Summary
IT WAS a warm summer evening in North Queensferry. Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah were holding a party at their home, an imposing mansion with magnificent views across the Firth of Forth. In the house were some of the Chancellor's closest political allies: Scottish Secretary Alastair Darling, ; David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, a close friend of both the Chancellor and his wife; and Henry McLeish, Brown's old Fife colleague, whose ill-fated rise to the First Minister's job Brown had backed after the death of Donald Dewar.
With local activists also in attendance, it was very much a gathering of Brown's people. Except that also there on that July evening last year was one Jack McConnell. While Brown and the First Minister go back a long way - when a young McConnell had, 12 years earlier, applied for the job of Scottish Labour Party general secretary, Brown had been one of his referees - relations since then had been glacial.See the full content of this document
Extract
For the Love of Power
McConnell's decision to back Tony Blair as Labour leader following the death of John Smith had been tantamount to betrayal. McConnell's subsequent New Labour-ising of the Scottish party - over which Brown had previously held such a firm hold - had been equivalent to mutiny. Yet now, it seemed, McConnell was back in the fold.
The pair were almost inseparable that July week. After the Queensferry party, it was down to London on the Monday when the two enjoyed one of their increasingly regular private meetings. In the early days of McConnell's First Ministership, contact b...See the full content of this document
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