to become a full member of the party, there is still the option of making a £3 donation to become a registered supporter so that you can vote in the leadership election.

Here is the link to do that.

Registration problems

As the Labour Party leadership election has progressed I've received ever more messages from people who have attempted to register to vote, but ended up getting declined by the Labour Party with claims that they are not listed on the electoral register (even though they assure me that they definitely are listed).

One of the common themes amongst these messages is that they have tried to register their vote via "support Jeremy Corbyn" type web pages. Now I'm not trying to claim "conspiracy" here, because there are a number of factors to consider. Firstly, the majority of new people registering to vote in the Labour leadership contest appear to be Corbyn supporters, meaning it's very much more likely that I'd hear about registration problems from them. Secondly, it's pretty damned unlikely that a supporter of centre-right candidates like Liz Kendall or Yvette Cooper would write to a "bloody leftie" like me to complain about their own registration problems. Thirdly, it think it's far more likely to be some kind of glitch in the Labour Party registration system than a deliberate systematic effort to "weed out" Corbyn supporters.

I think one of the most important things to say about this issue is that several people have told me that they were successful in registering at the second attempt when they did it directly through the Labour Party registration page, rather than attempting to register through their Labour affiliated trade union or whatever.

Other ways you can help the Corbyn campaign

If you are a member of another political party, or if you are disinclined to register yourself as any kind of Labour supporter until you're sure that it will be led by Jeremy Corbyn, there are still things you can do to help his campaign.

One of the most important things you can do is to help to undermine the utterly misleading narrative from the Blairites and the mainstream media that there is no public appetite for left-wing politics in the UK. One of the most compelling arguments against this toxic right-wing narrative is the fact that an overwhelming majority of people support the explicitly left-wing policy of running vital national infrastructure (the NHS, rail network, energy infrastructure and Royal Mail) as not-for-profit public services. Here's a link to evidence to support this assertion.

Another way you can help is by sharing Jeremy Corbyn articles and infographics that clearly explain his actual political views. This is important because very many people rote learn their political opinions from the mainstream media, so unless they're presented with counter evidence, they're likely to take the anti-Corbyn propaganda at face value and consider him some kind of dangerous Marxist bogeymen (without even knowing the proper definition of Marxism of course). The more people who are presented with Jeremy Corbyn's actual policies and opinions, the less effective the mainstream media anti-Corbyn demonisation tactics will be.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
                 
Austerity is a con
                                       
Who are the 48 genuine Labour MPs?
                
The Blairite attacks on Jeremy Corbyn
                         
George Osborne has created more debt than every Labour government in history combined
                        
How Ed Balls' austerity-lite agenda ruined Labour's election chances
           
The Tory ideological mission
                     
How the Lib-Dems were just as compassionless as the Tories

                                
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
  

The Blairite attacks on Jeremy Corbyn

The rising popularity and public profile of the left-wing Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn is sending the right-wing elements of the Labour Party into panic mode. In the wake of the almost unbelievably inept decision by the three Blairite leadership candidates to abstain from voting against the latest Tory attack on children, vulnerable people and the working poor, leaving Jeremy Corbyn as the only leadership candidate to actually oppose the Tories, right-wingers like John McTernan, Tony Blair and Chuka Umunna waded into the leadership debate to attack him.

Assumptions about the electorate

The first thing to note before I get to the specific comments from McTernan, Blair and Umunna is that their opposition to Jeremy Corbyn is built upon the foundation of a fantasy narrative about what the UK electorate want. Not only is it highly presumptuous to tell the electorate what they do and don't want, the idea that people don't want a left-wing government is also contradicted by a number of indisputable facts, including the fact that a party running on a centre-left anti-austerity platform just annihilated the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in Scotland (more on that later ...) and the fact that an overwhelming majority of the UK public support the unmistakably left-wing policies of running the NHS, the nation's energy infrastructure, the Royal Mail and the rail network as not-for-profit public sector services (source).

The claim that a Labour Party that offers a genuine alternative to the Tory ideological austerity con would render itself completely unelectable is at best a display of bogus futurology, and at worst a complete denial of indisputable facts.

John McTernan

In order to understand how ludicrous John McTernan's attacks on Jeremy Corbyn were, it's important to understand who the guy actually is. Newsnight presented him as if he was some kind of expert on Labour Party politics, but in reality the guy should be considered an absolute laughing stock. This is a guy who was Chief of Staff to the humiliated Scottish Labour Party leader Jim Murphy. McTernan just played an instrumental role in the most catastrophic electoral collapse in British political history (from 41 Scottish Labour seats to just 1), yet he has the audacity to lecture the Labour Party about how they need to stick to the same Blairite centre-right policies he just failed abysmally with, or they'll be unable to win the 2020 General Election!

Aside from McTernan's complete lack of self-awareness or humility, he also displayed a very nasty streak too, calling certain Labour Party MPs "morons" for having nominated Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership contest. People who go around using mental health based insults to describe anybody they disagree with are odious enough, but to use such language to attack members of their own party is not only vile, it's also hugely divisive. Any genuine member of the Labour Party (whether they support Jeremy Corbyn or not) should be horrified at an absurdly discredited figure like McTernan publicly using such divisive and offensive language against fellow Labour Party members.

What authority does this joker think he has to call people "morons" and opine about what the Labour Party needs to do to win elections when he's just overseen the most humiliating capitulation in the entire history of the Labour Party? I can't actually think of anyone in the Labour Party who is more deserving of insults against their intelligence and mental faculties than McTernan himself.

The fact that McTernan is so lacking in self-awareness isn't the most important thing though, the more important thing is the way that the heavily biased mainstream media have picked up on his anti-Corbyn tirade and reported it as if it was the brilliant advice of some kind of sage and insightful oracle, rather than impotent ranting of the hopelessly discredited laughing stock that he actually is.

Tony Blair

John McTernan is a hopelessly discredited figure saved only by the fact that practically nobody knows who he actually is. Tony Blair on the other hand is widely despised for misleading parliament and the electorate in his desperation to cement his legacy as a war leader through the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Like Jeremy Corbyn I opposed the attack on Iraq at the time, but with the benefit of hindsight very many people who supported it have now come to realise what a catastrophe it turned out to be; how Tony Blair and his minions lied and deceived in order to get the bloodbath that they wanted; and how the destabilisation of Iraq led to a decade of brutal sectarian violence culminating in the rise of ISIS.

The incredible thing is that Blair's legacy of dishonesty and destruction in Iraq is not even the most glaring hole in his credibility. The clearest proof of all that the man has no credibility whatever to talk about the Labour leadership contenst is the desperate rubbish he spouted in a feeble effort to attack and undermine the groundswell of support rising behind Jeremy Corbyn.

The worst part of all in Blair's premeditated attack on Corbyn was his unmistakable assertion that he'd rather see the Tories win in 2020 than a Labour Party running on a left-wing platform. Here's precisely what he said:

"Let me be absolutely clear: I wouldn't want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn't take it." [source]

This assertion that Blair would rather the Tories remain in power than see a left-wing Labour leadership triumph in 2020 tells us all we need to know about the man: Tony Blair is an enemy of the labour movement. He always has been. He usurped the Labour Party in 1994 and used it for his own purposes (to become rich and powerful), and now that there's a groundswell of opinion that the party should be taken back from his Blairite successors, he's saying he'd rather the Tories remained in power for another decade than see that happen.

Chuka Umunna

I've already written an article about Chuka Umunna's petulant wailing from the sidelines, so I'll keep this fairly brief. On the day after Tony Blair's attack on Jeremy Corbyn, Chuka joined the Blairite leadership candidates Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall in swearing that he'd never serve in a front bench role were Jeremy Corbyn to win the Labour leadership election.

The Guardian described this terribly divisive posturing as "a potential exodus of talent", which is perhaps one of the most bizarre misuses of the English language I've ever seen. People like Cooper, Kendall and Umunna are not "talent". They are precisely the kind of unprincipled self-serving career politician non-entities that the Labour Party need to sweep aside in order to rebuild their credibility. The fact that a Corbyn shadow cabinet would contain none of these three is actually yet another good reason for Labour Party members and supporters to get out and vote for Corbyn.

Conclusion

It's entirely clear that the Labour Party right-wingers who have queued up to attack Jeremy Corbyn in the mainstream press are pretty damned clueless because they are so keen to adopt the stance that they know more about what the British electorate might want in 2020 than the British public do themselves. However the thing that makes them look so outlandishly stupid is the fact they can't even understand the consequences of their own divisive diatribes.

Before the Labour leadership election the vast majority of people had no idea who any of the four candidates were. Those of a political disposition may have known about Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper from their various roles on the Labour front bench. Political nerds like me knew about Jeremy Corbyn because his name featured so often on the lists of Labour MPs sane enough to rebel against the party when they decided to do lunatic things. Liz Kendall was such an appalling non-entity that even a politics nerd like me knew nothing about her before the leadership election.

It's fair to say that all four of the candidates were suffering from low public profiles when they decided to enter the race to become the next Labour leader. The idiocy of the Blairites lies in the fact that every time they launch an attack on Jeremy Corbyn, they raise his public profile, meaning more people have heard of him and might have a look into what he actually stands for.

What makes these attacks even more self-defeating in Tony Blair's case, is that he's now seen as such an unprincipled figure than a condemnation from Tony Blair serves as a ringing endorsement in many millions of people's ears.

As far as I'm concerned, it would be a good thing if the right-wing elements of the Labour Party kept up their highly divisive attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, because each time they do it they raise his public profile and make it even more likely that he's going to actually win. 

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

MORE ARTICLES FROM
 ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE 
                 
Austerity is a con
                                       
Labour vs the Lib-Dems in the strategic ineptitude stakes
                
If anyone is behaving like a petulant child it's Chuka Umunna
                         
George Osborne has created more debt than every Labour government in history combined
                        
How Ed Balls' austerity-lite agenda ruined Labour's election chances
           
The Tory ideological mission
                     
Who are the 48 genuine Labour MPs?

                                
Margaret Thatcher's toxic neoliberal legacies
  

The Lynton Crosby triple conflict of interest scandal

It may have escaped your notice (especially if you rely upon the right-wing press or the BBC for your news) that David Cameron's chief election strategist Lynton Crosby has been caught up in three separate conflicts of interest scandals in the space of little over a week. First it was the plain cigarette packaging U-turn, then it was George Osborne's huge tax break for the fracking industry, then it was his involvement with numerous private health companies that are straining at the leash to gobble up medical services as the Tory party savagely carve them off the still living corpus of the NHS.

I'll begin with a short biography of Lynton Crosby, then provide more details of the three blatant conflicts of interest that have been exposed, before concluding with some important questions.

Biography
Lynton Crosby is an Australian political strategist who is famed for his use of so-called "wedge strategies" designed to create divisions amongst opposition parties by deliberately focusing debate on a policy are in which the other party is divided. He is also a proponent of using narrative strategies aimed at instilling simplistic political idioms in the minds of the electorate and is a big fan of polling, leading to accusations from the Australian defence secretary Mike Kelly, that he uses the push-polling technique.

Crosby is also a lobbyist with his own lobbying company called Crosby Textor (which has a UK subsidiary called CTF Partners). The Crosby Textor website boasts "Our intimate understanding of the regulatory and political processes ... enables us to guide our clients discreetly through potentially high profile issues". If getting caught up in three conflicts of interest scandals in the space of a week is what they describe as "discreet" one wonders what on Earth their definition of "indiscreet" might be!

Crosby has worked for the UK Conservative party on several occasions and CTF partners is literally stuffed with Tory party wonks. He was the chief strategist for the Tories in the desperately poor 2005 General election, where the Tories were hammered for the third election in a row, despite the fact that their opponent Tony Blair was severely tarnished by his role in the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. However in his defence it is difficult to see how even the most gifted political strategist could have made a man like Michael Howard palatable to the British electorate.

Crosby had more success in 2008 when he helped Boris Johnson to become Mayor of London (at a cost to the Tory party of £140,000 for three months work). In 2012 Crosby was re-engaged by the Tory party as David Cameron's chief election strategist. 
 
The tobacco Industry
The first Lynton Crosby conflict of interest scandal broke in the wake of the Tory U-turn on their policy to introduce plain cigarette packaging. When it was revealed that Crosby's lobbying company represents Philip Morris, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world (on a contract worth something like £6 million), numerous Lib-Dem members of the government began calling for his resignation or sacking. Crosby managed to hold on for around a week, with David Cameron dodging questions and desperately trying to smokescreen the issue. Now that two more conflicts of interest have erupted, one would expect the calls for resignation and an official enquiry from the Labour opposition and the Lib-Dem coalition partners alike to reach fever pitch.

The fracking industry
Just a week or so after the cigarette packaging conflicts of interest scandal broke, Crosby was caught up in another lobbying scandal when George Osborne announced unprecedented tax breaks for the shale gas fracking industry, essentially slashing the tax rate for fracking operations in half, putting them at an enormous advantage compared to both conventional (coal, North Sea oil, natural gas) and renewable energy suppliers.

Within hours of Osborne's announcement it became clear that Crosby Textor represents Dart Energy, a firm that holds numerous shale gas extraction licences in Scotland. Another clear example of a Crosby Textor client benefiting from extremely favourable Tory party legislation.

Lynton Crosby is not the only person at the very heart of government to have massive vested interests in the shale gas fracking industry. The conflicts of interests of several top Tories, including George Osborne's father-in-law are detailed in this article.

The private health industry
Just one day after I wrote about Crosby's fracking conflict of interest, the Guardian broke the story that Crosby had yet another blatant conflict of interest. They revealed that at the same time the Tory party were working out how to carve open the NHS for mass privatisation, Textor Crosby were advising a group of private healthcare firms on how to exploit perceived failings in the NHS.

Some of the activities undertaken included the production of loaded-question surveys, seemingly in order to convince the members of the private healthcare group that privatisation of NHS services would actually be popular with the public.

Shortly after Crosby returned into the Tory fold, they launched their secretive backdoor NHS privatisation amendment to ensure that NHS services must be tendered to the lowest bidder, irrespective of concerns over quality or continuity of service. This backdoor privatisation legislation would certainly have been extremely beneficial to Crosby's private health clients had it not been spotted, campaigned against and eventually watered down.

As it stands, private health companies still stand to profit enormously from Tory reforms to the NHS.

Now I'm not a massive fan of the Labour shadow health minister Andy Burnham, however his reaction to the third Lynton Crosby conflicts of interest scandal is certainly worth repeating:

"It simply cannot be right to have people paid to lobby for private health organisations wandering round Downing Street when policies are being discussed that could benefit their clients. It is more evidence of a shocking conflict of interest that David Cameron has created at the heart of his government." - Andy Burnham

Conclusion
After three damning conflict of interest revelations in little over a week, there are many questions that need to be asked, not limited to the eight that I am about to pose.

1. How many more conflicts of interest does Lynton Crosby have?
2, How have so many brazen conflicts of interest been allowed to develop at the heart of a government, that claimed in 2010 that they would "regulate lobbying" and "ensure greater transparency" (Coalition Agreement, page 20)?
3. How is Lynton Crosby still in his job after these revelations of three egregious conflicts of interest?
4. How does the selection of two such appalling inappropriate advisers (in Andy Coulson and Lynton Crosby) reflect on David Cameron's leadership skills and judgement of character?
5. What kind of damage have these numerous conflict of interest revelations inflicted on the already desperately low public confidence in the political system?
6. What measures will be taken, if any, to force non-ministerial members of the government to fully declare their conflicts of interests and recuse themselves from participation in any area of government policy where these conflicts arise?
7. Will David Cameron's choice of replacement for Crosby be yet another individual that is appallingly unfit to be working at the heart of government?
8. Will David Cameron be taking his own advice and ensure that his party "take responsibility for their actions and show how they're going to be accountable for these actions" and ensure that this responsibility taking and accountability "goes all the way to the top of the organisation"?

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