Peter Watt's revenge on Gordon Brown – a dish eaten very cold

[Hopeless Romantic]

The man scapegoated by Brown for the so-called donorgate scandal is pretty savage about the PM – and who can blame him?

Loyalty to institutions in which people have served for many years is generally a good rule of life, even if the institution eventually lets you down. But I'm willing to make an exception for Peter Watt, ex-general secretary of the Labour party.

Who he? He's the man who was scapegoated and forced to resign by Gordon Brown over the spurious "donorgate" affair in late 2007. Now he has taken his revenge by publishing his memoirs, Inside Out: My Story of Betrayal and Cowardice at the Heart of New Labour. Among other things, it is pretty savage about Gordon Brown, as Patrick Wintour reports this morning.

What's more Watt's done it all in the Mail on Sunday, though it is the newspaper that first broke the story that wealthy Geordie businessman David Abrahams donated £600,000 (more than I realised) to party coffers via employees to whom he "legally gifted" the money.

The MoS went into typically camp outrage mode about this ("oooh, isn't he AWFUL!") and was followed by most of Fleet Street and the dear, daft TV networks, including the ever-excitable BBC. For several days it was the biggest political scandal of the week.

So the MoS solemnly printing Watt's side of the story is vintage Mail hypocrisy, so evident when it campaigns for the release of a mother wrongly convicted of killing her child having previously campaigned for her conviction.

It's called having your cake and wolfing it down. They didn't give anyone the benefit of the doubt at the time. But they and the Sunday Times usually win book auctions: deeper pockets.

Abrahams' gifting device was clearly a technical breach of the Labour-devised rules on transparency – Zac Goldsmith was similarly accused of using a third party conduit in yesterday's papers – but the motive appeared respectable enough in Abrahams's case: he wanted to avoid personal publicity.

What normal person wouldn't, as the donorgate duly "scandal" demonstrated? I barely know Peter Watt, but was told that he and his wife foster children with disabilities, which probably makes them better people than most of us.

I didn't know Abrahams at all at the time, but have since met him. He struck me as pretty sane and sound. All sorts of allegations were made in 2007, including suggestions that Abrahams was seeking favours by way of planning consent from Labour councils.

It didn't come to anything – as predicted here from day one. Nor did the eventual news that there would be no prosecutions of Peter Watt either generate much publicity. The media never admits its own major mistakes, unless forced to; it's a cardinal rule.

All of which is old stuff, except that Labour is still in deep financial trouble as the election looms and one of Watt's complaints – as the man charged with keeping his party solvent – is that Brown was uninterested in fundraising.

He was willing to waste £1m the party didn't have in planning a 2007 election he eventually decided not to stage. Watt says he was one of those who warned the boss not to gear up for a election and then bottle it. Hey ho.

Why am I indulgent towards such disloyalty to his party when only last week I deplored it in Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt? Because Hewitt and Hoon owed their party loyalty rather than hack-handed, counterproductive plotting. Because Hewitt was a fanatical champion of loyalty to Neil Kinnock when she was on his staff. Whatever he thinks now, Kinnock keeps his mouth shut.

But as Watt reports, he was deemed to be the expendable official who could be made a scapegoat. Brown referred to "crimes" committed and Watt was required to resign – left to the waiting wolves. No wonder he's cross.

No point in MPs moaning. He was badly let down by colleagues who should have protected him. When Tony Blair's staff were under threat over the almost-as-spurious loans-for-honours investigation he stood by his team, though he was less loyal to fundraiser Lord (Michael) Levy.

As for the anecdotes Watt has put into his book, they won't tell you much you probably don't know about the Brown style, though the hissy fit he allegedly threw when some American VIP guests (plus the Watts) sat down to supper at No 10 without him (he was on the phone) startled even me. The placement doesn't matter that much, Gordon, it really doesn't.

On shakier ground, Watt reports that Douglas Alexander – due to perform at tonight's meeting of the parliamentary Labour party as elections coordinator – told him that he was keen on a quickie 2007 election because the more voters knew Gordon the more they'd dislike him. It's tempting to believe it, but it is generally wise to mistrust what X says Y says and means.

Last week Brown reportedly promised colleagues like Alexander to be more collegiate in future. But the Sunday papers report that the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, is thinking of resigning.

A solid citizen is Ainsworth, underestimated by the hooligans on account of his not having gone to Oxford. The BBC's Nick Robinson reports that news of his possible resignation is news to Ainsworth.

Ask Peter Watt, Bob.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/jan/11/peter-watt-donorgate-gordon-brown