Gordon’s retirement plan

With Brown celebrating what Matt rightly calls a triumph of a first month, it is a strange time to consider his retirment as I do in my column in today’s News of the World (not online). My information is that Brown believes he has only one election in him: he’ll fight it, then hand over. This makes sense: Brown may be all for working past retirement age but I doubt the electorate would let him lead by example. He has already started succession planning, by putting a new generation of ministers in key posts but being careful not to over promote (and therefore risk ruining) them. But as Blair showed, openly planning for retirement is a dangeous game in No 10. After you win the election, the fighting begins. This is a reason for him to avoid an early election: he will want to keep hold of his tremendous personal authority (ie having no rival power bases) for as long as possible.