by Atul Hatwal
If Rebekah Brooks’ e-mail to James Murdoch does give a fair account of her conversation with Tony Blair, then he’s been a very foolish ex-prime minister.
It’s not so much the apparent cynicism of the advice on how to manage the process, or even the reference to Hutton (which might be Brooks’ interpretation rather than a direct reference by Blair) but the crushing, ghastly, inescapable lack of judgement. What did he think he was doing?
One of the worst aspects of politics is the faux comity within which work relationships become wrapped.
It was evident at the Huhne trial in the cringeworthy string of BFF e-mails between Vicky Pryce and Isabel Oakeshott, where they discuss having a “fun” mini-break in Greece to work through the details of the story to bring down Huhne.
The chummy undercurrent is wholly at odds with the reality of what is happening. These types of exchanges are not friends having a little chitter chatter, they are work transactions of significant gravity. Each participant has something the other wants. At stake are careers, livelihoods, and in the case of the Huhne fiasco, people’s liberty.
But it is the argot in which much modern politics is conducted and in Tony Blair’s case, he seems to have mistaken the artifice of sociability for the substance for friendship.
