Shame It's Not Friday - The Tuesday Tosser?

I feel under a strange kind of obligation to blog about Derek Draper, seeing as he is back in the news, and he and I were at University together. There, and in the student movement at large, Draper and I did battle, he for the right, I for the left.

I find it a little hard to understand why Gordon Brown has not twigged that for as long as Derek Draper has any association with his party, stuff like the e-mail scandal will happen. There may be weeks, months or years between such scandals, but happen they will.

You see, Mr Draper can not help himself. Sure, he is political, clever, and one of the few actual ideological adherents of the Labour right's project - as distinct from those along for the ride. But essentially, he enjoys manipulation, intrigue and stitching up much more than he would ever enjoy political battle. He also shares a particuarly unpleasant trait with a historical succession of Labour figures running from Ramsay MacDonald and Aneurin Bevan through to Draper's hero Peter Mandelson: he adores the company and attention of the rich and important.

The real political point at the heart of this small scandal is that it is only when practically nothing distinguishes political parties politically that they seek to distinguish themselves personally. If they were supporters of an even halfway-decent Labour government, Draper and Damian McBride would be exchanging emails about how to bring out the political differences, how to expose the Tories as the vile, pro-capitalist, anti-working-class scum that they are. But when they are supporters of a Labour government which is also vile, pro-capitalist, anti-working-class scum, then there is not much purchase in that particular strategy - so hey, diss their personal traits instead.

So I think maybe I have worked out why Brown has not twigged ... Because he has left Labour with no other way to distinguish themselves from the Tories than smear campaigns, and Draper is a natural at those.

How repulsive.