Is Cherie inadvertently helping Gordon by attacking him in her book?

Cherie Blair's book is being serialised in the Times and all the papers are full of details about it, including the Daily Mail which dwells on it at some length. In particular the Mail gives prominence to a passage about Cherie's attitude to money and MP's salaries, with quotes from the book:

"When the move to Number 10 became a probability the accountant looked at our income and expenditure exercise. The results weren't encouraging. It showed that while Tony's income would go up, mine would go down.

"We'd been told that living in Downing Street would be taxed, yet we still had a big mortgage to pay, plus the overdraft I'd taken out. I didn't know how long Tony would be Prime Minister. On the plus side I knew MPs and ministers would be about to get a 26% payrise."

........She said she was furious with Mr Brown after he told Labour's first Cabinet meeting in 1997 not to take a 26 per cent pay rise.

Mrs Blair - who said she had taken a pay cut when her husband became PM - revealed: "Tony told me as soon as he got back to the flat. I couldn't believe it as the Tories were taking it. It meant Tony would be earning less than William Hague.

"I remember sitting at the table at the kitchen at No 10 with my head in my hands and staring at the now completely redundant financial breakdown as Tony tried to calm me down, but I wouldn't be calmed down.

"How dare Gordon do that? What did he know about financial commitments? He was a bachelor living on his own in a flat with a small mortgage."


Cherie also says that Blair is helping Brown with his election strategy.

The comments on the piece (and there are loads of them) indicate that people dislike Cherie more than they dislike Gordon Brown. One person, Terry Stride from Tamworth writes:

Well now we know why Mr Brown is making such a mess of things, he is taking advice from Quisling Blair, you could not make it up if you tried.

There's tons more in that vein. To read the whole thing, click here.