Michael White examines the latest Brown-Blair conspiracy theory to wobble the government and wonders if Ed Balls is really so rude to his political masters. He also thinks we should all be more worried about Tehran
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Monday morning, west London:
What should we make of the latest conspiracy theory to emerge from the vortex of Brown-Blair rivalry in the shape of Anthony Seldon's latest volume on the Blair years - as serialised by the Mail on Sunday yesterday? To me much of the overall tone sounds plausible, but I am sceptical about detail.
Seldon asserts that GB was actively trying to unseat TB in the immediate wake of Labour's poor showing in the local elections of May 4 2006, but that he pulled back from stabbing him in the front during a Today programme interview in the 8.10am slot on May 5.
The result was a screaming match with his lieutenant, Ed Balls - likened by Seldon to the sinister and manipulative Dirk Bogarde role in the sixties classic, The Servant - shouting at the then-chancellor: ''You bottled it!'' .
A suspiciously topical word, ''bottled,'' reinforcing as it does the view - current since the non-election decision - that Brown backs off decisive action. No wonder the Mail on Sunday is so keen to promote it and the Seldon book.
At least as topical 24 hours before Assistant Commissioner, John Yates gives evidence to MPs on his abortive cash-for-honours investigation is Seldon's implication that Labour's treasurer, Jack Dromey, may have been part of a plot. Namely that he deliberately revealed that he knew nothing on the secret loans on the very day - March 15 2006 - that a vulnerable Blair was facing a Commons revolt on his education bill.
Some Blairites believe Dromey may have been put up to it because Mrs Dromey - better known to us all as Harriet Harman - was a Brownite, still is. If Labour's donors went on strike (some did) a bankrupt party would have to turn to GB, so the theory ran at the time - still does. The money tap is flowing again.
Blair finally left on June 27 2007 after months of sniping on both sides, including the famous September 2006 ''coup'' which forced him to say he would go during 2007. But is Seldon's version right?
I have no problem with claims that Brown was pressing hard; there's plenty of evidence for that over the years or that Blair persistently gave him the slip - for reasons both selfish and because he worried about a Brown inheritance for Labour.
But would even Ed Balls dare to shout at Brown like that? '' He's pretty straight with Gordon, but he's not rude,'' my man in the GB camp told me an hour ago. I think the same goes for Seldon's claims that Balls (who is a bit of a bully) and Ed Miliband (a very mild-mannered young man) treated Blair ''like an abused and bullied wife'' - as TB reportedly said after one session.
As for Dromey as a plotter, well, the Brown camp says he'd had a falling out with Gordon over an attack he made on the chancellor about regional public sector pay - this during one of Dromey's doomed attempts to be elected general secretary of the T&G union.
There was no plot, he acted alone: covering his backside as Labour party treasurer, they insist. I love conspiracy theories, but they are rarely true. ''They ain't that good,'' so I often tell student audiences. That's certainly true of Mr Harman, though - in fairness - some MPs regard Dr Seldon, a private school headmaster in his day job, as ''a bit naïve".
One explanation is that the Blairies were jumpy at the time, especially then-chief whip, Hilary Armstrong,. Understandably so. But the mirror image of their jumpiness could often be found in the Sunday papers, where reports of what the Blairites were up to were very often what the Brownites thought the Blairites were up to - not always the same thing at all, but worth knowing.
None of this matters now in that it does not affect the way the government functions. It's all GB's now. So if he recovers from this month's glitch over the election, he will be able to say: ''Told you so.'' But if he screws things up, the Blairites will be able to say ''Do you understand now?''
Footnote: Lewis Hamilton's lost Formula One dreams were on many front pages today, but they did not lead national newspapers - as England defeat in the rugby led several of yesterday's Sunday papers.
Of those I saw only the MoS (on Seldon's book) and the Sunday Times (Christina Lamb's eyewitness account of the Karachi suicide bomb) found a ''proper story'' for which to charge their readers quite a lot of money. Don't we have sports pages for sports defeats?
If the world goes pear-shaped in the years ahead we may wonder at our complacency, as folk did looking back on balmy Edwardian England. A sensible lead might have been the resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, after being frozen out by President Ahmadinejad.
Some gossip suggests Larijani walked because his president had rejected President Putin's idea for a compromise formula over Tehran's nuclear stalemate with the UN, made during his visit last week.
Ahmadinejad is at least as erratic a leader as George Bush - with at least as many domestic problems. We should all worry more.
