Was Brown really serious about this offer?

I’ve been musing on Fraser’s post about the Ashdown affair and can’t help thinking that Brown must have know that Ashdown would say no: Northern Ireland Secretary is hardly something worth breaking with your party for. Indeed, if you think about it, is hard to see what the attraction of the job is even to someone like Ashdown who has personal links to the province. The ‘heroic’ period of peace-making, which wasn’t heroic at all to my mind but that’s an issue for another day, is over and the prizes for solving the Irish Question have already been awarded.

If Brown had really wanted to bring Ashdown inside the tent he could have tempted him with something involving Iraq or Afghanistan. He could have put Ashdown in charge of a government, rather than think tank, Baker-Hamilton style Iraq