More truths emerge about ‘brutal’ Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown has summoned his ministers to a political Cabinet tomorrow morning to survey the wreckage of his busted premiership. And he will be looking for a sacrificial lamb. For we now have it on the authority of the former General Secretary of the Labour Party, Peter Watt, that this is Brown's style. "When things go wrong, you find someone to blame," said Watt at the weekend. "This is Gordon's politics".

Brown knows as he surveys the polling evidence that though the Daily Telegraph has finally turned the mud gun on the Tories over MPs' expenses, this will not save him or his party from humiliation on June 4 in the European elections or defeat in the subsequent General Election. His apology this morning "on behalf of all politicians", given at a nursing conference in Harrogate, was too late. The damage has gone too far.

A BPIX poll for the Mail on Sunday put Labour on only 23 per cent - lower than it recorded under Michael Foot - while a YouGov poll in the Sunday Times gave the Tories an unassailable lead of 16 points.

Just as Brown is facing a wipeout, Watt has popped up to wreak revenge for being hung out to dry in the row about party donations last year.

Watt was told last week by the Crown Prosecution Service that he would not face prosecution over taking cash for the Labour Party from donors hiding their identities behind third parties - a practice banned under electoral law - and, with no hope of being given his job back, he has started to speak out against the Brown regime.

Had it not been for the expenses revelations, Watt's attack on Brown - whom he labelled "a disaster" - would have been front page news.

"Publicly, Gordon talks about the values of his moral compass,” Watt told the Sunday Times, "but actually the way he conducts himself behind the scenes is anything but that - it's brutal." He said the last 10 years were "littered" with former aides "cast asunder" by Brown.

Among other revelations, Watt claims that Brown misled the public about the "election that never was" in the late autumn of 2007. "No matter what anyone says," Watts recalls, "the election had been called and was then cancelled. We had been working on it for weeks. We spent £1.2m in immediate preparations."

So Brown is a ditherer who wasted £1.2m of precious party funds before losing his nerve.

Watt, who played a central role in the handover from Blair to Brown, also confirms the Blairites' claims that Brown seized power by waging a campaign "designed to cause maximum damage to Tony" and force him out of Number Ten.

Watt claims he was sacrificed because Brown and the party's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, needed a scapegoat for the donor story. "There was huge pressure for someone to take the rap. I knew at that point that elected politicians were going to dive for cover. There was no way Gordon or Harriet were going to stand by me. They made a choice that I, at that point, was expendable."

When Watt did the decent thing and resigned, Brown telephoned him to commiserate and promised to "look after" him. But within 24 hours he had betrayed him, by falsely suggesting that he had broken the law, triggering a police inquiry which has taken 18 months to discover that Watt did nothing wrong.
 
Back to the present fiasco, Brown needs to deal with the worst excesses of the expenses "exploitation" on his benches.
 
Hazel Blears is likely to pay the ultimate price in a post-June 4 reshuffle for her "YouTube if you want to" jibe in the Observer last week, now that she turns out to be one of Parliament's most blatant allowance manipulators. She is reported to have admitted paying no capital gains tax (CGT) on the £45,000 profit she made by selling a flat in Kennington that she had designated her second home in order to claim expenses.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell also avoided CGT when he sold a London flat. And others including Chancellor Alistair Darling have maximised the money they can get out of the taxpayer by 'flipping'. Darling 'flipped' four times in four years.

One of the most crass examples of exploitation revealed by the Telegraph is that of Margaret Moran, MP for Luton South. She spent £22,500 of taxpayers' money treating dry rot at her seaside house – 100 miles from her constituency, and nowhere near Westminster - days after switching her second home designation there. At the weekend she insisted she had done nothing wrong, because her husband works in Southampton and that is where she needed to be. But the second home allowance is supposed to be used for her public service to her constituents, not her private convenience.

At tomorrow's Cabinet, Brown will be seeking a golden bullet, a single shot that can allow him to break free from the stranglehold of sleaze. The Mole can offer him one - tell his ministers to repay the money they have avoided in tax. And in the most blatant cases, such as that of Margaret Moran, insist that the allowances are paid back. ·