{"id":13599,"date":"2010-10-29T13:19:58","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T12:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/politics.widmann.org.uk\/?p=2946"},"modified":"2010-10-29T13:19:58","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T12:19:58","slug":"why-didnt-blair-sack-brown-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/why-didnt-blair-sack-brown-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why didn&#039;t Blair sack Brown?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/veronika23\/670266163\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1405\/670266163_e1a42a00b4_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\"><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/veronika23\/670266163\/\">27\/6<\/a><br \/>\nOriginally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/veronika23\/\">Ronnie23<\/a><br \/>\n<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<p>There&#8217;s a new revelation about the war between Blair and Brown in the Jonathan Powell&#8217;s new Book, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/gp\/product\/1847921221?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=thewidblo-21&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1634&#038;creative=6738&#038;creativeASIN=1847921221\">The New Machiavelli<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.co.uk\/e\/ir?t=thewidblo-21&#038;l=as2&#038;o=2&#038;a=1847921221\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/>&#8220;, as mentioned in the Guardian&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/wintour-and-watt\/2010\/oct\/28\/jonathan-powell-gordon-brown\">Wintour and Watt blog<\/a> (hat-tip: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.libdemvoice.org\/?p=21833&#038;utm_source=tweet&#038;utm_medium=twitter&#038;utm_campaign=twitter\">Liberal Democrat Voice<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Given the Treasury&#8217;s refusal to share information with us, we had real trouble working out what the financial implications for Britain of the Luxembourg proposal would be. In desperation, we kidnapped the Treasury&#8217;s expert at the UK mission in Brussels and took him with us to Luxembourg so that he could explain to us what the offer really meant.<\/p>\n<p>He was enormously relieved when we finally let him go. He didn&#8217;t mind that he was being dumped in Paris, the next stop on our trip, without a passport or any money. He just wanted our assurance that we wouldn&#8217;t tell the Treasury that he had been travelling with us: that would blight his career for ever.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Why didn&#8217;t Blair just sack Brown?<\/p>\n<p>I know he was afraid of Brown creating a backbench rebellion, but surely nothing could have been worse than this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>27\/6 Originally uploaded by Ronnie23 There&#8217;s a new revelation about the war between Blair and Brown in the Jonathan Powell&#8217;s new Book, &#8220;The New Machiavelli&#8220;, as mentioned in the Guardian&#8217;s Wintour and Watt blog (hat-tip: Liberal Democrat Voice): Given the Treasury&#8217;s refusal to share information with us, we had real trouble working out what the financial implications for Britain of the Luxembourg proposal would be. In desperation, we kidnapped the Treasury&#8217;s expert at the UK mission in Brussels and took him with us to Luxembourg so that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[159,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-en","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/widmanniana.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}