Brown on the rack

Watching Gordon Brown’s press conference you realise how on the ropes he is. The opening questions are all about the letter and Brown’s misspellings. Brown doesn’t have an answer that can shut this damaging story down and it is noticeable how he lacks the easy, public empathy of a Blair or a Cameron. Then the focus turns to Afghanistan and Brown lacks a compelling rationale for the presence of British troops there. All the while, everyone is forgetting the announcements on the NHS which Brown was trying to showcase this morning.

When you consider that even with Brown acting as a drag on Labour’s electoral fortunes, some polls only suggest that the Tories are on course for a single figure majority, one wonders whether Labour will finally dump him. Certainly, David Miliband’s decision to stay in British politics means that one possible replacement remains on the scene. As I wrote in the magazine last