Sympathy for Gordon Brown is not a common emotion in Westminster, but this week only the coldest heart could fail to feel for the Prime Minister. It is mortifying to have misspelt the name of a fallen soldier, even if the mistake was minor. To have his misery played out in front of the national media, complete with a taped conversation of him being berated by the soldier’s mother, can only have been devastating.
But the power of this sorry episode lies in the truths it represents. Jacqui Janes, whose Grenadier Guardsman son Jamie, 20, was killed last month, was richly entitled to berate the Prime Minister for the lack of equipment in Afghanistan. It was his decision to fight two wars on a peacetime military budget. The widow of Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe (who was killed by a roadside bomb in July after warning about the lack of helicopters) would have felt no less angry.
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