Another day, another former Labour insider confessing their true feelings about Gordon Brown . . . and in the process potentially damaging what election hopes there are left for the party.
The Mail on Sunday today dedicates six pages to its first extract from Inside Out: My Story of Betrayal and Cowardice at the Heart of New Labour, a book by the former general secretary of the Labour Party Peter Watt.
Watt discusses the election that never was, claiming that limousines were circling parliament to take MPs on the campaign trail when Brown made a U-turn live on TV.
At this point, stories of disunity at the heart of the Brown administration are nothing new. But, in a fresh spin, Watt draws the International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander — who had been mentored and backed by Brown — into the intrigue. Apparently Alexander said of the election:
The truth is, Peter, we have spent ten years working with this guy, and we don’t actually like him. We have always thought that the longer the British public had to get to know him, the less they would like him as well.
Watt quotes him at another point saying:
You’d imagine that after ten years of waiting for this, and ten years complaining about Tony, we would have some idea of what we are going to do, but we don’t seem to have any policies. For God’s sake, Harriet’s helping write the manifesto!
Clearly, there are fundamental and increasingly bitter divisions within New Labour, as last week’s failed coup attempt illustrated with painful clarity. I can understand that people might feel desperate to speak out — or I would understand, had they done so a year ago, or even six months ago. Acting on the cusp of a general election strikes me as showing all the concern for the potential fallout of a toddler smashing its toys in a tantrum. That said, it’s worth noting that a poll for the Sunday Telegraph published yesterday showed that Labour, weirdly, had gained a point despite the failed coup.
It makes more sense for Watt to act now than it did for Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt last week: he says he was treated unfairly when he was forced to take the blame for the “Donorgate” scandal and resign, so he obviously wants to inflict maximum damage.
And yet, call me idealistic, but isn’t this a little petty? Hoon, Hewitt and Watt are all members of the Labour Party, and were once at the very centre of it. With a general election in the offing, is a personal vendetta against Gordon Brown really more important than salvaging that election?
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