Is The Lid Finally Coming Off Gordon’s Head?
The health denials that emanated from Downing Street throughout Autumn 2009 are now revealed in almost every detail as a tissue of cynical lies from start to finish. Following the Mail’s extracts from Peter Watt’s new book Inside Out, Guido Fawkes last night as good as confirmed our story of 4th September 2009, which had alleged that the evidence for Mr Brown being on anti-depressant drugs and going blind was compelling. Fawkes’ new piece openly headlines ‘He’s Bonkers’.
From the start of the ‘Gordon Bonkers’ saga, Guido has been just a tad behind the music – as we shall see; but his now-at-last-revealed account of lunch with ‘a former senior Downing Street advisor’ in Autumn 2009 mirrors Nby/Slog editor John Ward’s experience exactly. The advisor cited by Guido refers to the Prime Minister as ‘a narcissistic, manic depressive’.
To judge from Guido’s latest post, you’d never know I had anything to do with revealing this story. But the reality is that The First Post’s Mole column picked up my September 4th piece – as did Blogosphere rising star Anna Raccoon, and via her the irrepressible Old Holborn. The more conservative Guido Fawkes was not minded, at that time, to go with it…..until The Independent took an interest.
Still, it’s good to see Guido confirming it now. And adding, tantalisingly, ‘there is lots more of this to come out about Brown…’
Indeed there must be – for the Guy News Man (very much a member of the Establishment these days) tends to keep his powder dry until he has his facts in a row.
Even without Guido’s late entry as a runner re this one, there is already plenty to confirm the accuracy of nby’s original story in Watt’s book. The author’s wife, having shared a supper with Brown, refers to him openly as ‘bonkers’. Peter Watt himself writes of Gordo as ‘not fit to be Prime Minister’ – a near-identical phrase to the one my original source used. He also gives several examples of irrational behaviour by Brown, including:
*Running the country ‘by making it up as he goes along’ and acute indecisiveness: classic symptoms of clinical depression.
*Being unable to tell lies from truth – first pointed up by Matthew Parris in the Spring of 2009, and confirmed by the revelation in Watt’s book that Brown told blatant lies to Marr on live television (in October 2007) about ‘hand on heart’, never seriously considering an election.
*How Brown ‘walked out of a Downing Street dinner party with US politicians because they sat down without his permission’ – again, grandeur delusion associated with manically narcissistic phases of bipolar disorder.
Let us now revisit the key points from nby’s September 2009 revelations:
*’”The Prime Minister of Great Britain is a man too ill to be holding the Office.” This was the conclusion last week of a senior civil servant liaising regularly with Gordon Brown’.
*’One of the main sources of this story told us, “It’s a farce, and utterly disgraceful. There isn’t a mandarin in Whitehall who’s unaware of Brown’s condition”‘.
*MAOIs: ‘this older class of drugs has one huge advantage: for severe (ie manic)depression…it remains very effective’.
Remember too that we revealed Brown’s deteriorating eyesight before any other news medium. This too was denied, then leaked, then farcically half-confirmed.
And as the anti-depressant usage speculation spread, each of Mandelson, Balls and Bradshaw smeared nby on television by referring to the allegations as ‘fantasies and lies from an extreme right-wing blogsite’.
The mendacity of all three men is largely assumed these days. But after such fervent denials, news media (although not Raccoon and Holborn) steered clear of the Editor’s new revelations. These too have proved to be robust: in particular, Alistair Darling’s remark to an aide (about Brown) “that man has to go”; the spat between Balls and the Chancellor; the site’s persistent conviction that Brown ‘will not make it to the election’ because of his continuing problems; and the Editor’s contention only two days ago that, despite the Hoon/Hewitt fiasco, destabilisation of Brown would continue.
Not Born Yesterday stands by its sources, and on its track record. We predicted in May 2007 that Brown would ‘unravel in public’, based partly on the allegation we’d already heard (amongst other things) about Brown’s anti-depressant usage a year before then. We led the pack on his likely mental health and eyesight problems. In this process, Guido Fawkes hung onto our coat-tails – but now claims the suit as his. Well, plus ca change: but based on my own enquiries over the last week, my instinct is that – late runner or not – this time the Gunpowder plotter is right enough: there is more to come out about what has been kept cynically from the electorate by Government spinners and Opposition cynics alike.
More and more real journalists are working harder than ever to nail the story once and for all; but in the immediate term, what might Guido have up his cavalier sleeve? Here’s a tip: there is a certain well-placed lady who just might – after many sleepless nights and much persuasion – go public at last, and sink the multiply-torpedoed ‘leader’ that is Gordon Brown today.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: See The Mole this morning.
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January 11, 2010 at 09:55 -
Oi John Ward! It’s understandable that you want to blow your own trumpet over this, but to refer to your host as “Blogosphere rising star Anna Raccoon” is, IMHO, just wrong. Ms Raccoon’s star didn’t rise – it started at the apogee (in geocentric terms) and stays there. But then maybe I don’t understand irony?
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January 11, 2010 at 10:51
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January 11, 2010 at 12:08 -
Dear Mr Thrung
It has always been my policy to suggest, in relation to ladies of the feminine gender, that they might be youthful rather than old….and filled with yet more potential we have not as yet even dreamed possible.
I think of Ms Raccoon-Hatte as a super-nova with a good few millennia in her yet.
And you can borrow the JCB after me if you like.
YM x -
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January 11, 2010 at 14:00 -
The most disagreeable aspect of this affair for me was Andrew Marr’s conduct.
He asked, in my opinion deliberately, the wrong question.
Upon asking the rather lame and easily sidestepped question with no discernible follow through, some bloggers, like Iain Dale for example, commended him on the bravery of asking it.
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/09/should-marr-have-asked-that-question.html
My comment on that page halfway down (as Roger Dodger) expressed my gut feeling at the time. I am usually loath to contradict my reading of a person in the moment as I generally find it more reliable than my post event analysis (something poker taught me rather expensively).
I think that Marr was under pressure as the feeling that the blogosphere was pushing ahead of the MSM and with it the stature of its big wigs like Marr was becoming very apparent at that point. By phrasing it as he did he managed to accept that the MSM was responsive and relevant whilst not actually pushing to nail Brown over an issue which many thought/think is not the public’s business. It is the kind of controversy the spineless ones in White City detest.
Either I was right at the time or I am right now. The former makes Marr incompetent and the latter cowardly.
I now feel the latter most likely.
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January 11, 2010 at 14:21 -
THIS – the kowtowing to a sociopath (Blair is at the NPD end of the specturm, IMHO, Brown the sociopathic) by the Labour Party, letting him become PM despite KNOWING him to be unfit for any sort of public office, and doing nothing about it. As a result of their total cowardice, they have done the country untold damage.
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January 11, 2010 at 14:24 -
And whilst I am here, nothing would give me more pleasure than to see Brown removed from Number 10 a la Anthony Hopkins in Silence Of The Lambs. And then delivered the Ceaucescu Farewell.
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January 11, 2010 at 14:34 -
I’m 100% with Rodger the slaughtering old Dodger. I asked one of Marr’s retinue why the Scot asked about painkillers, and the person just pulled a face of bewilderment.
You can’t say ‘painkillers’ by mistake. Another source suggested to me that Marr had been under pressure to deflect the crisis from Mark the Armbiting Spineless Thompson. But somebody close to AM says “Rubbish – we had no idea Andy was even going to ask it”.
However, the utter lack of insight by the Labour Party (Giving Marr a hard time at the Conference the following day) says it all really: the wooden analysis, the ‘let’s get ‘im’, the paranoia…when the bloke was trying to do them a favour. New Labour couldn’t spot a gift horse if their heads were inside the bugger’s mouth.
Andrew has been a man of the Left all his life – the obvious explanation is I’m sure the right one. -
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January 11, 2010 at 14:41 -
Elby (i)
Let us not forget that New Labour’s lobby fodder is spineless and stupid…but the Tories are spineless and cunning.
I always felt the most disgusting elements of this story were (1) The Humphreys happy to dine out on the anecdotes about Brown – but not to point out the Consititutional problem of having George III in Number Ten without a Regent (enter Scandalson later); and (2) the Tory Cabinet colluding in the plight of a bloke who is clearly a QE short of a bailout.
Bezerk (ii)
I like your solution….it’s a good solution for the role. But is there enough pain involved?
YM x
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