It would be an absolute effing disaster if Gordon Brown was PM, and I’ll do anything in my power to effing stop him.
So said the mystery minister to Nick Robinson in 2006. Now, the former defence secretary John Hutton has admitted that it was he, after intensive questioning on Eddie Mair’s radio show. The confession came with the caveat that he has now changed his opinion: “I think he has been a tremendously hard-working man, who has really put his heart and soul into it.”
Robinson, on his blog (which also has the full transcript of the Mair interview), says:
This is more than mere historical trivia. Hutton resigned from Brown’s cabinet on the same day as James Purnell walked out calling for a change of leadership. Had Hutton backed Purnell’s view — or, indeed, publicly repeated any of his private views — we would now in all probability have a different man leading the country.
But there is nothing wrong with a bit of historical trivia, I say, so here we go. You’d think politicians would behave with a little diplomacy. But whether it’s members of their own party, or other heads of state, they are slating each other all over the place.
Here are my top five quotes about British PMs — from other politicians. Please do share any other suggestions below.
1. Alas, poor Gordon. In a verbal echo of Hutton’s comments, the former home secretary Charles Clarke used an article in the New Statesman last year to say that: “Labour’s current course will lead to utter destruction at the next general election”. He doesn’t mention Brown by name, but in case you were in any doubt, he goes on to describe “a deep and widely shared concern — which does not derive from ideology — that Labour is destined to disaster if we go on as we are”.
2. “What does she want, this housewife? My balls on a tray?” Jacques Chirac, then prime minister of France, made this delightful comment about our very own Maggie Thatcher during the February 1988 Brussels summit. Misogynistic? Naaah.
3. Although, that said, she’s not so lovely herself. “I’ve got my teeth into him, and I’m not going to let go,” said Thatcher of Edward Heath during the Tory leadership contest in 1975. Frightening stuff. She followed it up in 1979 when she was safely ensconced, with the cutting comment: “When I look at him and he looks at me, I don’t feel that it is a man looking at a woman. More like a woman being looked at by another woman.”
4a. “Yo, Blair.” Oh, Dubbya. George W Bush was caught on tape at the G8 conference in 2006 using the casual greeting with Tony Blair — evidence of that irksome special relationship. Suffice to say that the tabloids were not impressed.
b. On a more serious note, Blair got his fair share of criticism from within the party, too. In 2005, during the dispute over extending the detention of terror suspects to 90 days, Peter Kilfoyle, a former junior defence minister, said:
Any reality check should start at No 10. The Prime Minister is out of touch with his own party and both Houses. He can’t keep playing the loyalty card. He said after the May election he had listened and learned. If he listened, he hasn’t learned the right lessons.
5. And finally — turning the tables. In 1993, the then prime minister, John Major, branded three unnamed cabinet ministers (thought to be Michael Portillo, Michael Howard and Peter Lilley) “bastards”. Good on him.
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