That was how Jacquie Janes reacted when she received the letter from Gordon Brown following her son's death in Afghanistan.

Her boy had just sacrificed his life for his country, and as far as she was concerned the uncaring response from Number Ten was an inaccurate, ungrammatical and barely legible note.

Her first thought was how she could inflict upon the Prime Minister some of the torment she was enduring. What better way than by exposing what she considered to be his indifference to the widest possible audience?

A quick telephone call to The Sun news desk and the job was done. Within hours, Brown, his appalling handwriting and questionable spelling were being offered up for public ridicule.

But worse was to follow. When Gordon Brown rang to apologise for any distress he may have caused, Mrs Janes recorded the conversation without his knowledge.

The Sun denies any involvement in this perfidy, so we can only assume Mrs Janes already had some fairly sophisticated recording equipment attached to her telephone as a matter of course.

This exchange was also put forward for public delectation – but from that moment things did not go as planned.

The Sun was roundly denounced as callous and exploitative (no change there then) and Mrs Janes came across as an embittered woman who had become a martyr to her own distorted judgement.

The public consensus was that while Brown may have been as ham-fisted and emotionally sclerotic as ever, he actually meant well. The same could not be said of Mrs Janes or The Sun.

There are many issues to do with Afghanistan on which Gordon Brown can be justifiably attacked – especially the lack of basic equipment being provided for our soldiers in the field.

But between them, a distraught mother and a newspaper playing its own odiously self-serving game have conspired to engender sympathy for Brown where none previously existed.

Peter Mandelson described the whole sorry episode as 'crude politicking.' He is absolutely right.

And that's the first - and last - time I ever expect to write that particular sentence.



* The description so often applied to David Cameron – that of 'Blair-lite' – always seemed too trite and convenient. But it is gaining credibility by the day.

He used the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty as a way in which to slither out of his commitment to 'a cast-iron guarantee' of offering voters a say on Europe.

He knew perfectly well the treaty issue was going to be academic and that any referendum would therefore serve as a bellwether on the public attitude towards EU in general.

He also knew it would have come up with the answer he didn't want – and that's a shameful abuse of democracy.


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