Gordon Brown - the stench of hypocrisy

I was going to write an expose of Gordon Brown's nauseatingly hypocritical and self-serving House of Commons speech yesterday but I am very short of time today and also Toby Young in The Telegraph has already done a fine job. Here's an extract:

'What a performance! Gordon Brown raised himself up to his full height in the House of Commons yesterday and delivered a thunderous sermon about the sinful behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and the “rats” who work at his British newspapers. These lowlifes had “descended from the gutter to the sewer”, we were told. They intruded on the “private sorrows” of “innocent men, women and children” – his own family, no less – and treated their “innermost feelings” as the “public property of News International”...

 It was marvellous stuff, a fitting climax to the high drama of the past week. But it does raise one or two awkward questions.

1. As Jacob Rees-Mogg asked when Brown allowed him to get a word in edgewise, if he found the methods of the gutter press so abominable why did he employ both Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride who routinely spread lies and misinformation about the ex-Prime Minister’s political opponents in Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers? Doesn’t McBride’s attempt to smear David and Samantha Cameron in the wake of their son Ivan’s death constitute an intrusion into their “private sorrow”?

2. As Nadhim Zahawi pointed out, if Brown was so morally disgusted by the behaviour of Rupert Murdoch and his minions, why did he allow his wife, Sarah, to invite Rebekah Brooks, along with Murdoch’s wife Wendi and his daughter Elisabeth, to a “slumber party” at Chequers in 2008? And why did he and Sarah attend the wedding of Rebekah and Charlie Brooks in 2009?

3. If Brown and his wife were “in tears” and “incredibly upset” when the Sun called them in 2006 to ask them about their son’s cystic fibrosis, why didn’t they apply for an injunction to stop the Sun running the story? Why did they, instead, try to ensure the story got the widest possible coverage? According to yesterday’s edition of the paper:

The Sun ran the story after speaking to Mr Brown and wife Sarah. She gave us their consent to run it.
We agreed not to publish until they were ready to go public.
They also asked that the story be allowed to run in other newspapers. We agreed. In the following months the Browns showed no sign of any discontent with The Sun.
They attended a number of functions with The Sun’s then editor Rebekah Brooks and the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch.

Not only that, but Brown gave his first ever interview as Britain’s Prime Minister to one George Pascoe-Watson of the Sun, the very same journalist who wrote about his son’s illness nine months earlier.

4. If, as Brown claims, the Cabinet Secretary obstructed his efforts to order a judicial inquiry into the dastardly goings-on at News International, why did Sir Gus O’Donnell issue a denial immediately after the speech claiming that the decision not to launch an inquiry was Brown’s and Brown’s alone? Sir Gus is now seeking permission to publish the confidential advice to rebut the allegation.

5. Could it be that Brown’s unhappiness with Murdoch doesn’t date from 2006, when the Sun broke the story of his son’s illness, but from the Labour Party Conference in 2009, when, on the eve of Brown’s keynote speech, Murdoch’s British papers decided to withdraw their support from the Prime Minister and throw it behind David Cameron instead? On Monday, Andrew Neil wrote the following Tweet: “Labour Conf  ’09. Brown calls Murdoch to stop Sun deserting to Tories. Fails. “I will destroy you,” says Brown. Slams down phone.”

I hope that Gordon Brown, or anyone who thinks he delivered a “powerful speech” yesterday and believes his “moral outrage” is “justified” (see today’s leader in the Guardian), can answer these questions. Because on the face of it this looks like a classic case of Presbyterian hypocrisy. A son of the manse indeed.'

Five powerful questions that Gordon Brown needs to answer honestly; do you see the flaw in that point?