Powell-Regrets I had a few

The revelations that Tony Blair's ex chief of staff Jonathon Powell thinks that we should be talking to Al Qaeda makes the headlines but his book out on Monday and to be serialised in the Guardian contains many other revelations about the Blair Government.

Powell was the longest serving member of Blair's inner circle joining the former Prime Minister in 1995 and leaving on the day of his resignation.

Interviewed in this morning's Guardian magazine,he is compared to Alsitair Campbell as such

If Alastair Campbell was the mercurial all-rounder, blasting his way to a flashy 50 before being caught off an ill-judged stroke, Powell was the cool-headed, circumspect opener quietly toiling to a gritty 100 before running out of partners at the crease

He kept 17 bound diaries during his 12 years and not surprisingly they contain some revelations which the Guardian will be holding back for next week.We are though given some snippets

On Blair's weakness

he ventures, a little half-heartedly, that perhaps there was some hubris towards the end, and "maybe he was not quite tough enough with people

and adds

not sticking to things once you'd decided them.

He is disappointed that

Labour failed seriously to challenge the establishment. "What we sort of did was create a new establishment, which was pretty much like the old establishment but with slightly different people...

and regrets

Labour did not govern more boldly. "I think we were mesmerised by the notion that we'd be another Labour government that came in, a flash in the pan, and then disappeared again. One term and, if we were lucky, two terms. And so the huge emphasis was on not spending all our political capital, hoarding it and saving it to win another election and stay in power. I think it ran through all three terms. You never quite escaped it."

On Iraq he concedes that the government had

not understoodquite what we were getting ourselves into... I don't think we realised quite what a task, or a lengthy task, we were taking on

And finally on the story that

Brown walked past Powell every week for 10 years for his regular meetings with Blair without ever saying hello

well it was all true