Why Gordon Brown should fear Alistair Darling's wife

Why Gordon Brown should fear Alistair Darling's wife

Hell hath no fury like a loyal spouse scorned — as Gordon Brown is about to discover to his cost.

Alistair Darling, who was Brown’s Chancellor during Britain’s biggest financial crisis since the Depression, is publishing his memoirs.

Expect fireworks. For helping prime his rockets as he reveals who was to blame for the catastrophic events and writes about his tempestuous relationship with Brown is Darling’s formidable wife Maggie.

Brace yourself: Alastair Darling (right) is expected to give Gordon Brown both barrels in his forthcoming memoirs

A former tabloid journalist, she feels her husband was betrayed.

As Chancellor, the normally mild-mannered Darling complained at the time about ‘the forces of hell’ being unleashed against him after he bravely admitted that the economic crash was the worst for 60 years.

 

   

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Yet his wife went much, much further — using characteristically blistering language to make clear her fury with Brown’s No 10 aides, who she felt were briefing the media against her husband. Political columnist Andrew Rawnsley’s book The End Of The Party disclosed that Mrs Darling raged: ‘The f***ing ****s are trying to stitch up Alistair. The ****s. I can’t believe they’re such ****s.’

The exact swear-words have been disputed, but what is not in doubt is that Mrs Darling was one of Rawnsley’s sources.

Not only is Darling’s book expected to challenge the dull bureaucrat image of the likeable former Labour Chancellor, but it will make seriously uncomfortable reading for Brown.

 

 

Disgraced former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has been wheeled out to support the case for Gordon Brown being given the top job at the International Monetary Fund.

She said: ‘There is a long tradition of former politicians going on to do big jobs like this.’

Was the use of the word ‘former’ a Freudian slip? Brown, who still draws his £65,000 MP’s salary, has spoken in the Commons only once in 12 months.
Not so much ‘former politician’ as a ‘tired old has-been’.

 

 

Rowan Williams: Should he have a trim for the Royal Wedding?

Snip for Archbishop?

After David Cameron finally did the right thing by agreeing to wear tails at the Royal Wedding, attention has now turned to the Archbishop of Canterbury, one of the clerics due to officiate at the ceremony. People are asking: is ‘the old Druid’ going to spruce himself up for the occasion by getting his wayward hair cut and his unruly beard trimmed?

James Naughtie, presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, has a new rival as the station’s biggest windbag interviewer.

Step forward colleague Evan Davis. My man with the stopwatch reveals that during an interview with David Cameron last week, the prolix Davis spoke for seven minutes and 20 seconds, allowing the country’s Prime Minister only 11 minutes.

 

 

 

 

A series of written Commons questions from Maria Eagle, the Shadow Transport Secretary, was intended to embarrass ministers in the department of Rural Affairs over the number of ministerial cars they use. However, the exercise — an absurd waste of taxpayers’ money — backfired terribly. For the answer was ‘just one Toyota Prius’. That’s two fewer than were used by Labour ministers from the same department when they were in power!

 

 

Chicklit author-cum-Tory MP Louise Bagshawe has suffered excoriating reviews of her leaden prose in her time. So when she was asked to review Sarah Brown’s memoirs, Behind The Black Door, she didn’t hesitate to dish the dirt on the former PM’s wife. ‘Chapters are filled with safe, dishwater-dull lists of worthy people and charities, or spouses of other leaders she has entertained,’ she writes in the magazine Total Politics.

Teeth-grinding prose: Sarah Brown's new book has not been described in glowing terms by Louise Bagshawe

‘The prose is teeth-grinding. Somebody, some day, will write a warts-and-all account of what it’s like to be in the Prime Minister’s family. Sadly there is none of this in Sarah Brown’s book.’ Miaow! Can’t wait to read Mrs Brown’s review of Bagshawe’s latest offering . . .

 

 

Happily wasting your money

The next time that Tory Cabinet ministers attack Labour councils for wasting money they should perhaps look closer to home. For example, Cotswold District Council, a Tory stronghold, has spent £19,000 on a magician to give motivational talks to staff who face losing their jobs as part of £1.4 million worth of spending cuts. The authority’s chief executive, David Neudegg, also runs neighbouring West Oxfordshire district council, which spent £30,000 on a happiness course.

Is the reason there hasn’t been a squeak of complaint from the local Tory MP that he is none other than David Cameron, who has pioneered his own and even more risible National Happiness Index?