Did Blair really say Brown was psychologically flawed?

Blogger Iain Dale has been setting the political agenda again today following his 18 Doughty Street interview with former No 10 spin doctor Lance Price. In the interview, Price questioned the assumption that it was Alastair Campbell who first called Gordon Brown "psychologically flawed," suggesting that the phrase might actually have come from the Prime Minister himself.

It's a great scoop, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Blair was asked about it at Prime Minister's Questions earlier today.

But is Price telling the truth? Well, several things cause me to doubt that, I'm afraid, not least the fact that Price appears to be making a fine living at the moment out of the dishing dirt on his former employers.

Entertaining as this sort of thing may be for the press, and for the publishing industry generally, I can't help thinking it is bad for British government.

In his interview with Dale, Price also subtly misquotes the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley, who was the journalist originally on the receiving end of the "psychological flaws" comment and who wrote about it in his masterwork on early New Labour, Servants of the People.

Price says that Rawsnley described his source as "somebody with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister’s mind. Well, the only person with a better claim to know the Prime Minister’s mind than Alistair Campbell is, possibly Cherie, is the Prime Minister himself."

This is factually incorrect. The words Rawnsley actually used in Servants of the People were "someone who has an extremely good claim to know the mind of the Prime Minister."

Splitting hairs? Well, not really. Someone with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister's mind could only be Blair. Someone with merely an extremely good claim could be three or four people - Cherie, Campbell, Peter Mandelson, maybe even Jonathan Powell except that he doesn't often speak to journalists.

As it is, Blair has now denied it in the House, and loath as I am to admit that the Prime Minister might, for once, be telling the truth, this, for me, seems to settle the matter.

Why? Well, because if Blair is not telling the truth, he has just handed Andrew Rawnsley the golden bullet with which to put a fairly immediate end to his premiership.

If Rawnsley were now to reveal that it was indeed Blair who said it, then the Prime Minister will have lied to Parliament and he will be forced to resign.

Would Blair take such a risk with his political career even at this late stage? On balance, I think not.

A story of great importance, but nobody to know what it is

I both like and respect my fellow leftie Christian blogger Paul Burgin, but this post on his Mars Hill blog earlier today really is the blogging equivalent of the South Sea Bubble (depicted by Hogarth, left.)


To quote Tom Hamilton on Fisking Central, "give that man a newspaper column now!"

The Union: Will it last another 300 years?

Well, the answer to that is sadly not, unless the growing pressure from English voters for a distinctive political voice of their own is finally acknowledged and acted upon in the shape of an English Parliament.

Indeed, if our political leaders continue to place their heads in the sand on this issue in the way that our esteemed Prime Minister is currently doing, it will be surprising if it lasts another ten.