The Devil And (Is?) Mr. Blair

"I'm renouncing Tony Blair, the Devil, New Labour and all their works ... Is it any wonder I urge everyone from the centre and left in British politics to give Blair a bloody nose at the election and to vote Liberal Democrat to ensure the tawdry New Labour project is dead? ... Look at Blair standing in the shadow of Gordon Brown and you can see the power ebbing away from him. He is now an empty husk who should be thrown on the scrapheap of history.

-Long-time Labour backbench MP Brian Sedgemore (Hackney South & Shoreditch), who announced today that he has defected to the Liberal Democrats, in a must-read, uproarious column in the Independent.

Sure, Sedgemore is not running for re-election, but the timing of his defection has to hurt Tony -- 10 days before Britons head to the polls? This kind of political noise is going to be difficult for Labour to ignore, particularly as Iraq has become Issue No. 1 in the last couple of days. Then again, as Sedgemore says himself in what is undoubtedly a prescient observation, 'I will be rubbished by the New Labour spin machine. Mad Dog [John] Reid will be set on me. John Prescott will say, "Brian? Brian who?"'