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Taxing Times

by | 26th, September 2006

“AS a private person, what drew me into public life was not a search for fame or headlines but a determination to make a difference.”

So says Gordon Brown in his address to the Labour Party conference in Manchester.

This, as the Times’s sketch writer Ann Treneman says, is part of Gordon’s application for his dream job. He wants to be Prime Minister. He doesn’t want fame, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with celebrities and be at the vanguard of Cool Britannia. No. All Gordon wants is to be understood and to make the world understand.

And to help Gordon the Times produces edited extracts from his speech (the real thing ran to 4,808 words and contained 1 joke – “I’m more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle than the future of the Arctic Monkeys”).

The shortened Brown oratory goes on for an entire page. And although it is punctuated with pictures of Gordon delivering his impassioned plea for the top job, and comes broken into chapters headed by such titles as “ON TERROIRSM”, “ON VALUES” and “ON THE GOOD SOCIETY”, it is still a taxing read. (That’s our one joke.)

Poor Gordon should have taken a leaf from Tony’s book and repeated himself three times to the catechism “Things Can Only Get Better”. Short. Sweet. Sure thing.

Just get a load of another master communicator at work. As Brown was telling delegates that it had been “a privilege to work with the most successful ever Labour leader and Labour prime minister”, a journalist for the Bloomberg news agency heard Mrs Cherie Blair say: “Well, that’s a lie.”

The Telegraph catches up with Carolin Lotter, a producer at Bloomberg Television. She says: “She was walking towards me, coming from the auditorium area, and I had to step out of the way to let her pass when I heard her say the now very infamous words, ‘Well, that’s a lie.’ The Prime Minister’s wife was not more than a metre or two away. I had to step out of the way; otherwise she would have run me down.”

Clever old, Cherie. Her four words have, as the Telegraph says, “derailed” Brown’s much longer statement.

But Cherie is unwilling to take the plaudits. As she tells the press pack: “Honestly, guys, I hate to spoil your story, but I didn’t say it and I don’t believe it either.”

Course not. And lest you doubt her – and mind that she is a lawyer – a Downing Street spokesman tells the Telegraph that four people with Mrs Blair, including two protection officers, had not heard her say anything.

Pah! As if Cherie would says “guys” – only Cliff Richard and Tony Blair would address a group of adults with such a word.

Cherie would say “loves” or “me dears”. She would no more say “guys” than she would call into question a respected news reporter and heckle Gordon Brown.

As if…



Posted: 26th, September 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink