I got a call today from the Independent asking me to write 90 words on the following subject: "Would you ditch a friend if they were damaging your career?" Echoes of Carole Capilin & Cherie. This is what I wrote... Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for his life, - so said Jeremy Thorpe about Harold Macmillan’s night of the long knives in 1963. In politics you can never have too many friends, because those you make on the way up you can rest assured you’ll need on the way down. When I heard Gordon Brown say that Tony Blair was the best friend he had had in politics I noted the tense and thought of Jeremy Thorpe’s quote. Ditching true friends seems to run in the Blair family. I'd like to think it doesn't in mine.Profound, eh?!
