Blair on Brown: ‘No instinct at all’
By Ian Dunt
Tony Blair has launched a withering attack on Gordon Brown in his memoirs, branding him a “disaster”.
The former prime minister detailed Mr Brown’s mistakes while in Downing Street, saying Labour lost the election because it had given up on the ‘New Labour’ approach to politics.
But Mr Blair reserves his worst attack for a series of personal insights into Mr Brown’s failings, mapping out the former chancellor’s psychological flaws.
“I could see Gordon’s enormous ability, extraordinary grasp and unyielding energy, and realised they were all big qualities in a leader,” Mr Blair wrote.
“Unfortunately, what I had also come to realise was that those qualities needed to be combined with a sure political instinct in order to be fully effective. And that instinct comes from knowing what you truly believe, not vaguely or at a high level of generality or “values”, but practical, on the ground, everyday-life conviction.
“And at this utterly crucial epicentre of political destiny, I discovered there was a lacuna – not the wrong instinct, but no instinct at the human, gut level. Political calculation, yes. Political feelings, no. Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero,” he continued.
“Gordon is a strange guy. But by the end I had come to see that this was not the fundamental problem. (He had and has a sort of endearing charm in the strangeness.) The fundamental problem was the he simply did not understand the appeal of New Labour, in anything other than a polling, ‘strategy’, election-winning sort of way.”
The current peace envoy to the Middle East then documented how he felt sorry for Labour when Mr Brown took over.
“In a curious way, I felt sorry for the party and I more or less remained like that up to the point of departure,” he wrote.
“By then, I had come to the clear and settled view that unless Gordon spelt out whether he was New Labour or something different – and defined the something different – it was going to be a disaster.
“I thought by then [early 2007] that a) it was going to be a mess, not quite New Labour, not quite not; and b) as a result, Gordon’s self-evident personal drawbacks would very quickly mean he was under pretty brutal attack for which he was not psychologically wired.”
Mr Blair details the breakdown in the two men’s relationship, from close allies to bitter rivals.
At the beginning Mr Blair described it using the metaphore of lovers.
“Our minds moved fast and at that point in sync,” he wrote.
“When others were present, we felt the pace and power diminish, until, a bit like lovers desperate to get to love-making but disturbed by old friends dropping round, we would try to bustle them out, steering them doorwards with a hearty slap on the back.”
At one point, Mr Brown is understood to have threatened Mr Blair with prompting an inquiry into cash-for-honours in revenge for his pensions policy. The inquiry which later took place expanded into a police investigation in which Mr Blair became the first prime minister to be questioned by police.
Mr Blair is also scornful towards Ed Balls, Mr Brown’s main ally in government and a Labour leadership contender, although he tempered his judgement with praise for Mr Ball’s abilities.
“I’ve had some harsh things to say about Ed Balls – I thought he behaved badly at points, and was wrong on policy – but I also thought he was really able, and a talent that any political party should be grateful to have,” Mr Blair wrote.
The memoir, A Journey, was released today. A one hour TV interview – the first since Mr Blair left office – will be shown at 19:00 BST tonight on BBC 2.
