The Gordon Brown Style

Thursday, 19th March 2009

A couple of revealing entries from Chris Mullin's diaries that reveal the Prime Minister to be some ungodly (and unhealthy) combination of Uriah Heep and Lyndon Baines Johnson:

Wednesday July 4th, 2001:
Later, sitting on the terrace, I was joined by a member of the Blair inner circle*. Conversation soon turned to Gordon. I mentioned that following my departure from government, I had received a handwritten letter saying how much he had enjoyed working with me. It seems that every ex-Minister has received an identical letter. All the new Members have received letters too. He must have been up half the night writing them. No stone is left unturned. Gordon's machine churns night and day. My friend was scathing. "He's mad, quite mad."

And:

Saturday April 20th 2002:
To the County Hotel at Durham to address the annual dinner of the Crimewriters Association. Giles and Lisanne Radice were there. Lisanne told me that when the Treasury Select Comittee, which giles used to chair, published a report that was anything less than a perfect replica of the official position, Gordon Brown used to ring up Giles at midnight, incandescent with rage, f-king and blinding, demanding retractions, slamming the phone down. At times, she said, it was so bad that Giles stopped answering the phone when it rang after midnight because he knew it would be Gordon.

Labour MPs knew all this, and yet none of them was prepared to do the decent thing and stand against Brown. Frankly, Alastair Campbell's (alleged!) description of the PM as "psychologically flawed" seems but the half of it. That is to say that even by politicians' standards, Brown is unusually, er, "flawed".

*I suspect this is tactful editing and that the diary has been edited to remove a name here. Would be embarrassing for a member of the cabinet to be outed in this fashion...

Filed under: Brown (179 more articles) , Westminster (182 more articles)

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Burt

March 19th, 2009 1:26pm Report this comment

Blair should get most of the blame for leaving us this basket case. He of all people must have known what this charmless control freak would be like

Wily Trout

March 19th, 2009 1:35pm Report this comment

So loyalty to the party has out-weighed loyalty to the country. Or should that be the loyalty of the snout to the trough? It says volumes about the calibre of the people who get to the top of Labour. Arent' they supposed to serve the Country, not themselves?

Rhoda Klapp

March 19th, 2009 2:18pm Report this comment

The Trout has the right of it. If he's a complete ****ing nutcase, his colleagues ought to have the doctors in. There is no excuse for leaving the country under his control. They only think of themselves, although by no stretch of the imagination can any of them gain in this way, only delay the inevitable. Despicable.