Brown is either fleet-footed or indecisive – he cannot be both

Gordon Brown delivers the most important speech of his life this afternoon. Whether that speech can even check the march of the seemingly inevitable is doubtful, but his best chance is to express an alternative strain of personality from the severe and serious man the electorate plainly dislike.

Jim Naughtie and Neil Kinnock debated the alleged disparity between Gordon Brown in public and Gordon Brown in private. Kinnock repeated the line that, behind closed doors, Brown is a barrel of laughs, a near dilettante, and he sang the usual ‘if you could see him through my eyes’ chorus.

Kinnock claimed that many in Labour circles have urged Brown in private to become the “fleet-footed, highly articulate, wonderfully lucid and forceful politician” he once was, allegedly. According to Kinnock, Brown’s response is always that “the obligations of being Chancellor” required him to be deadly serious and that his “critics will claim the credit” if he changes.