Still reeling from disastrous local election results and the loss of London to Boris Johnson, last weekend Gordon Brown had to face the memoirs of his “Scouse nemesis”, Cherie Blair, says Matthew d’Ancona in The Sunday Telegraph.
Cherie’s not the only “political ghost” haunting Brown, says Julian Glover in The Guardian. Lord Levy and his “terrifying coiffure” popped up in The Mail on Sunday and John Prescott’s “grin has been stalking him” in The Sunday Times.
All three authors claim it is coincidence that their books have been published now. But the reality is that “the sharpest political books always arrive when a government is on the slide”. If Brown had been ahead of Cameron in the polls, would the authors have dared to be so rude – “and would we have been so interested”?
These memoirs are vain, disloyal and smug, says Libby Purves in The Times. Lord Levy says Blair doesn’t think Gordon can win and insinuates that the Blairs were in it for money and fame; Cherie says that Levy “knows nothing” and that Brown could win, “provided genius Tony advises him”. She also lets it be known that she toned down her criticisms of Brown, so that “whenever she does stick the knife in, we know to add 30%”.
John Prescott brags that he called Tony “a little shit” and urged him to sack Gordon. But these books are “anything but vengeful“, says Lance Price in The Daily Telegraph. Brown “probably feels lucky to have got off so lightly”. The irony is that it might have been better for him if Cherie or Prescott had “come out with all guns blazing” so that he would attract a sympathy vote. He has, says David Hughes, elsewhere in The Daily Telegraph.
These memoirs, along with Frank Field’s disparaging remarks about Brown in a recent BBC World Service interview, have turned the “exasperation and anger” on the Labour benches to “pity”. Being pitied is “not generally rated a useful leadership attribute“, but as Brown faces a potentially damaging by-election in Crewe and Nantwich, the “flicker of sympathy ignited by the tittle-tattle that passes these days for political memoirs and the insensitive dabbling into his mental health may give him one last chance”.