Patricia Hewitt

Wise, in prison

Two names, Tony Blair and Stephen Byers, are both in the news now. However, the glare of the spotlight is brightest on Byers. The Times has a story about Byers with a video clip showing Byers doing what Tom Wise did, remember him? Wise was the UKIP MEP who boasted to a journalist about his income and way of working the system. Eventually reality caught up with Wise and he went to prison, he's there now. If he is allowed newspapers no doubt there will be a booming laugh echoing around the building as he reads the detail. I've met both Byers and Wise. The latter a big booming bully ex-policeman, the former a small apparatchik prone, like his mentor Blair, to near permanent rictus smile. And of course for Blair that's the problem, Byers is like a stick of rock, he has the word 'Blairite' running all the way through his soul.