Malloch Brown’s unintentional parting shots

Mark Malloch-Brown started off in government with an interview in The Daily Telegraph where he said too much and he is ending his stint in government the same way. Malloch-Brown stresses that he doesn’t want to cause any trouble for Brown but then says a string of things that are damaging to the Prime Minister.

The line that must have caused the most consternation in Downing Street, and from which Malloch-Brown has already tried to walk back, is his admission that ‘We definitely don’t have enough helicopters’ in Afghanistan. To put it mildly, this is not what Brown has been saying these past few weeks.

There are a couple of other unhelpful lines in the interview. Asking if his plan to do two years meant getting out before a defeat, MMB replies: “Yeah. well at the time I was appointed, [that] wasn’t quite so clear. Then Gordon was getting a boost in the polls.”