Evil and its returns

Of the many confidences broken by Peter Mandelson in his The Third Man, perhaps the most striking (not that I have finished reading it yet) is this quotation from a note from Cherie Blair after his first resignation, in which “the engine of my destruction was Gordon Brown”, from the Cabinet in December 1998:

I have no doubt you have been the victim of a vicious and selfish campaign … My only consolation is that I believe a person who causes evil to another will in the end suffer his returns. That he is prepared to risk the whole Labour government and to plot against a vital part of it means that to me he has lost any claim to the moral high ground he affects to inhabit.

Brian Wilson quotes part of it in his review in Scotland on Sunday, and comments: “The only bits that matter are ten years too late.”

Or possibly about 20 years too early.

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  But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. ~Deuteronomy 32:15

• Guest

  Written in prose from an earllier time, but to paraphrase, ‘The upstanding in society, and this is addressed to all readers, have too much, given by God, and we have rejected the God who gave us everything, which will result in losing everything.’

  Perhaps, when Keats wrote, “See how it takes a lifetime of suffering, to school an ntelligence and make it a soul,” he was right. Doesn’t this, however, simpy excuse the wicked in Government for their lack of knowledge of suffering? I’m not sure I understand your point.

• http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/ BlairSupporter

  Haven’t got far into it yet, and not to that part, JR. I nearly threw it away when the first person Mandelson thanked was GHOSTly Robert (novelist/killer) Harris! FGS!

  But this is near the start and stopped me. I even re-read it.

  Brown had just asked Mandelson to help him after he had failed to call the election in 2007 and was dropping in the polls. During their talk Brown became enthused when Mandelson said, trying to give him a strategy and direction,”it’s the world economy, stupid”. Brown then started reeling off his ideas for domestic renewal.

  Mandelson said,”It was… remarkably similar to Tony’s policy agenda, which because of his deep frustration at his wait to take over, Gordon had done so much to undermine, and had spent his early months in Number 10 distancing himself from. ‘You could have done all of this without dumping on the government of which you were a member for the lat ten years ….It was all that neurosis and pent-up anger about Tony, fanned by the people around you.’

  Very, very similar to Alastair Campbell’s version. I have almost finished his book. And now we have one of the “people around” Brown standing to lead the Labour party. Balls to you.

• takeoman

  “I believe a person who causes evil to another will in the end suffer his returns.” No hope for Tony then best he can hope for is eternal damnation or rebirth as a dung beetle.