Madeleine McCann And Spinning The New Labour Of Love
“DAVID Miliband was under fire yesterday on turning his back on the parents of missing Madeleine McCann.”
Is this the result of Gordon Brown’s no-spin policy, a departure from Tony Blair’s heart-on-shirtsleeve caring? No picture of missing Madeleine on Gordon’s mug of tea.
When Tony’s Chancellor, Gordon promised to help “in any way he could”. Back then the MPs in the chamber were wearing yellow ribbons. They no longer wear them. Have they forgotten or just moved on with a clean slate?
But Madeleine McCann is an ongoing tragedy. She’s not been found. So what’s changed? Was it mere exploitation back then, a mawkish and cynical move to show the carers in a good light?
Now we get what the Express calls “fury at Labour’s snub to family of Madeleine.”
Miliband is the new Foreign Secretary. His predecessor, Margaret Beckett, is said to have made “regular calls” to the McCanns to see how they were.
Amid war and famine Beckett found time to call the grief-worn McCanns and relay her feelings of sorrow. A source, said to be close to the McCanns, tells the Express that Beckett even broke off “important” calls to Washington to telephone Kate and Gerry.
But not 41-year-old David Miliband. Not the country’s youngest Foreign Secretary since David Owen, 38, took the job in 1977.
Miliband has a child. Is the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, billed by the media as “every parent’s worst nightmare”, no longer so?
Says the source: “If I were Kate and Gerry, I would have expected something but there hasn’t been anything.”
Is this right? Do they really expect the new broom who represents the Government overseas to call them? And does anyone really care that Miliband doesn’t? There is talk of “fury”, but who is furious?
The Story So Far
If the McCann story were a novel, a mystery, we would be in the middle chapters, reading along because we have started the story and made a commitment to finish it. But the end is not in sight. It may never end. The story is getting tedious. How long do we stay with it?
Of course, the McCanns do not complain. They just want to keep their daughter’s name to the fore. And with no little success. They have already had more media coverage then, for instance, the five Britons being held by Islamists is Baghdad; countless other murders and heinous crimes that have not been reported so avidly.
And all is linked. The media are working with the McCanns. And the McCanns are working the media, or so they suppose.
This means the McCanns are being invited to fill column inches on the promise that anything they do or say will to keeping Madeleine’s name alive. Nothing is too wandering or tangential.
Here’s Gerry McCann: “It was heartening for Kate and I to learn of the release of Alan Johnston after almost four months in captivity.”
Anything and everything the McCanns do and say is newsworthy. But are we listening? And do we still care?
Posted: 6th, July 2007 | In: Madeleine McCann Comments (32) | TrackBack | Permalink
