Tom Watson has contacted me directly to deny any involvement in the whole McBride/Draper black propaganda caper.
I rather feel that he ought to have noticed what was going on immediately around him. But the evidence implicating him was circumstantial, and my enquiries today of people who know him personally seem to indicate that he is not a vicious character.
So I accept his statement.
If the UK is really not becoming a police state, then the police must demonstrate their independence of the government today by immediately arresting Damian McBride, Charlie Whelan and Tom Watson for the crime of misconduct in public office.
Their offices should already have been raided and sealed, and their computers seized. These disgusting New Labour spin doctors are a cancer attached to the heart of the British government. They pose an infinitely more fundamental threat to British society and values than terrorism does. We can get through the odd bomb attack. We cannot get through the radical corruption of the democratic system.
The Crown Prosecution Service defines the principles of the criminal offence of misconduct in public office:
“The elements of misconduct in public office are:
a) A public officer acting as such.
b) Wilfully neglects to perform his duty and/or wilfully misconducts himself.
c) To such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public’s trust in the office holder.
d) Without reasonable excuse or justification”
http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/misconduct_in_public_office/
Plainly they are guilty as hell. The only possible defence I can see is to say that at the time they cooked up this plot to libel the Opposition they were not “Acting as public officers”. But I do not believe that will wash. They were inside government offices – indeed two of them in the heart of Downing St – in office hours, and communicting with each other on official computers and using official email addresses. I understand that there is no email addressed to Watson, but he is mentioned in the emails, is in charge of the government’s internet straegy and sits in the same office as McBride.
Labour must be hoist with their own petard. They have insisted that the plainly party political dirty work being done by the likes of Brown’s long term creature McBride, is public service. We as taxpayers have been bearing the huge salaries and expenses of hundreds of these vile New Labour hacks for over a decade. They cannot now turn round and claim that what you and I have been forced to pay them to do for the last decade, was not done as public officers. While a tautologous argument that misconduct is evidently not public service, is obviously excluded by reasonable construction of the meaning and purpose of the law.
There can seldom have been a more definite case of misconduct in public office. If the police do not act, it will be an utter disgrace. Even Nixon could not prevent the Watergate burglars from bein arrested.
The behaviour of these vile people is not just a sin, it is a crime. A crime which strikes at the credibility of British democracy. We must demand their arrest.
I criticised Paul Staines earlier this week, but it would be wrong not to acknowledge that he has done a great service here.
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