The scurrilous attempt by our biggest selling newspaper to denigrate the character of the PM for political purposes

Richard Robinson‘s Speech Bubble

On Remebrance Sunday, Gordon Brown delivered a personal, sensitive and emotionally moving tribute to the Armed Forces. He referred to our soldiers as heroes, brave young people to the core, who fought in pursuit of peace. He wished us all to remember those who had lost their lives with a debt of gratitude for their sacrifices.

And he solemnly remarked:

“Each life lost represents a family in mourning: a table with an empty space this Christmas; a father who will not be their to walk his daughter down the aisle; a parent who has had to bury their child too soon; and a partner who has lost the person they had hoped to grow old with. It’s our sacred duty to celebrate the courage of the fallen, to honour their extraordinary sacrifice, and to remember them with pride. So as you pause at home or work, or kneel in church, or stand in front of a war memorial, remember all those who gave their tomorrow for our today. We owe them, and all our war dead, a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay.”

Less than twenty four hours later he found himself embroiled in a bitter row, fuelled by The Sun, clearly focused on further destroying the PM’s reputation and undermining his confidence.

The Sun itself clearly seeks to sit in the judgement seat as the self proclaimed champion of the people – and influence the outcome of the General Election. To facilitate this it has decided to unashamedly declare war on the Prime Minister.

Can we for a moment rationally consider the issue of the handwritten letter? As Lance Price, Director of Communications for Tony Blair, rightly asserted, it should have been checked first by Civil Servants. No real argument here, we can probably all agree on that.

In context though, can we please get a grip on real life? Should we judge the character of a person by the style of their handwriting? My writing is absolutely appalling, having typed and used computers, day in day out for the past twenty odd years. As a Constituency Office Manager for an MP and a local authority councillor, working often 14+ hours a day, I have no time to hand write letters. The fact that the PM (who deals with world matters on a scale one hundred and fifty times more complex than I do, and works around the clock) actually chose to write a letter himself, says something about the compassion of the man.

This is then nothing other than a scurrilous and shameful attempt by the country’s biggest selling newspaper to denigrate the character of the Prime Minister for political purposes. It is equally reprehensible how it has brought party politics into a forum where it plays no part; the grief of a nation, mourning those who have sacrificed lives in war.

Yes we can all fiercely debate the reasons why we are in Afghanistan, and no doubt agree on the many mistakes that have been made. But the tactics The Sun are using, exploiting a family’s grief to vilify the PM, smacks of the sort of authoritarian intrusion that the paper itself would deplore.

Handwriting styles and what was and wasn’t said in a telephone call is all really irrelevant to the challenges facing the country.

When it comes down to a choice give me any day the clunking and somewhat clumsy hand of Gordon Brown, and a Labour Government, compared to a Party, egged on by a newspaper that gleefully supports fox hunting, despises Europe, unashamedly promises redistribute taxes to the most wealthy and has no bold narrative spelling out how it would transform the future of this country’s citizens.

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