The ability to sleep is once again defeating me, so I've taken solace in a cup of rubbish herbal tea and a perusal of tomorrow's/today's papers. Something jumped out as I read about the coming by-election in the Glasgow East seat, caused by the resignation of David Marshall MP. Mr Marshall (about whom I know nothing) told his party workers that he was stepping down on grounds of ill-health. That wasn't good enough for the government's spin doctors, who have let it be known - in unattributed briefings, of course - that "he could have been facing an investigation into his own parliamentary funding".
Do you think they've been stuck in default "Exterminate" mode for so long that they don't even realise when their name-blackening actually harms their own cause? From Rose Addis to Pam Warren and on (to David Kelly, of course, more than any other), those whose existence causes a problem for this government have had their reputations trashed through whispering, sibilant, dirty campaigns of innuendo and downright lies. Andy Burnham's crass fiction about David Davis and Shami Chakrabarti was bad enough, but at least he acted under a form of immoral logic (since the Labour Party lack the guts to fight the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, they may as well smear the likely victor ahead of time). Mr Burnham also had the decency, as he told his lies, to lift his dead-eyed gaze into the public sphere, rather than to rely on an off-the-record briefing.
But in the case of Mr Marshall I can't see any reason for the government to put it about that he may, at some time in the future, be subject to an expenses investigation; or more likely, given his resignation, that he might have been. Either the government knows that this was so, in which case it should produce the evidence for its case; or it should apologise to Mr Marshall for adding to the distress he's already suffering.
Why did they do it? Was it a cack-handed attempt to reassure the public that Labour members who break the rules on expenses will be subject to repercussions, even if only through damage to their reputations? Or has it now become a sort of autonomic response, the squirting of malice, sprayed without pity against anyone who gives the Prime Minister, that walking Moral Compass, a political headache?
Imagine the effect these briefings have had, are having, on Mr Marshall. Imagine being the source of them: the man or woman who chose to lift the phone, to speak to the journalist, to plant the story, to offer no evidence. Perhaps, tonight, sleeplessness is more common than we might think.
