Gordon gets Writer’s Block · Issue 870

Gareth Ludkin asks whether the growing number of political autobiographies mounting attacks on Gordon Brown are effective or just yesterday’s news?

Gordon Brown’s personality and leadership has received a serious battering in the last couple of weeks, all at a time when Labour has suffered a serious downturn in the polls and suggestions have been banded about that Brown may not even make it as leader of the Labour Party to the next general election, or indeed this summer.

As Brown reveals a £2.7bn tax cut to help clear up the mess after the 10p tax debacle, Gordon is almost stepping into his last chance saloon in which he must reinstate faith in a weak and bitter looking Labour Party.

This task has not been helped by the gossiping new memoirs released by Lord Levy, John Prescott and the latest from Cherie Blair, all which take fairly damaging pot shots at the current Prime Minister.

In her memoirs, Speaking For Myself Cherie Blair paints a picture of financial insecurity, complaining about the mortgage on their £3.6m Connaught Square house, which she describes as ‘the size of Mount Snowdon.’

“Whatever happened, we had to meet the monthly payment and it was down to me. Because no one else was going to meet it were they?”

Poor old Cherie having to scrabble around for monthly payments on their luxury home with a prime minister for a husband and the wage packet of a successful barrister.

The reality is, of course, starkly different, with the Blairs having recently spent a whopping £4m on a new country retreat, which Mrs Blair defends with the fact that Tony has recently come into a bit of money: “Tony has been lucky enough to get a job which means we can afford a country house.”

At last Cherie can live in comfort, because of course the Blair’s have been living on peanuts until recently. With an estimated £1.5m advance on her book, £4.6m on her husband’s and a reported £100,000 for the serialisation of her book in the The Sun and The Times. This is hardly the story of a woman who is struggling to pay the monthly bills.

The claims made in the book are certainly thought provoking and create questions over the true character of Gordon Brown, who we already know is a gloomy character.

However, they hardly present the scandal that the newspapers were looking for. The character assassination is still very worrying for Brown, who is in a very shaky position ahead of the Crewe by-elections on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the PM spoke of “bafflement” at the claims made in the book.

Ed Balls also came to the aid of Brown, defending the claim that Brown leaked the news of Cherie’s pregnancy in 1999, suggesting that “anyone who knows Gordon Brown knows that is total nonsense,” and condemned the use of memoirs for making personal attacks and settling old scores.

It has also been claimed that the book itself is an attempt to destabilise the Labour leadership, ironically something which Cherie accuses Gordon of doing, by notably ‘rattling the keys’ of No 10 over Tony Blair’s head.

Cherie also states in her book that if Gordon Brown was willing to accept Tony Blair’s policies he would have willingly stepped down, and that Gordon was impatient about Tony moving on.

However, the fact that Cherie and Gordon had a fraught relationship is old news. Cherie suggests that: “The problem between Gordon and me is not personal. It is because I thought my husband was the best person for the job.”

The book continues in a similar snivelling way, claiming that she did not have as much support as Sarah Brown in Downing Street, when in fact she had more.

Attacks made by Lord Levy and John Prescott in their memoirs could be considered more damaging. Levy’s belief that there is a lack of strong leadership in the Labour Party has been well documented.

While Prescott’s attack on Brown’s personality claimed that: “Gordon could go off like a bloody volcano,” and that he told Tony Blair to sack Brown: “When he was moaning on about Gordon’s behaviour – I’d say sack him.”

He also revealed that meetings had to be abandoned because of Gordon’s behaviour, which was “frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly.”

All these attacks do not prove happy reading for Brown, but this is certainly nothing new. Political biographies, memoirs and diaries have been used throughout history to settle scores and blight others.

Paul Routledge’s book about Peter Mandleson and Robert Peston’s Biography of Brown paint very different pictures to Cherie Blair’s memoirs, instead attempting to destabilise the Blair government.

How far we can trust these memoirs is very debatable. Of the three recent memoirs Julian Glover in The Guardian states that: “What really unites all three of the latest books is an aura of pettiness.” and that, “all three books are instant and shallow and will soon be forgotten”.

What these books do is provide short sharp shocks of sensation craved by the national papers. Anything to rock the political boat is most welcome.

In the long term, however, these books have little in the way of staying power. All we need to do is look back at the history of political memoirs to see how they have often suffered at the checkouts.

Although Thatcher’s ‘Downing Street Years sold what is a comparatively massive 500,000 copies, Blunkett’s book after serialisation sold only 4,000.

Cherie Blair can expect better sales than Blunkett, but the fact still remains that political memoirs are read then pushed down the side of armchairs or into second hand bookshops and car boot sales.