For those of you who remember him, you might have read the other day that Derek Draper has returned to Labour Party politics. You remember him, he the New Labour errand boy and Peter Mandelson’s best mate until they fell out and he got burned in the “Lobbygate Scandal” where he famously told an undercover reporter: “There are 17 people who count in this government. And to say I am intimate with every one of them is the understatement of the century.”
Anyway, you probably read he’s back. The Guardian reported it on Tuesday. I thought about posting something then, but didn’t as the idea of spending time pulling all the links together and wasting energy on someone as deeply unpleasant as Draper is just wrong. Fortunately someone else has done it for me. This was on Popbitch today and it seems only fair to share.
“November 2004, former New Labour lobbyist Derek Draper, back in Britain after studying to be a psychotherapist in California, wrote an article in the New Statesman saying that he was the only one from his peer group to have stepped away from politics and made a new life.
“Draper said that politics exerted a powerful pull on those with no self-worth, ‘For anyone with an underdeveloped sense of self-esteem, this is a lifeline… I suspect that what ultimately matters to my old comrades is not what they do for politics, as they claim, but what politics does for them.’
“So Draper bravely went off, married GMTV muppet Kate Garraway [Wiki: In certain circles, it was considered an unlikely match; Piers Morgan was quoted as saying, “…if I’d known that the bar was set that low, I’d have had a go myself.”] and threw himself into developing a TV career. Attempts for the pair to become the new political Richard and Judy haven’t worked and the high point has been appearing as Jeremy Kyle’s on-screen therapist.
“So how has this quest for self-worth and the kind of stable personal and professional life which is deaf to what he called “Westminster’s siren call” turned out?
July 2008, ‘Draper is to be the first appointment by Labour’s general secretary, Ray Collins, to help revive the party’s fortunes,’ The Guardian.”
Right now Labour is in deep trouble, but bringing back Draper or associating with him is a desperate move.
