ALISTAIR GIVES THE PM A LITTLE HAND.... IN THE SMALL OF HIS BACK

Alistair Darling has added to the “Bully Boy Brown ” controversy by telling Sky News that people working for the prime minister tried to damage him because he told the truth about the economy. This confirms reports in Andrew Rawnsley’s book that Brown’s aides tried to undermine the chancellor after he forecast the worse economic downturn for 60 years.

In the interview Darling confirmed that No 10 worked against him. He made his “60-year” prediction in an interview he gave whilst on holiday at his croft in Scotland in the summer of 2008. Afterwards, Downing Street aides briefed journalists saying that his prediction had damaged the economy. They suggested that he should be asked to go.

“Nobody likes the sort of briefing that goes on,” Mr Darling said, “the forces of hell were unleashed”.

According to Mr Rawnsley, Brown’s friends including Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride, then his political spokesman, started a campaign to undermine the chancellor over his interview, raising the prospect that he would be fired from his high level post.

When he was asked if he thought that McBride and Whelan had briefed against him, Mr Darling said: “Of course you have people saying things.”

Of course he was bound to add, referring to the fact that McBride was sacked over his disgraceful lying slurs of leading Tories and their wives in an email campaign last year, that his best answer for them was that he was still there and one of them was not.

Mr Darling seems a difficult man to shift. Last summer Brown planned to move him from the Treasury and replace him with his (Brown's) friend Ed Balls. But Mr Darling was not prepared to move over to let Balls take his place in one of the most powerful jobs in government. In what must be a very uneasy relationship between chancellor and prime minister the reshuffle attempt must have caused even more problems for them.

What was even more embarrassing for Brown was that his plans were an open secret. Everyone knew that Brown intended to put Balls in Number 11. Darling’s refusal to budge showed Brown to be a prime minister who had lost control of his own party, unable to allocate positions.

As Marie Joseph Eugène Sue wrote in 1841: “la vengeance se mange très bien froide”, or "revenge is a dish best eaten cold”. Mr Darling has found that as Brown struggles towards the end of his political career, plunging a little dagger in the back of your enemy, just when a helping hand is needed, is a very satisfying feeling for one who was wounded in the past.

Post Script: Danny has sent me this excellent article from the New York Times. I think it's interesting to see another county's perspective on these things, and this is worth a read.

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