Time to end feud, Brown tells Blair (Guardian)

When I first saw this article, I thought that I had been mistaken in my earlier posts, and that there actually was an awful lot of bad blood between Mr Brown and Mr Blair. Which would certainly be a big story.

But then I saw this, which made me reconsider. This is a case of Brown using the apparent bad blood to make Mr Blair look bad. Obviously, this shows that there is a degree of animosity between the two, which, I dare say, is not helped by this kind of thing. Mr Brown is desperate to be seen as the good guy in all of this, so that he can become the new party leader. But he’s not nearly such a good manipulator as Mr Blair, and he hasn’t realised that pulling this sort of stunt will damage Labour at the next general election: Something for which the party will not forgive him, and that will preclude him from being allowed to ascend to party leadership. He’s being foolish.

I realise now, though, that there is greater animosity between the two than I had at first realised, and this could very well do some serious damage to the party. But was the speech clash part of this argument? I still think that’s too puerile a trick for Mr Blair to pull.