{"id":5370,"date":"2004-12-15T19:22:29","date_gmt":"2004-12-15T19:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grayblog.co.uk\/?p=5370"},"modified":"2004-12-15T19:22:29","modified_gmt":"2004-12-15T19:22:29","slug":"devil-you-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/2004\/12\/15\/devil-you-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Devil you know?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, at last, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/in_depth\/uk_politics\/2004\/blunkett_resigns\/default.stm\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Beeb\">Blunkett has resigned<\/a>, though only for a few minor misdemeanours and not because of his policies and practices.<br \/>\nWhat worries me though is that the even less attractive political lardarse, Charles Clarke, is tipped to be his replacement. Firepan and fire? Would we be better with the devil we know? (Probably not, but who can tell?)<br \/>\nInteresting to see that the PM persists in supporting Blunkett. I would have felt that this was the time to be putting some distance between Number 10 and the outgoing Home Secretary. Blair has been hanging on to Blunkett desperately during the past couple of weeks, as he is one of his few remaining supporters in the fight against the Brownites. Now, however, we see that Blunkett has become incredibly unpopular with the backbenchers and the rest of the cabinet &#8211; to such an extent that the Chief Whip hurled a copy of his autobiography across the Commons chamber (though that says as much about her as it does about him) &#8211; and, as such, it can not be doing the PM any good at all to be continuing to support him. The question is, will this encourage the Brownites to move on the PM before or after an election?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, at last, Blunkett has resigned, though only for a few minor misdemeanours and not because of his policies and practices. What worries me though is that the even less attractive political lardarse, Charles Clarke, is tipped to be his replacement. Firepan and fire? Would we be better with the devil we know? (Probably not, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grayblog.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}