Labour’s heavies make the Sopranos look like the Vienna Boys’ Choir

Watching Labour’s 2005 election campaign unfold, I’m afraid words fail me. The great Democrat governor of New York Mario Cuomo once remarked that ‘we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose’. And even though I struggle to find the language to do justice to Labour’s campaign, one poet does capture their approach perfectly: Rudyard Kipling.

Seeing Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and Alan Milburn on the offensive irresistibly brings back some lines from ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’. ‘The Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,/ And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.’

Under their direction, the government has reverted to its worst instincts — to smear, threaten and distort. The pledge that attended Campbell’s departure from Downing Street, the resolution to abandon the culture of spin, joins the list of other broken promises which constitute new Labour’s distinctive contribution to British public life.