Gordon Brown's past is catching up with him, because he can't deny his fully consummated, tongue-on-tongue love affair with Fred the Shred, just as Iraq caught up with Tony Blair," says David Hare.
Our leading political playwright, a career-long chronicler and critic of the Left, thinks the rows about Damian McBride's emails and Jacqui Smith's bath-plug are mere aftershocks of bigger scandals that have already shattered the party.
"What we are seeing in the email scandal and in the financial compromises is the result of a decision Labour made on the point of defeat in 1991 to never again be the party of opposition to either the press or the City," Hare continues. "That was the plan, to cosy up to those two institutions. Didn't work, did it?
"Blair was plainly in love with the City, so Labour bet the house on the expansion of the financial sector, partly because it did such great things for the economy and produced huge amounts of tax for the social programmes Brown believed in.
"Now it turns out that the financial sector has ruined the country, Brown is in an impossible situation. Labour is certain to lose the next election - to be replaced by the most profoundly unimpressive Conservative opposition ever. And I don't think Labour can come back until Iraq is cleansed from its system. Which will be a long time yet."
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