Martin Bright

Fear and Loathing at the Heart of Government

There’s some really fascinating stuff knocking around today. Rachel Sylvester’s column in The Times is really quite extraordinary. She claims that in a conference call with Peter Mandelson and Ed Balls, the Prime Minister could not be persuaded to concentrate on domestic policy and kept returning to the international global crisis. Were there others involved in the call or is one of Balls or Mandelson briefing the Blairite Sylvester (hmm, I wonder)?

Pete Hoskin over at Coffee House has suggested that the level of humility in Alistair Darling’s interview in today’s Telegraph and similar noises from Ed Balls suggest that perhaps Brown will go for a mea culpa of his own in America. As I have said consistently that I believe Darling is a man of honour, whose loyalty was thrown back in his face last summer.

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