Leave Gordon Brown alone (just this once)
Dear The Sun,
Yesterday, both Sky News and the BBC were fixated with your story detailing how the mother of a dead soldier was said to be upset by Gordon Brown’s letter of condolence to her, in which he made several spelling mistakes including the soldier’s name. You also attacked Brown for failing to bow at the Cenotaph. The story is still running today after you published the transcript of the conservation between Brown and the soldier’s mother from Sunday evening. While these incidents are all regrettable, your suggestion that this amounts to evidence that Gordon Brown does not care about Britain’s armed forces is absurd.
First, the Cenotaph. I don’t think anyone will be particularly thrilled with Brown if questioned about it, but before you tried to make a big deal out of his failure to bow, I didn’t see a single newspaper, blog or website make an issue out of this – presumably because they didn’t even notice. I also think it’s ridiculous that you extrapolated from this minor error and used it to attack Brown’s commitment to our armed forces, as there is clearly no link between the two. In fact, I could reasonably argue that Brown was so caught up in a moment of reflection and sadness during the service that he was unable to think straight and therefore forgot to bow.
Second, the letter to Jacqui Janes about her son’s death.

As you noted, PMs write to all next-of-kin of the fallen and Brown telephoned Jacqui yesterday to apologise for his mistake. However, you didn’t think this was good enough. Jacqui apparently said: “He couldn’t even be bothered to get our family name right. That made me so angry. Then I saw he had scribbled out a mistake in Jamie’s name. The very least I would expect from Gordon Brown is to get his name right. The letter was scrawled so quickly I could hardly even read it and some of the words were half-finished. It’s just disrespectful.” You went on to gleefully detail Brown’s errors: spelling Jamie incorrectly and then correcting it by scrawling over the last letter, committing four other spelling mistakes (greatst, condolencs, you instead of your, and colleagus) and writing the letter “i” incorrectly 18 times – mostly by leaving the dots off them but once by using two in “security”.
Jacqui went on: “In the days after Jamie’s death I got letters from Prince Philip, Buckingham Palace, the Defence Secretary and his regiment. They were all written from the heart and made me feel Jamie’s death was important to them. Then I got Gordon Brown’s. I only got through the first four lines before I threw it across the room in disgust. I re-read it later. He said, ‘I know words can offer little comfort’. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer NO comfort. It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me that disgraceful, hastily-scrawled insult of a letter? He finished by asking if there was any way he could help. One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier’s family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right.”
I understand why Jacqui is upset, but a little bit of common sense often goes a long way in situations like this. A spokesperson for Brown said last night: “The PM takes a great deal of time writing letters of condolence. The reason he personally writes to every family is to acknowledge the debt of gratitude owed by the country to those who have died. He would never knowingly mis-spell anyone’s name.” Yes, Brown could have typed it, and yes, he should not have made so many mistakes, but I can almost guarantee that if Brown sent out typed letters then some parent somewhere would complain that he doesn’t even care enough to write the letters himself as they would assume that it was just another standardised letter sent to all families of the deceased. The fact that Gordon Brown has very bad handwriting is presumably down to the fact that he only has one eye and, unlike some other bloggers, I think it is appalling to attack Brown for his disability and make reference to it (Iain Dale pointed out that he has to write in felt tip because of his poor eyesight). Sure, Brown could get someone to check his letters but apparently he writes them himself and personally puts them straight into an envelope to be posted. Does that sound like a man who doesn’t give a damn?
I think this entire episode is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourselves. There are a million and one reasons to have a dig at Gordon Brown right now, including his funding of the military and failure to come up with an effective strategy in Afghanistan. Sadly, you have stooped to the lowest common denominator (no change there) and taken aim at his disability and suggested that he doesn’t care about our armed forces, even though the evidence that you cite suggests quite the contrary.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory










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