This week, I was intending to introduce Crikey readers to the joys of UK New Labour-style merchandising via the website ‘Hazel for deputy‘ — set up to back the run of Blairite robot Hazel Blears for the deputy leadership coming up when Mr Tony is finally prised off the furniture at No. 10, and loyal deputy dawg John Prescott goes with him.

As a cursory glance at her website will show, Blears is the full New Labour horror story — representing a working-class and substantially Muslim constituency of Salford, she’s never made a peep of protest at the Iraq war, the reversal of opportunity etc etc, and her eerily fixed smile looks like something stuck badly to a balloon.

But Blairites are nothing if not modern, and Blears’s supporters have taken the idea — popular in Australian Labor circles — that Labour is neither a movement nor a party, but a brand. To this end, she, sorry they, have not only established a MySpace site — Hazel has 20 friends, which might not do the trick — but a whole range of Hazel merchandise, from t-shirts to environmentally friendly shopping-bags-for life, all bearing the Hazel brand. Forget the old-fashioned idea of talking to members and explaining your position — have a cap! With Hazel on it!

Alas, on Friday, it all went horribly wrong. As the website explains, all merchandise has been withdrawn from sale as it has emerged that far down the supply chain one of the companies making the t-shirts may have had a small fire in their factory in Thailand which may have burnt to death a small number of people, like, erm 65.

As the website reports: “As you can imagine we are horrified that any product sold on this site might have any connection to exploitation of workers anywhere in the world.” Exploitation in the global textile industry. Who’da thought?

Meanwhile, Hazel’s blog, which sounds like it was written by the office photocopier, details life on the campaign trail for the Scottish elections: “At Stockton South CLP I attended a dinner, where Patricia Scotland was the guest speaker. She went down really well.”

Will these people stop at nothing to garner support?