So just how rich IS is "the Doctor"?

Much chatter about "Dr" John Reid** being brought back by Gordon Brown -- who is not desperate at all.

One Adam Smith (#121) over at PB.com said this:

Wouldn’t John Reid be the richest leader of the Labour Party in history? Who next…Sean Woodward?

Now I find it intriguing that a Marxist turned Leninist turned Stalinsit turned Blairite who has never had a job outside Glaswegian working class politics should be terribly, terribly rich. The words Glasgow, Labour and corruption spring unbidden to the lips although I can't think why.

He has a Brazilian film-maker wife whose films I have never heard of. Does she have famaily money? Information would be much appreciated.

Back at the same post on PB. com, here is wot I rote on the subject of the possible revival of Jurassic Park politics:

I am having a terrible struggle to be serious after reading ‘Reid would offer nothing short of mesmeric leadership’. (Wipe eyes, deep breath.)

Ah, nostalgia. CCHQ would pay serious money for to have Reid back this summer. They’d throw The Doctor a welcome back party. Black tie, fireworks, full orchestra. First waltz to be led by those popular dancers, James Naughtie and Mariella Frostrup, and Kevin Maguire and Polly Toynbee.

Reid’s disastrous record of personal incompetence in every office he’s held is the perfect image of Labour in government. The Jock/commie roots underline perfectly the Old (Glasgie) Labour/Brown mafia tags. The words ‘desperate’, ‘throwback’ and ‘Neanderthal’ (apologies to any Neanderthals reading this) would figure in every CCHQ briefing between now and the GE. Lovely.

Inviting a thug like Reid back might (*might*) just put a ‘disloyalty’ shot across… anyone considering serious manoeuvres this side of the GE, with the party now mortally wounded. Hang together or…

Brown might want Reid back to restore the fading memory of, wossname, Socialism, before the GE campaign-in-earnest. Bringing him back from the dead might (*might*) solidify 0.001 per cent of the Alice Mahon Tendency, making, er, Rockall difference to the swing to the F.U. party and the BNP.

OK, Reid could put up a barrage of noise to give Brown some cover, spitting abuse on Newsnight. That would cheer Brown’s old friend Kirsty up and it would give the rest of us a laugh. Those who are still listening.

Too late. Dead men walking. Oh - and Harriet.

** Reid is not a medical doctor. He is a PhD like the half of all MPs who do not have inferiority complexes. His thesis, which he started in his mid twenties, was a Marxist critique of zzzzzzzz...