The opposite of news

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Seemingly Blair and Brown didn’t get on. Rumour has it that Brown wanted Blair’s job. He was even willing to remove him against his will. It was all very unseemly. I’m sure this will all come as a great surprise to you if you were perhaps trapped underground in 2005, like an unheralded Chilean miner. Or perhaps if you’re on the editorial staff of the Daily Telegraph.

The papers obtained by the Telegraph – catnip future Labour historians though they may be – reveal little. They bring to mind the classified documents released under the thirty year rule that titulate and entertain us each year. Except the split in New Labour wasn’t classified at the time. It wasn’t even a secret. It was a round the clock soap opera played out infront of a frankly disinterested populace.

Seemingly the files document attempts to negotiate an orderly transition between Blair and Brown. Whilst I’m yet to complete my full run through of the New Labour-era biography odyssey (15+ bookshelf snapping tomes and counting), this offer has come up time and time again – as has its failure, with the men poles apart on Blair’s legacy. And that Balls and Miliband worked for Brown, alongside him, as key aides is no secret either. If this is an attempt to tie the Labour leadership to Brown it is even more clumsy and crass than the attacks on Brown’s alleged ambitions to run the IMF (days before polling day, naturally).

And of course, as Brown supporters, the two Eds wanted Blair gone and their man in charge. This is pure office politics, writ large because we know the characters, and with the added benefit of hindsight. Who can honestly say they have not bad-mouthed a superior at work? Or talked through how if only you were in charge, everything would be different?

There’s something terribly unseemly about all of this, like pouring through the break up messages of a relationship long since passed. It was not pleasant. Few covered themselves in glory. But – barring any further, actually new, revelations – this should all be left where it belongs, in the past.

The scars from the TB/GB’s run deep for those who were closely involved. There’s still plenty of animosity and bile in the old camps, buried – deeply, but occasionally rising to the surface. No doubt the coming days will bring further “revelations” – some of which may even be revelatory – but the public has gotten over the Blair/Brown fueds, as has much of the party. Now it’s time for the Westminster bubble to get over them too.

For some it’s just a way to continue the war by-proxy and fight old battles over old ground.

But if we want to win again, we can’t let that be the case. Lets put these distractions out of our minds, and focus on the real battle ahead – not internal squabbling, but electing a Labour government. It’s what Tony and Gordon would want, after all.