Scrap all my gloomy prognoses of New Labour meltdown in 2010; thankfully, Derek ‘Dolly’ Draper has accepted an unpaid part-time appointment and will advise the party on how to win the next election. We’re saved! Saved, I tell you!
Or maybe not. Few can seriously believe that this discredited and deeply unpleasant little man - whose track record in influence-peddling as a glorified PR merchant in the early years of the first Blair administration will surely be exhumed in great detail over the next few days – will do anything to boost Labour’s fortunes.
Let me give you some idea of this guy's people skills. After all, I vividly remember our first meeting at a champagne party thrown by a Westminster lobbyist at some point in the mid 1990s.
Both he and I were members of Vauxhall Labour Party at the time, and our reputations preceded each other. I knew who he was, and he knew who I was. Moreover, it was a hot evening, and both of us had partaken fully of the hospitality on offer.
Although I tried to keep the discussion civil, within minutes of being introduced I found myself forced into in a high volume full-on public slanging match on the merits of Blairism and socialism.
Draper very early on began shouting and then aggressively initiated use of the crudest four-letter obscenities. This move – clearly designed to intimidate – appears to be one of his standard debating tactics. While things didn’t come to blows, they certainly could have done.
You can get some measure of the hubris of the man by some of his reported comments at the time his corrupt political introductions racket – which consisted of offering privileged access to ministers in exchange for cash - was rumbled by investigative journalist Greg Palast. ‘What I really am is a commentator-fixer,’ he self-importantly opined. ‘Your Mayor Daley has nothing on me.’
Nor were his actions inspired by any desire to make the world a better place, he candidly admitted: ‘I just want to stuff my bank account at £250 an hour.’ Clearly, his morality is about as dodgy as the tie he is wearing in the photo above.
Cash for access, as the affair became known, was to prove Draper’s downfall. He was, in short order, dismissed by the lobbyist for whom he worked, while his national newspaper column was axed.
As he ruefully relected in a subsequent radio interview: ‘I am a bit of a tosser’. That is one of the few things he is ever known to have said that found widespread popular resonance across the labour movement.
Hired by former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie as a Talk Radio presenter – that station certainly picks its Labour cast-offs carefully, right? - he was sacked from that gig after a prank on-air call, in which he claimed to be sitting in a Jacuzzi in an Amsterdam brothel with a prostitute called Claudia.
At a time when Labour urgently needs to reconnect with ordinary voters, giving this man any position of responsibility whatsoever is surely extraordinary. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope he doesn’t have the opportunity to cause too much damage. He should stick to purveying the psychobabble by which he has earned his crust in recent years.
Posted at 13:30, 16 July 2008
Comments (11)
You just don't get it.
He is the epitome of New Labour.
It's hardly surprising that, in their desperation, they seek to return to their glory days and the characters from then.
The fact that he was just a chancer who happened, by great fortune, to be able to coast the anti Tory wave and make it look as of it was his and other like minded souls doing, to the simpletons of Labour, is neither here nor there. He actually has denigrated his own abilities in fields like PR, but doubtless not by enough.
Have you noticed that you are working for the same ends(then and) now? You will all be going down with him.
Draper's choice of theoretical orientation in the psychotherapy arena is also politically suspect. Apparently he practices something called "CBT plus". New Labour's plan is to use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to get 'depressed' people back into work. They favour goal-orientated quick-fix solutions such as CBT because, ideologically, CBT depends upon the patient wanting to change. This way, it can portray those depressed people who don't make progress within CBT as simply immoral, lazy scroungers pushing up the numbers of people on disability benefits.
Draper's "CBT plus" is apparently CBT with a little more psychodynamic psychotherapy thrown in as an added extra... So the government will be able to tell these people - via the mediation of therapy - that it was their parents which made them lazy immoral scroungers.
Of course, if we had democratic workplaces, decent council housing etc, then maybe these people wouldn't be so depressed. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a shit job is just a shit job.
Don't forget defamation laws apply to the internet Dave ;)
Dave, I have to say I disagree with you completely on one very fundamental point in your post.
That is a very nice tie. I've always thought so.
Lucky you for not meeting him til the 90s. I was at university with him in the 80s. He was a proud right winger when everyone else, even the, erm, right wingers, were pretending to be left wing. We did battle the whole time.
You love him Janine, admit it.
'At a time when Labour urgently needs to reconnect with ordinary voters, giving this man any position of responsibility whatsoever is surely extraordinary. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed and hope he doesn’t have the opportunity to cause too much damage.'
Personally I'd like Draper to do as much damage as he can, as soon as he can. There is nothing positive he can do, so let's get over with him quickly.
Since his marriage to teh very nice Kate Geraghty off teh telly and teh birth of their child, I'm sure he's a changed man. NOT.
He fits right in with New Labour, he would have been in the gang with Blair, Miliband, Balls, Hutton, and that tosser Purnell. This is a gang of people who seem to have joined new Labour around about the same time, all have looked at ways of getting from A to B and earn a lot of money, they all agreed to stuff Labour to form New Labour. As one New Labour personality said to me what would you rather ten years of Labour or a life time of New Labour, easy ten years.
I alo met the guy up in Teesside where he was occasionally guarding Peter M's local flank. At the time i was a councillor on the now defunct Cleveland County Coucil and a Committee Chair. On a couple of occasions he did approach me asking for Peter's pet constituency projects to be fast tracked, and did this in a fairly abrasive way (and that is putting it mildly) He seemed to terat us likee provincial hicks. However i have heard comments since that he has - perhaps at long last - matured and joined the human race. Only time will tell.
Surely part of the problem is that no-one wants the job? I remember a few months back when someone rejected the job of Labour Party chairman because Labour was so shafted.