No one expects Hazel Blears to win the race to be deputy leader of the Labour Party, or even come second. She is confidently expected to be an also-ran, merely unnecessarily making up the numbers. It is a shame that the cards are stacked against her, because unlike some of her rivals, she is not “establishment” and inspite of her abilities and obvious success in her political career, she is still refreshingly “ordinary”, remaining indistinguishable in many respects from those constituents who elected her, an authentic representative of the people.
Why then, has her campaign become so accident prone? First we had the “T-shirt” spanner and now her special adviser Paul Richards, who has been assisting with her campaign, is alleged to have breached rules by, in effect, working on her campaign using “day job” tools and time.
These “minor distractions” did not fall into the public domain by themselves. Someone pushed them there, deliberately. One ponders why, if Hazel Blears’ campaign is so doomed to failure, someone believes that it needs a helping hand down the pan? Perhaps Miss Blears has more support in the Labour Party than is generally supposed. I hope so.
Hazel Blears' campaign to be Deputy Leader gains momentum