I agree with much of Deborah Orr’s column about Gordon Brown (Brown’s fatal flaw? A lack of confidence, 31 October). I knew him when he was a shadow minister and then during the early years of his spell as chancellor. When people ask me what Gordon and Tony Blair were really like, I tell them just how amusing Gordon was in those early years. As a political journalist, I would go down to the bar where hacks and politicians rubbed shoulders before the evening vote took place. Gordon would come down perhaps 10 minutes before the vote – sometimes John Smith would join us – and he was tremendously funny. He had an ability to put you down delicately, which made everyone else chuckle at your expense but taught you to be more circumspect next time round.
Viewing the situation from closer quarters subsequently at Labour HQ and then in No 10, I think there were two elements that diminished Gordon. First, the desire to be prime minister and then to be elected prime minister consumed him. My view then was that he would have gone to his grave a broken man had he not been prime minister. My view now is he will probably go his grave a broken man because he was not elected prime minister.
Second, I think he was taken in by the then GMB view of life: you are either with us and we will help you; or you are against us and we will kill you. Most of the team around him lived by that ethic – Ed Miliband was a notable exception – and that created the toxic Blair-versus-Brown combat that characterised the second half of the Blair regime.
He has a towering intellect. He was a great communicator. He was a voracious workaholic. He was certainly flawed, but he was – and is – a huge figure in international politics. We should not be too hard on him.
Phil Murphy
Weybridge, Surrey
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