Gordon Brown gets a Monday morning visit!

He must have thought his week was starting well. Visit the kirk, chat to friends, fly back to Downing Street for business as usual. Then he gets a visit from his best friends. Lord Mandelson, who has more capricious relationships than any person, led the charge. Ed Balls is in there now (a trusted friend?) and that wily Alastair Campbell, who seems to have been on high dose antacid tablets recently. I'd love to be a fly on the wall. Gordon Brown's minister said he prayed for all even if he disagreed with them. He better do something different today. Get down on his knees (not very Presbyterian!) and pray like mad that Mandelson is not up to some vile trickery!

Tears of a spin doctor

Alastair Campbell got all weepy yesterday on the Andrew Marr Show. He feels aggrieved at not being believed about his testimony over the Iraq War handling. He told Marr he had been "through a lot on this". Well, no doubt he has, but so have millions of others for extremely different reasons. Some have been killed, others maimed and the truth itself has been sorely abused. Campbell came across as a man deeply troubled. I have no doubt he believes in this New Labour project. He gave his all to see Tony Blair esconced in No.10. But he must surely realise that he has a reputatation for being a devious liar at worst and a man who dissembles the facts at best. Maybe its all catching up with him.

Even if his version of events has some element of truth in it, most people can never believe that he and Blair were not up to something. All the evidence points to the fact that Blair agreed in advance with Bush to go to war over Iraq. It was an invasion. We were not targeted or at risk. Blair did not listen to anything he did not want to hear. Perhaps he believed Bush's crazed notions about this war "being over by Christmas". Such nonsense has always been trotted out to give a false sense of hope. The American neo-cons, led by Bush and his apparatchik Rumsfeld, thought they could make a killing over oil. No such luck. But the devious types are still rooting around trying to make a fast buck with "security" and "advice".

Campbell may cry a river of tears and part of me feels sorry for him. But in the end, his own rather viscious method of political operation has eventually caught up with him. He's in a Matilda situation. Nobody really believes him anymore.