Tomorrow's Mail on Sunday carries the second part of the Peter Watt serialisation from his book INSIDE OUT: MY STORY OF BETRAYAL AND COWARDICE AT THE HEART OF NEW LABOUR.
This week's installment covers...- The transition from Blair to Brown
- The existence of a secret Gordon Brown slush fund
- The moment when Brown screamed at Blair: "I'll bring you down with sleaze"
- How Brown tried to skew the leadership election rules to prevent others standing
- Brown's reaction when he heard Harriet Harman had won the deputy leadership
- Brown's embarrassing visit to Labour HQ
- How Brown tried to stop Blair having one last PMQs
And much more besides...
The book is published on Monday January 25th. Pre-order your copy HERE.
UPDATE: The Mail website now has the "I'll Bring You Down With Sleaze" story online HERE.
UPDATE: Find Me Some Sick Children story is HERE.
UPDATE: Gordon Brown's secret 'slush' fund HERE.
Mr Dale,
ReplyDeleteHatts off to you sir!
Who needs the Sun
A big fat OOOoooooohhhhh moment with perhaps a hee hee hee thrown in for good measure.
ReplyDeleteCheers Iain and good work Mr Watt.
Is it in Waterstones or do we need to use this internetty thing?
Did Brown break any rules with his secret slush funds, public or labour party.
ReplyDeleteBut in any event - we should not be surprised at him keeping a load of dodgy figures in an exercise book - he has been running the economy like that for years. (please feel free to use that one Dave ...)
It will be in Waterstone's from 25 Jan, and all branches of W H Smith.
ReplyDeleteGood luck wooing the middle classes Gordon
ReplyDeleteI can see David Cameron smiling and thinking to himself- Lord Dale of Tumbridge Wells has a nice ring to it!
ReplyDeleteDavid. And I am sure he wouldn't be alone in that thought. Except it wouldn't be 'of Tunbridge Wells'!! I can already see those pigs flying, though :)
ReplyDeleteUnbelievable! But well done you for bringing this out into the light.
ReplyDeleteJust when you think Labour can't get any more sleazy; they JUST DO!
I hope the morons who still intend to vote for these crooks can sleep at night.
BTW Iain, have you managed to see the Gordon Brown article at the Guardian?
I can guarantee that there are well over a hundred critical posts which have simply 'disappeared' from the comment list; in a bid to fool everyone that the response has not been as critical as it has.
It's Political Censorship and the Guardian should hang it's head in shame.
C.P. Snow must be weeping to see the the Guardian using his saying "Comment is Free but the Truth is Sacred"
The hypocrisy is enough to make am honest man vomit. Matt Seaton is now out of control at the Guardian; some one should fire him.
Preferably from a large howitzer.
Shame the BBC will ignore it Iain.
ReplyDeleteThis private slush fund of Browns, could it be illegal if he was using it as private monies, technically could it be parliamentary income or misuse of funds. Seems strange no record kept of it, i mean, a tax issue maybe.
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone buy the book when all the good bits have been published.
ReplyDeleteOh believe you me, this is less than 10% of the book
ReplyDeleteI always used to think that Brown was a decent and politically smart man.
ReplyDeleteBut now just reading bits about the handover i think, Christ how the hell did he get to become PM.
I mean hearing there was no plan for his government- even though Blair had annouced since Sept 2006 that he was going is astonishing.
Also the whole handover think with Blair at the conference, when he was about to become PM and he was focused on when Blair was to be on stage- What a petty man he is.
thats another couple of points onto the tories in the next opinion poll
ReplyDeleteOn tonight's BBC News 24 press review - one of the funniest put downs of all time:
ReplyDelete"Britain's dirty secret class still maters"
Jasmin Alibhai-Brown:
"we had a funny kind of statement from the communities minister (John Denham) that race didn't matter but class did"
Iain Dale:
"puts you out of a job then"
-hahahahahaha!!!!!!
Hmm, interesting. I think I remember mentioning something about the criminality at the head of Labour, which is why they will never really get rid of Brown because he has got something on everyone.
ReplyDeleteI think Brown is a Hoover character, in more than just wearing a dress sense as well, he has done his research, made sure to get the dirt on everyone, then who dares cross (cross dress) the man who can sink you.
Anyone with a brain cell knows Tony was a crook from day one, it was all about getting him on to the world stage, and making money. He did, then he shreaded the records. Labour will do the same, unless someone rats them out and keeps copies, we will never know the half of it.
All you need is Page 3 and I wouldn't need to look at The Sun ever again....
ReplyDelete"Oh believe you me, this is less than 10% of the book"
ReplyDeleteSo there's some interesting stuff in it as well?
I, for one, am shocked at Mr Watt's scandalous news that Gordon Brown attempted to change the Labour Party rules so that leadership candidates needed FOURTY FIVE MPs to back them.
ReplyDeleteOh, no. Hang on, this is exactly what the rules have long stated. 12.5% of he PLP required.
I am sure Mr Watt is sad that he was fired, and that he had to work his way back up to his new job, the place where old SecGens go to die, but really if he was to be a great bureaucrat of the Labour movement, the rules of the party shouldn't be a surprise to him
I see Jimmy still can't resist partisan pettiness. You would have thought the Left would be happy Brown is being screwed, it allows them to blame him for everything that goes wrong rather than the Labour Party as a whole.
ReplyDeleteWe need to see the receipts of the slush fund. Slush fund for this could mean he has another one for dirty tricks department.
ReplyDeleteThis maniac has to be stopped
This kind of stuff was done much earlier (and better) in Tom Bowers biography of Brown.
ReplyDeleteNice to see that Prescott took some time off from fornicating with his Civil Service 'secretary' to pick up a phone and scream at people, and interesting to understand Dromey's position. Isn't he married to some Minister or other?
ReplyDeleteBut the question might be: if that's how Brown carries on with Labour Party donors' money, what is he doing with ours? How much taxpayers' cash has he secretly hidden, and what is he spending ('investing'?) it on? Maybe Jimmy or golden_bollox can cast some light on the murky goings on in Treasury, too.
I look forward to the complete rebuttal of these allegations from a (any) Minister of State and the subsequent court action for libel, slander, defamation or anything else that they think might stick. As I said before, if these are lies the remedy is in the courts. In any event it's clear that this will rumble on, causing more and more damage to their already sordid reputations.
We can expect to see this branded as tittle-tattle, which it may be, but it is certainly revelatory as to the morality and personal standards of those at the very top of NuLab. Where is Mandelson in all of this?
What was that about the 'Middle Class'? Entertaining and/or scandalising, certainly - but 'wooing'? I don't think so.
It seems to me that 'Peter' cannot read...
ReplyDeleteBrown attempted to ensure that the names of backers were kept secret - to deter MPs from giving backing to any potential rival, not alter the numbers needed to be nominated.
Its the little things that make a control freak a control freak
Watt seems like a principled bloke who reached the end of his tether and was screwed over.
ReplyDeletePeter, I think you've misunderstood. The point is that Gordon only wanted the names of would-be candidates to be published once they had ALL 45 backers they needed. Obviously he would have got off to a flying start, having amassed his list of 45 long in advance. Meanwhile anyone who was deliberating over whether to back a rival candidate would not have known how much support that potential rival had that rival had gathered all 45 names he or she needed. Meanwhile gordon's list of names would have been getting longer and longer, increasing the pressure on everyone to sign up to his campaign. A rival might have had 44 backers, and only need one more name, but nobody would have known. The Labour party believed it would be more open and democratic to publish names of backers for each potential candidate as they came in. Complicated, yes, but it's an important point about whether gordon wanted an open and democratic process. He didn't.
ReplyDelete