By Jonathan Isaby
Conservative spokesmen have said nothing about the The Sun's story yesterday concerning Jacqui Janes' complaint about Gordon Brown's condolence letter - and rightly so.
I don't want for a moment to dismiss the grief and anguish which Mrs Janes naturally feels: she has suffered a loss which no parent should have to go through. But I felt there was something unseemly, even ugly, about the attack on the Prime Minister effectively for his bad handwriting, which is surely not unrelated to his bad eyesight.
I have blogged here recently about why it would be wrong to try and make an issue out of Mr Brown's eyesight and I stand by that. Quite simply there are so many fronts on which to attack him politically, that this kind of personal issue should not be considered fair game.
After the media storm yesterday about the letter, Mrs Janes must have been expecting a phone call from the PM, since when it came she was ready to record it - and she has today shared it with the world via the good offices of The Sun.
She rightly pursued the Prime Minister over the lack of equipment given to British troops in Afghanistan, which is very much the kind of issue on which he should be taken to task.
But I can't help feeling that she could have made those very valid points without the others about his handwriting.
1.30pm update:
As pointed out in the comments section below, Adam Holloway MP, a Conservative MP, former soldier and member of the defence select committee broke the Tory silence on the issue on Radio 4's World at One today, when he compared Gordon Brown's letter to the overall strategy in Afghanistan:
"It's sort of an allegory for the whole thing - very good intentions but the problem has been in the execution... We can't write a letter correctly, we can't get the right equipment and as far as I'm concerned, we don't have the right strategy."
