Jowell’s torment is a gift from the gods to Gordon Brown

There has been an iron rule at Westminster since New Labour won power nine years ago. When Brown is strong Blair is weak, and vice versa. Imagine a seesaw. This weekend Brown is up, feet dangling in the air, smirking. The Chancellor is the big winner from the Jowell debacle, so much so that it is hard to see how the Prime Minister can ever recover. Blair’s premiership — like John Major’s only much more so — has ended up mired in sleaze. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, naturally, is taking full advantage.

In marked contrast to Tony Blair and his allies, Gordon Brown is impervious to the trappings of office. This has always been the case. I remember conversations with my friend Charlie Whelan, Gordon Brown’s former spin-doctor, on the eve of the 1997 general election. Charlie would look forward to lavish weekends at Dorneywood, the magnificent country retreat long enjoyed by Chancellors as a perk of office.

‘It’ll be bloody marvellous,’ mused Charlie. ‘Snooker tables an’ all. Big-screen TVs. There’s tennis courts — what do they want them for? Bound to be one or two decent local pubs. Soon as the election’s over, we’ll be over there and take a butcher’s.’

Sad to say, we never found out if Dorneywood really did possess the facilities that Charlie Whelan fondly envisaged. Gordon Brown never went there, not even once, and has not done so to this day. At weekends he would travel to Scotland to visit his mother and attend to constituency duties.

This unfeigned austerity has been further in evidence over recent weeks. A quiet announcement went round Whitehall two weeks ago that the government car fleet is to be upgraded. All Cabinet ministers are to be awarded a Jaguar car.