Peter Hoskin

The insiders bite back

Another weekend, another set of embarrassing revelations for Gordon Brown.  The Mail on Sunday continues its serialisation of Peter Watt’s Inside Out; this time focusing on what Watt wryly describes as Labour’s “plans … for swapping the most electorally successful Labour Prime Minister in our history for Gordon Brown.”  

Ok, so the Blairite-Brownite wars are nothing new, but this alleged Brown quote, made at the time of the cash-for-honours scandal, deserves adding to the notebook:

“Later, rumours swirled in No10 of a furious bust-up between the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. ‘I’ll bring you down with sleaze,’ the Chancellor was said to have yelled.”

Although, to my mind, this passage could say just as much about Brown’s way of operating:

“My colleagues and I were shocked when, during the long negotiations about how the contest would work, he blatantly tried to skew the process as it was being drafted to make it more difficult for anyone else to run.

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