The Centrist

Postcards from the political centre

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Now, the Cenrist is sometimes accused of being unfair to Gordon Brown. True, I’ve said some pretty harsh things about him here in the past. I’ve even called him childish names and made up songs about him.

But I don’t think anybody could have failed to be moved by the Prime Minister’s appearance on Piers Morgan’s chat show at the weekend, in which he cried while discussing the death of his daughter, Jennifer, in 2001.

What Gordon and Sarah Brown went through is simply unimaginable to one who hasn’t been there. It’s beyond awful. And beyond politics. Brown handled himself with dignity and humanity in that interview, which I found to be a genuinely affecting piece of television.

I found the contrast particularly marked coming, as it did, just a week after Alastair Campbell theatrically choked back the crocodile tears and “took a moment” to compose himself after Andrew Marr lobbed him a softball jibe so gentle it may as well have been dipped in marshmallow fluff and coated with chocolate sprinkles.

The Centrist isn’t suggesting that Campbell is an insincere man. On the contrary, Campbell once threw the Centrist and his wife out of the lobby of parliament (through which they were passing, innocently and with the utmost decorum, after a drinking session with a parliamentary researcher friend). Clearly he is a man of some principle.

Whether fragile Ali’s tears were genuine or not is up to us, the viewers (and the voters) to decide. But nobody could, or should, doubt the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s pain in that interview last Sunday. To do so would be to show an astonishing lack of empathy.

And if there’s one thing that politics really needs right now, it’s a little more humanity.

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