International

Mo Mowlam attacks Blair 'spin machine'

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON APRIL 14. For many in the Government, their Sunday morning tea was spoilt as a former senior Cabinet Minister hit the headlines with a bitter attack on her "vicious'' one-time colleagues, portraying the most damaging picture yet of the hothouse atmosphere in Whitehall and Downing Street.

Mo Mowlam, one of the most charismatic old Labour figures who quit active politics last year following what she alleges was a sustained "smear campaign'', has not spared even the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, accusing him of reducing the Cabinet system to a "farce''. His communications-in-chief, Alistair Campbell, is whacked for presiding over a "spin machine'' that, she says, went on overdrive in what she darkly hints were attempts to hound her out because of her outspokenness and popularity with Labour's grassroots members.

Ms Mowlam's fury at the way she was treated by the Prime Minister downwards is the subject of a Channel 4 documentary, "Mo Mowlam: Inside New Labour'' whose transcript mysteriously surfaced in Sunday papers.

In a blistering attack which will please Her Majesty's Opposition, the former Northern Ireland Secretary speaks of growing tension at the heart of the Blair Government.

The most "destructive'' element, she says, is Mr Blair's relations with his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, whom he pipped at the post to become Prime Minister.

``If their relationship continues as destructively as it is now, I think the only way forward is for the Prime Minister to move him to another job,'' she says, recalling that often the two don't "even acknowledge each other's presence''.

Ms Mowlam, who was removed as Northern Ireland Secretary and made a Cabinet Office Minister in 1999 in what was made to appear as a demotion, is bitter that her struggle with a brain tumour was used as a weapon against her.

"My health was used against me all the way through the whispering campaign that I thought was disgusting. They'll stop at nothing'', she says describing the behaviour of her colleagues as "vicious, violent, horrible (and) appalling''.

Apparently, "Saint Mo'', as she is known among her admirers in the party, is not quite finished and there is more ammunition to come in her memoirs, due next month.

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