11 Jun 2012

Brown swings at Tory deal and ‘on oath’ testimony

Gordon Brown is a firm believer in “the grand deal” and has been alleging to the Leveson Inquiry that David Cameron (not mentioned by name) rolled over and signed off on the Murdoch shopping list on the BBC, Ofcom and much else before the 2010 election.

But he didn’t produce much by way of granular evidence so I doubt he’s edged Lord Justice Leveson any closer to writing the sort of conclusions he’d like to see on how the Tories responded to James Murdoch’s MacTaggart lecture.

Gordon Brown has been very pointedly challenging the on-oath testimony of Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks. In particular, whether he and his wife, Sarah, gave “explicit permission” to The Sun to write about his son’s medical condition.

Another swipe was over whether there was an angry and “unbalanced” phone call between him and Rupert Murdoch and a subsequent one with Rebekah Brooks.

Gordon Brown claimed that he tended to be “very calm indeed” when things were going badly. He insisted his call with Rebekah Brooks was calm.

Lord Justice Leveson seemed to think that a little surprising. I understand that it was a phone call that ended with Mr Brown slamming the phone down on Mrs Brooks – presumably very calmly.

Gordon Brown will be pleased to see Fife NHS seeming to back up his version of events and throwing up questions for News International’s version of how they came to know about his son’s medical condition.

Gordon Brown told the inquiry, on oath, that he did not as chancellor authorise his press aides to brief against Tony Blair and would hope they didn’t do so. When he was asked if his aides briefed the press, he said only when they were cleared by Treasury staff press chiefs.

It emerged that Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander told Gordon Brown to rein in Damian McBride when he was Gordon Brown’s special adviser at the Treasury. Mr Brown was asked about warnings he had from Jacqui Smith, Alistair Darling and others about Mr McBride.

Gordon Brown started his testimony by saying he tried in 2007 (when he came to No 10) to start announcing policy in the Commons rather than dribbling it out in cosy deals with newspapers. He returned to this at the end of his testimony as well.

He did indeed try reverting to the old-fashioned approach of announcing stuff in the Commons but bowed to pressure from the newspapers, complaining they wanted their “exclusives” and would not give prominence to policy announcements unless they got them to themselves.

The experiment folded after about three or four weeks.

Gordon Brown mentioned how he knew Robert Jay, the QC who asks questions on behalf of Lord Justice Leveson, would be coming on to other matters in his questioning.

He also mentioned at one point that Mr Jay had already asked him something when he hadn’t been asked the question in public today. I understand this is because Mr Jay visits witnesses to talk through their written evidence before they give evidence at the inquiry in person, telling them where questioning might go and where they might need to brief themselves a bit more.

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