On that, there was no evidence to suspect anything other than Blair's megalomania.

It's not like he did it alone. Bliar was backed by a large fraction of the people who ended up backing Ashton, and that does reflect negatively on those people. Which cannot help but reflect negatively on Ashton in turn. This is not (entirely) guilt by association either. Politics is at least partly a patronage game, and I'm not sure I like the thought of somebody backed by Bliar's patrons.

Now, Bliar undoubtedly did call in a lot of favours from his establishment backers. And he does undoubtedly have a fairly precise notion of the location of a respectable number of buried bodies (both literally and figuratively speaking). But he is not a PR deity who can singlehandedly conjure up a campaign of this magnitude. Which means that a lot of his backers did so without having to be compelled by old loyalty or outright blackmail.

That being said, I don't know Ashton, and there's a sufficient number of Old Labour people still around that her party affiliation is not an instant disqualifier in my book.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.