The Tory Party faithful are gathering in Manchester today for their annual conference. This should be an occasion for quiet satisfaction at winning an overall majority in May’s General Election, and a little smugness at Labour electing Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, someone their pals in the press have been beating up on ever since his victory. But in the background, the dark side of campaigning is being brutally exposed.
Elliott Johnson (left) and Mark Clarke (behind) in happier times
Bullying and thuggishness were what the others did: the Tories were a happy team, full of smiling and recently younger faces, being bussed around the country to support candidates in marginal seats. But the reality - that the Tories were the ones harbouring a vicious bullying culture - burst into the open recently with the death of activist Elliott Johnson in an apparent suicide at Sandy station.
This is an issue on which the Tories cannot expect their press pals to help them, and so it has proved, with the Mail On Sunday revealing that it has obtained the recording Johnson made of his fateful meeting with Road Trip 2015 head man Mark Clarke, and Clarke’s pal André Walker, where Johnson’s complaint about Clarke is discussed, and where Clarke and Walker behave like a couple of pantomime heavies.
The MoS is a little dramatic, but the detail is compelling: the recording “shows how he was bullied by Mark Clarke, who ran David Cameron’s Road Trip 2015 Election campaign, and fellow Conservative Andre Walker in a menacing showdown in a pub … Clarke is said to have made similar threats against other Tory officials who complained about him. In the recording, Johnson said they included allegations of ‘adultery’”.
That last detail should not surprise anyone: my information is that married father of two Clarke may have indulged in more than a little less than totally appropriate behaviour while carrying out his duties for the Tory Party. And the MoS reminds us they “revealed last week how Clarke tried to leak a video of another Tory rival duped into performing a lewd sex act in a film sent to a fake website … The victim says he was told to pay £2,500 ‘blackmail’ to avoid the video being put online. When he refused, it was posted on YouTube”.
There was more: “He is also accused of trying to leak allegations concerning cocaine and a senior female Tory aide who complained about him. He denies it … It is not the first time he has hit the headlines. Before the 2010 Election, when he stood as a Parliamentary candidate, his nurse girlfriend revealed his ‘appalling’ behaviour”.
And there is Clarke being congratulated by Young Dave himself. While the Independent notes “the RoadTrip 2020 reception has been cancelled, the group’s Facebook page has been deleted, and the project, which had David Cameron’s backing and had mobilised thousands of campaigners before the election, faces an uncertain future”, the whole party is bracing itself for more revelations. And I have to tell them that there will be more.
Meanwhile, Mark Clarke should note that the MoS’ political editor Simon Walters is one of the names on the by-line. Walters’ persistence did for Clarke’s pal Aidan Burley. That means it’s Game Over for Mark Clarke. And it could be trouble for many more.
What consenting adults do to each other in private is a matter for them. In that respect I couldn't care less about their politics.
ReplyDeleteWhat DOES concern me is that the tories, New Labour and LibDems have sold this country and its people down the river......all of it supported by mainstream media that has become, as Dan Rather(!) said, "stenographers for the establishment."
British mainstream media has become a tragic joke, staffed to the hilt by cowards without a trace of conscience or concern for the propaganda damage they do as routine.
This morning I listened to a BBC Radio 5 broadcast fronted by John Pienaar, the content of which had to be heard to be believed. Naturally, he "interviewed" far right mainstream media Pavlovian dogs plus that well known altruist, Francis Maude. Of all the news organisations to fall from grace, BBC News has by far fallen further and now leads the race to the bottom.
As for the Daily Heil's "exposure" of this story and its "attack" on the Bullingdon head boy......it's just payback for Leveson and readying the way for when metrognome Cameron does one to count his inherited, thieved millions. Anybody who trusts ANYTHING produced by Dacre and his sock puppets is an idiot.
My own wish is that all tories, New Labour and LibDems shag each other to death in the back of a 4WD in a Tesco supermarket car park in Bracknell. Now that WOULD be funny.
Good words well said, but should'nt it be a Sainsburys carpark, as DiCks best mates with Lord Sainsbury? (in a 'fact-finding' trip to India last year, instead of taking Oxfam,Red Cross representatives, he took Ls instead...bastards.
Delete
ReplyDelete*Song for our times*
Big bully days are here again
Tories and friends make it clear again
So let's hear all about their japes again
Bullingdon days are here again
Being involved as a candidate in this year's General Election and seeing what my local Tory party and candidate got up to, nothing they may be accused of would surprise me.
ReplyDelete