Labour has personalised and debased politics, with a recklessness born of their desperate wait for defeat. After their failed attempt to gather information and smear General Dannatt, they have released information of his expenditure into the public domain via Lord Foulkes. It turns out that they still do not have enough information and are reduced to revealing their own ignorance:
Parliamentary answers provided by Baroness Taylor, a junior defence minister, also showed that Sir Richard undertook 20 separate journeys by helicopter to visit units and attend conferences and ceremonies.....
Lord Foulkes said that the use of helicopters at a time when they are in short supply on the front line in Afghanistan was something which “raised eyebrows”.
The onus was on Labour to demonstrate that the helicopters were not only necessary for the Afghanistan campaign but that they had been held back for the particular purpose of ferrying top brass around. It is a foolish accusation as there is more than one type of helicopter and the media headlines are bound to focus on the smear, not the accusation.
What happened to the spin machine? It seems that the practices remain endemic and embedded with Labour's political practice but, without a central command, they contribute to the perceptions of sleaze and dishonesty. It is too late for Labour to alter its political culture before the election.