Has Tom Harris fallen victim to Ed’s new assertiveness?

I thought that Mike Smithson at Political Betting had asked number 432 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No when I saw his post this morning.

Glad to have it confirmed by Tom Harris himself (right), in a post-final post on his blog:

What’s provoked me to make this last and final post (honest) is Mike Smithson’s question – which I trust will feature in John Rentoul’s ongoing and successful series of posts entitled “Questions to which the answer is no” – “Has Tom Harris fallen victim to Ed’s new assertiveness?”

Never, at any point in the whole of my blogging career – including the period when I was a minister – has anyone in the Labour Party asked me to stop blogging. Not once. The last conversation I had with EdM ended with him telling me: “Keep up the blogging.”

In fact, the only thing that could have persuaded me to keep up the blogging would have been if any senior member of the party had “instructed” me to give it up. That would have been fun.

I said at the time that it would be brilliant but a shame in one way if Harris were elected to the shadow cabinet, because he had said he would give up blogging if he were. Now we get the worst of both worlds. He’s not in the shadow cabinet and he has stopped blogging. It’s a sad day.

Update: Loveandgarbage draws my attention to number 433, asked in response to Harris’s decision by Iain Dale on Twitter:

I wonder if we’re experiencing the gradual death of the political blogosphere.

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• AlanGiles

  Well, all good things come to an end. So do bad and mediocre things as well

• http://twitter.com/Broxted Ciaran Rehill

  No John we are experiencing those who “Know better” and wish us to “Know our place” finbally being given the heave-ho.

• http://twitter.com/Broxted Ciaran Rehill

  Put a Like” on you but it has “gone”.

• MaSek12

  Who the hell cares? One incompetent commie toad does not like another? They do not even like themselves! How could they?

• MayBrian

  Do you think that Nick Clegg still loves David Cameron?
  Cameron’s policies have virtually guaranteed that Clegg will not be returned to his Sheffield seat at the next general election. Is there an agreement that Cameron will acquire a safe Tory seat for Clegg prior to the next GE. Which Tory MP will be displaced to the Lords to that end?
  The Indie’ should commission a poll, in Sheffield, to confirm re-election Clegg’s chances. Then a wider poll to determine which MP is most hated throughout the UK. I imagine that Clegg will top that poll, in view of his betrayal of the British people with the Tories.
  Clegg and the Tories, who would have believed it six months ago …?