'If Gordon Brown has shown little enthusiasm for keeping in touch with his former Cabinet colleagues, it may be because they neglected the tradition of having a whip round for him when he stepped down as prime minister.Altogether now; ha ha ha...
"I think that is a private matter, don't you?"I was told by an irritable John Denham. Brown's communities secretary then put the telephone down.
When I asked Pat McFadden, the former business minister, who attended Cabinet meetings, if he knew of any gift, he said: "I have never heard it mentioned. No, there hasn't been a whip round."
Even if Brown had been minded to accept a leaving gift in a characteristically low-key way – in the manner, for instance, that he signed the Lisbon Treaty – it wouldn't have made any difference. His former Cabinet colleagues appear to have made a conscious decision to give him nothing.
"Part of it was because of the circumstances of his departure," one tells me on condition I do not name him. "For a while, we didn't know if he was going or not." By contrast, when Tony Blair left office, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, had asked each member of his cabinet to chip in £80 to buy him a print of Chequers. It was presented to him at their last meeting.'
Start the Week 25th November 2024 -petition
6 hours ago
2 comments:
They could at least have bought him a new stapler. He deserves a new stapler.
Or a mobile phone.
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