The Economist: Is Gordon Brown doomed?

Austin Barry

Gordon as Saint Sebastian. Mmm.

Henry Rogers

But didn't St Sebastian survive by miraculous means? Someone will put us right about that! Meanwhile does anyone care two hoots what happens to Brown and his party providing we can replace both before too long?

Tiberius

Let us make sure we do not forget that he was just as useless as Chancellor as he is as PM. Taxing pensions, selling gold - we know the list. A colossal tragedy, even for him personally, with an incalculable cost to the country.

salieri

You were right, Henry, but the rest of my post got censored for bad taste. Sorry, Sir, must try harder.

TrevorH

According to Wikipedia (as I readily confess) St Sebastian was shot full of arrows (lied to by Blair?) but did not die from the arrow shots and was later nursed to life. (ie elected unopposed?)

He later haranged the Emporor Diocletian (attacked the poor with the 10p tax fiasco?) ... who had him clubbed to death (23%in the polls?).

Seems quite an apposite front cover to me - although I suspect only the most desperate and miserable of Labour believers would equate Brown with St. Sabastian.

Frank

One can only hope that he is.
Pensions Thief and Patron Saint of Scroungers.

Lance Diatessaron

I think the Economist cover might be making a not-so-subtle point about Mr Brown, and not necessarily about his policies.

Salieri: was that the gist of your 'bad taste' post?

Ian C

I don't trust publishers who are prepared to define a politicians 'raison d'etre' for the - still less the politician for whom it needs to be defined. To credit just Brown with "essentially
a meritocracy leavened with egalitarianism" is to display a followership for the politician and is mischievous. All centrists believe in the quoted purpose - the eternal political quest is how it is achieved without strangling the economic and social life of the country. Brown with his control freakery and light fingered approach to whose money it is he is spending is far off to the left of this centrist appraoch, if indeed he can be held within the centrist boundaries. The man is dangerous to the country's health - just look at the charts of the currency (e.g. against the Euro and Aussie $) since the non-election fiasco. We are in the middle of an old Labour currency crisis which will not be resolved until we know the date when Brown is leaving No.10. The Economist should apply its mind to that not to giving tips to yesterday's man who they supported.

salieri

More or less below the belt, yes. But I'll try again for Henry.

The story was that as Captain of the Praetorian Guard in Narbonne Sebastian got his men to aim wide and survived, bloody but just alive, was nursed back to health by another Christian called Irene and then went straight back and lambasted Diocletian again: the next time he was beaten to death by iron rods.

I was also reminded of that marvellous soliloquy from Tom Stoppard's "Jumpers", where the logician muses on Zeno's paradox (whereby when an arrow is half-way to the target it has another half the distance to travel, then half of the remaining half, and so on ad infinitum, so that the arrow can never actually arrive) and concludes that Saint Sebastian died of fright. Something symbolic there too, perhaps?

Anyway, a disturbing image.

Henry Rogers

Salieri,

Thought for a moment that you'd been silenced for some altogether irresistable Guido-esque joke about St S's (or rather paintings of him) iconic significance and our revered PM. Perhaps this won't pass the eagle eyes of the Speccie management either. Nothing like a good bit of schoolboy humour though!

Teddy Smith

Would this image violate the new "extreme pornography" laws?? This bunch really have lost the plot...