A couple of weeks ago one of Tony Blair's most famous lieutenants told me this:
What none of you journalists ever realised is that from day one in government - and even when we were still in opposition - there were four or five occasions every day, right from May 1997, when Gordon deliberately tried to interfere with things that Tony was doing. It happened several times a day, every day, for ten years. It was awful. But nobody ever told the press, so nobody ever wrote about it.
Strong stuff - and, even if half true, a pretty astonishing glimpse into the Blair-Brown relationship. Now turn to the BBC's news website this afternoon and you read the following dramatic tale: "South Africa's governing ANC calls on President Thabo Mbeki to resign amid claims he conspired against the party chief."
Imagine a story from Manchester this week that says this: "Britain's governing Labour party calls on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to resign amid claims he conspired against the party chief." No, I can't imagine it either.
You can say what you like about the African National Congress as an appropriate model for politics in a multi-party democracy, but one thing's for certain: the ANC can certainly teach the Labour party a thing or two about standing up to the leadership.
