Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

I only wanted to do a short blog on the whole McBride/ Draper smear email affair to say that I think that it is just so sad to see a political party so desperate as to come up with this type of negative, nasty campaigning. It does show that Labour on a UK level has stooped to a new low, and I don’t think this will reflect well on them in future elections. Its even more sickening as this has been orchestrated by one of Gordon Brown’s special advisers- from the heart of the New Labour government in Westminster. Special advisers have strict rules to keep to in terms of performing party political activity. McBride knew full well that what he was doing was unacceptable from the outset. Time will tell now whether any Ministers, or Gordon Brown himself will be implicated further in all of this mess.

Even if it was all to be orchestrated from the sidelines from a relatively unknown Labour party member, I could understand that a little bit more than it coming from the Government- they should have much more important things to do with their time than think of ways to ruin people’s careers. I always think that when people start to attack others on a personal level that they lose the argument straight away. Most people have little time for that type of action.

Where are the high level political debates? We are in the middle of a recession for pity’s sake! If this is Labour’s way of trying to divert attention away from  economic problems, then this should be flagged up at every opportunity. People want to know about how the government is going to help people out of their financial difficulties, how they will help industry recover -not about their efforts in trying to smear high profile opposition politicians.

I’ve just read Nadine Dorries MP’s blog for the first time. She says this in one blog post-

‘Easter just hasn’t happened.

Spent most of it feeling sick, anxious and worried that any of my friends or family might think that a single word of what was in the emails was true’.

I do feel sorry for her having to fire fight, and to justify herself, and I believe that she is now taking legal action. McBride etc were obviously not thinking about the people behind the politicians. If they had done that for a second even, then they would not have even considered pressing send on those emails. Its OK for people to read about all of this on blogs and in the papers, but we forget how hard this is for those involved on a personal, practical level. I think I’ll end by linking to this article on the Independent’s website today. Says it all really.