Brown's wrong '“ but he's better than Blair..

'I think he's basically a decent man and an honest man and intent on doing absolutely what he thinks is the right thing for the country.

'Brown is not cheap, he is not tacky, he is not greedy and he is not trying to sell houses and buy bigger houses and all the rest of it for himself like his predecessor.

'Talking to Brown's wife is an entirely different experience to talking to Cherie Blair.

'If I had to be stuck on a desert island, I would choose Brown rather than Blair to be with me.

'Blair's great failing in the run-up to the war in Iraq is that he didn't understand himself and did not try to make the American understand that part of the world.

'He listened to Cherie that women couldn't paint their toenails there.

'That was wrong because Iraq was one of the few places in the Muslim world where women could hold driving licences and work and where there were churches.'

He attacked the thinking which assumed the Iraqis would rise to greet the Americans after Saddam Hussein was toppled like the French greeted them after Paris was liberated in the second world war.

'It makes me angry that this country, with all the experience we have accumulated and all the people who knew about this type of thing, no consideration was given to what would happen after the fighting.

'It's a tragedy.'