Labour, like the Tories before them, have forgotten that power corrupts

I long ago concluded that the present Government was worm-eaten, exhausted, dishonest, incompetent, lazy, mendacious, ignorant, rotten, false, disreputable, deceitful, unsavoury, squalid, abominable, soiled, piratical, shifty, discreditable, infamous, improper, obscene, hateful, impure, degraded, dilapidated, shabby, grovelling, discredited, renownless, tarnished, disgraced, shameless, creeping, abject, two-faced, unscrupulous, villainous, treacherous, untrustworthy, prevaricating, sinister, crawling, insincere, fishy, spurious, unclean, felonious, infamous, venal, base, vile, bribable, rancid, disloyal, scheming, unsavoury, sickening, fetid, nauseating, putrid, defaulting, mouldering, evil, vicious, damnable, maleficent, wrong, ineffectual, mean, inferior, contemptible, superficial, irrelevant, expendable, powerless, pathetic, nugatory, impotent, jumped-up, cheap, insalubrious, flea-ridden, unsound, nasty, baneful, foul-tonged, cursed, unwarranted, execrable, damned, abnormal, unreasonable, virtueless, peccant, sinful, unworthy, hopeless, incorrigible, tergiversating, brutalised, nefarious, culpable, scandalous, worthless, flagitious, gross, indefensible and unpardonable to say the least.

This was Bernard Levin's analysis of the Tory Government following Tony Blair's election as Labour leader back in 1994. 15 years later, the same could be said about the current Labour government.

Labour have enjoyed an unprecedented three terms in office, but the downside of being re-elected again and again is that you tend to forget that it was the voters who put you there. Complacency sets in and you start to believe that you are entitled to remain perpetually in power.

After 12 years in office, Labour have become sleazy, dishonest and like the Tories before them, downright nasty. Some have commented that Labour's sin is worse as it aspires to the high minded ideals of social justice and equality. How naive!

There is an old saying, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Labour are suffering from the same old malaise that affects all parties that have been in power too long. I think we have now reached the point where an economic recovery will make little difference to Labour's re-election prospects. Once you have the lost the trust of electorate, there is no gratitude from them.

Is the Damian McBride affair Gordon Brown's "Black Wednesday"

In April 1992, in the midst of a deep recession, the British electorate gave the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt and narrowly re-elected them to a fourth term in office. But just five months later, their reputation for competent handling of the economy was shattered by Black Wednesday. It has taken 15 years for their reputation to recover.

As Gordon Brown emerged triumphantly from "saving the world" towards the end of 2008, there were many who may have likewise concluded "better the devil you know than the devil you don't". But after the latest revelations emerging from the Damian McBride affair, it's clear that the current administration is more interested in smearing political opponents (including those in its own party) than saving the economy. After all this, can anyone honestly say they trust these guys to run the country?