Good Morning Britain host Kate Garraway has received messages of support for her husband from former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Derek was a Labour adviser until the Lobbygate scandal in 1998.
He remains in intensive care after he was admitted to hospital on March 30 with a severe case of coronavirus, which has since affected his whole body.
Wife Kate revealed last week that Derek may never recover after his case of Covid-19 worked through his entire body, affecting his heart, lungs and causing him to develop diabetes.
But his former boss Peter Mandelson revealed that Blair and Brown have sent supportive messages to Kate.
Kate Garraway’s husband Derek remains critically ill in hospital (Image: Mirrorpix)
Speaking to Emma Barnett on BBC Radio 5 on Monday, Lord Mandelson said: “The whole experience, the whole dreadful, tragic experience of what’s happened to him has actually brought an enormous lot of people, who knew him in the 90s and beyond, who knew him in New Labour and the government.
“He’s been a hugely unifying figure, ironically, through this terrible, terrible tragedy.
Derek worked with Tony Blair when he was a Labour adviser (Image: PA)
“Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have sent him recorded messages, as we have done the rest of us.”
He explained that, like Kate, he has been playing music for his friend Derek in the hopes of sparking a response.
Mandelson said: “We’re now giving him music, we’re giving him photographs to stimulate a response, we’ve all come together, and we hope, and pray, that he will come through it.”
Derek left politics after the Lobbygate scandal and moved to California to retrain as a psychotherapist.
He met ITV favourite ate not long after she divorced first husband Ian Rumsey.
They went on to get married in 2005, when Kate was pregnant with their daughter Darcey.
The couple also has a son together, William – or Billy – who was born a few years after his sister.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
