The Sun looses the dogs of war…
“When trouble comes, they come not in single spies, but in battalions” – that is the story of the dying days of any government.
You can understand a mother’s tearing grief at the death of her soldier son. And you can also, perhaps, forgive a prime-minister – especially one with poor eye-sight – for writing a condolence letter over-hurriedly. Not every British PM in recent years has written personal condolence letters. It’s to Brown’s credit that he does so.
So it’s hard not to sympathise with both parties. But you can’t really forgive The Sun for recording and publishing Mrs Janes’ heart-wrenching conversation with the prime-minister.
Jacqui Janes may or may not have a point when she says her son may not have bled to death if more helicopters had been available. But then no armed force in history has ever had all of the equipment it would like and in this case, a medical helicopter was in fact dispatched and in good time.
On the other hand, Gordon Brown as Chancellor was responsible for the funding and budget decisions which led to massive waste and debt across government even before the current economic crisis. Perhaps, too, the government should have moved sooner to cut the Typhoon fighter programme which is much more geared to the Cold War than today’s asymmetrical conflicts.
Only the Sun comes cringingly badly out of this. Having made what I suspect is the purely economic decision that Brown is doomed and that sucking up to the Tories is more to their commercial advantage – the mirror image of the decision they made to back Blair in ‘97 – Britain’s favourite redtop is now piling in, boot first.
But exploiting a mother’s grief is a kick too far – especially as I don’t remember that paper seriously questioning any defence budget decisions when Brown was at the Treasury.
There is, though, another truth: when a government has lost the respect of the people, troubles do come in battalions. Nothing much goes right and pretty much everything begins to go wrong.
That is where Gordon Brown is now. He and Tony Blair, with their legions of publicly funded press and special advisers played media games for years. Now they have nothing left to feed the monster, it is turning back to feed on them.
