Prime minister looks to the comeback kids for camouflage

By Nicola Barry

Published:

YOU have got to hand it to Gordon Brown. He wasn’t born yesterday, he definitely did not come up the Don on a banana.

What do you do if you are prime minister and subjected to the most dreadful press coverage in political history?

That’s it. You appoint as many scandalmongers and publicity hounds as possible and stand back, watching as the limelight slowly moves away from you and lands on them.

What a brilliant trick.

So far, nobody has spotted it either.

People have been asking all week why anyone in their right mind would bring back Peter Mandelson, the Prince of Darkness, or Nick Brown or Geoff Hoon.

If you think back to the weeks before the new Cabinet was announced, Gordon Brown occupied just about every page.

Acres of words devoted to how useless he was, how he must go.

Suddenly, all the attention is on the comeback kids.

It is an absolute coup as far as Brown’s own PR is concerned. These are men who, no matter how hard they spin, do not – ever – come up smelling of roses.

A lot of managers surround themselves with fall guys. It makes them feel safer.

Just look at the men Brown has chosen: Mandelson, the original architect of New Labour, not to mention overseeing the disastrous Millennium Dome. Had it not been for the unfortunate £373,000 home loan he took from Paymaster General Geoffrey Robinson, all would have gone swimmingly and he would still be commanding headlines every day of the week.

He has had to leave the government twice but he is back and he is more interesting to the media than Gordon Brown, who can now take a back seat and mess up all he likes because no one is going to notice.

Geoff Hoon is the man who managed to wriggle out from beneath the ashes of the Hutton inquiry into the death of poor Dr David Kelly. He even went on to become leader of the House of Commons.

You may recall that Dr Kelly was a man who took Saddam Hussein’s threat of weapons of mass destruction very seriously. He wanted people to know the truth and, as such, he had a right to anonymity, even in death. Guaranteeing confidentiality to whistleblowers is crucial to the process of democracy.

We also had a right to know whether the government misled the people about the necessity of the Iraq war? And I mean, specifically, Geoff Hoon, who was defence secretary.

All the parties involved stood by quite happily and watched from the sidelines as the scientist was torn apart by a committee of MPs.

Last but not least, Nick Brown, the man who managed to mishandle the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.

These guys will provide the perfect foil for the prime minister to cover up his bloomers.

As things stand, all we really know about Brown are his past achievements. He may have got the top job on the basis of his performance as chancellor – and that infamous deal with Tony Blair – but he needs media stars around him to make it as a successful prime minister.

And that could still happen, believe it or not.

The dodgy inheritance of Blair’s phoney war was enough of a challenge for Brown. He knew what he was getting himself into, yet thought he could separate himself from his predecessor’s policy mistakes.

But past deeds keep coming back to haunt him, so much so, his reputation is suffering at every turn.

Yet, even though Brown's reputation is in tatters, very little of the rumpus is to do with him.

Unlike his predecessor, however, he does not handle a crisis well.

Where Blair would grin, nonchalance oozing from every pore, Brown will grimace like an infant who has done something unspeakable in his nappy.

Now he is handing out largesse as if it is going out of fashion, much in the way of Tory wives who will forgive anything to get what they want.

Gordy has turned into a Tory wife.

Tory wives are well-known for their stiff upper lips, of course. Look at Mary Archer, long-suffering wife of Sir Jeffrey pots-of-money Archer.

Mary’s lip must be as solid as monumental alabaster by now. Stiff is one thing, permanently rigid quite another.

She was not the first and she won’t be the last. Think back to David Mellor and Antonia Da Sancha. Remember how he was photographed at the garden gate with his wife and family all around him. Alan Spencer’s wife did the same and so did Cecil Parkinson’s.

There is nothing remotely admirable about men like that. Nor is there anything great about the women who stand by them. The one exception to this rule has to be John Profumo, the former secretary of state for war, who in the early 1960s, was found to have been sharing a prostitute with the Soviet Union's naval attache in London. When asked about the relationship, Profumo lied to the House of Commons. When his denials were proved false, he resigned in disgrace. For lying, not for the affair.

Profumo has since earned our forgiveness, our respect even. Instead of blaming the tabloids for the scandal, the former war hero has quietly worked away in the slums of London’s east end for decades.

No comebacks.

But this lot are coming back, despite their embarrassing misdemeanours.

If I were a betting woman, I would bet that Gordon Brown will, once again, be that nice, respected man he was while in Tony Blair’s shadow.

I mean now that the tripartite camouflage of Mandelson, Hoon et al is in place.

It is the foundation, remember, that covers up politics' worse blemishes.