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Slip of the pen and slack work by aides are fatal combination
Joe Murphy, Political Editor10 Nov 2009
With today's press conference, Gordon Brown has probably done enough to draw a line under the horrible row about his condolence letter.
By invoking his own awful experience of the grief at losing a child, his daughter Jennifer Jane, he quashed the notion that he would have treated the war dead from Afghanistan with anything but respect.
It has been a dreadful two days for the Prime Minister and he looked emotionally shattered by it this morning. Some of the criticism levelled at him — such as allegedly not bowing at the Cenotaph — is silly and owes more to the mood that critics are out to get him than reality.
And it is worth noting that no Tory of any substance has joined in the criticism of his letter of condolence to Mrs Jacqui Janes. At least one kept silent because Mr Brown was personally kind to him when dealing with a bereavement a couple of years ago and therefore had his own grounds to disagree with Mrs Janes.
Others know very well that in six months it will be David Cameron and themselves who will be facing the likes of Jacqui Janes and Sharron Storer, who berated Tony Blair about poor quality of hospital care in 2001.
It is to Mr Brown's credit that he hand-writes his letters to bereaved families, even though his handwriting is challenging to say the least. Incidentally, he does not believe he misspelt the name of Jamie Janes at all, but thinks he shaped the letters badly.
But the fact remains that something went very wrong for this letter to go out. One of the officials who photocopy and post these things should have spotted the low quality, that was perhaps due to poor eyesight and fatigue, and brought it to the attention of one of the aides senior enough to ask the PM to do it again.
