Everyone at the heart of government is either "Blair" or "Brown"; every news story is seen as part of that same struggle.)Yet even Keegan, despite being sympathetic, does not give Brown as much credit as he deserves. A conversation with anyone in No 10 or the Treasury is peppered with unprompted references to the internal civil war It is so much part of the landscape it colours everything. Simply lasting seven years in the post without making a mess of things is a huge achievement in itself; but Brown has done better than that.William Keegan's excellent new book, The Prudence of Mr Gordon Brown, pays the Chancellor the compliment of taking his record seriously, rather than simply as soap opera (Mind you, the soap opera is important and real Journalists do not make it up. Even before he overtakes David Lloyd George's record for longevity in the job in June this year, he has some claim to equal his great predecessor in stature. His record of sound stewardship of the British economy, combined with that of social justice, is outstanding. Each one is greeted with the kind of modified rapture of which past chancellors of the exchequer could only dream - even the one, two years ago, that raised National Insurance contributions by £8bn a year.More than that, Brown is good at being Chancellor.
Many in the Labour Party are tempted by the prospect of a velvet revolution, a bloodless transfer of power to Gordon Brown It would refresh the Government It would allow everyone to move on from the Iraq war It would let them focus on the good news of public services. There has been no "end of major combat operations", just an invasion and an occupation that merged seamlessly into a long and ferocious war for liberation from the "liberators". Just as the British invaded Iraq in 1917, proclaiming their determination to bring Iraqis liberation from their tyrants - General Maude used those very words - so we have repeated this grim narrative today. The British who died in the subsequent Iraqi war of resistance lie now in the North Gate Cemetery on the edge of Baghdad, an enduring if largely neglected symbol of the folly of our occupation More from Robert Fisk. If we could have foreseen all this - if we could have been patient and waited for the UN arms inspectors to finish their job rather than go to war and plead for patience later, when our own inspectors couldn't find those oh so terrible weapons - would we have gone so blithely to war a year ago?For that war has not ended.
Driving south after winning a contract to run a garage in the city, he and his 11 companions in their AKEA vehicle were last week overtaken by men firing pistols at the car. One man died - he had 30 bullets in his body - and the relative, swamped in the blood of his friends, was the only man unwounded.Not surprisingly, the occupation authorities decline to keep statistics on the number of Iraqis who have died since the "liberation" - or during the invasion, for that matter - and prefer to talk about the "handover of sovereignty" from one American-appointed group of Iraqis to another, and to the constitution which is only temporary and may well fall apart before real elections are held - if they are held - next year. The two girls had just called from Yemen where they had been sold into slavery. Another of his neighbours had just received her 17-year-old son after paying $5,000 to gunmen in the Karada area of Baghdad. Two days ago - it is Friday as I am writing this - kidnappers grabbed another child, this time in Mansour, and are now demanding $200,000 for his life.
His mother, he said, had just raised a million Iraqi dinars to pay a ransom for a local woman whose daughter and daughter-in-law were kidnapped by armed men in Baghdad in January. A close relative of my visitor - and remember this is just one man's experience out of a population of 26 million Iraqis - had also just survived a bloody attack on his car outside Karbala. Who actually wanted this "civil war"? Why would the Sunnis - a minority in the country - allow al-Qa'ida to bring this about when they could not defeat the occupying power without at least passive Shia support?While I was writing this report, my phone rang and a voice asked me if I would meet a man downstairs, a middle-aged Iraqi and a teacher at Cardiff College who had recently returned to Iraq, only to realise the state of fear and pain in which his country now existed. Upstairs was a man on a soaked hospital trolley with a head wound that was almost indescribable. From his right eye socket hung a handkerchief that was streaming blood on to the floor.For days, we in the city had seen the news tapes of Basra and Nasiriyah after "liberation". We had seen the looting and pillage there, benignly watched over by the British and Americans. We knew what would happen when the fighting stopped in Baghdad.