Richard Littlejohn from The Daily Mail...
From clunking fist to limp wrist. So no change there, then. The only surprise is that anyone is in the least bit surprised.
You can perform cosmetic dentistry on a leopard, you can put him in a turquoise tie and comb his hair, but you can't get rid of the spots.
As long ago as July 6, shortly after he took over as Prime Minister, I wrote: "The defining characteristics of the Brown administration are fear and cowardice. He went out of his way to avoid a leadership challenge. He won't call a snap election because he's frightened he might lose."
The headline on that column read: "Admit it, Gordon, you're not up to the job."
Nothing I've seen in the intervening three months has gone any way towards changing my mind.
Regular readers will know my money was always against an election. As late as last Friday I said that while Gordon had painted himself into a corner, he was quite capable of walking out over the paint.
There are Dulux-spattered footprints all over the political landscape this morning as the boys in the bubble have all been forced to pick their way out across the wet emulsion because they let their gullibility get in the way of their better judgment.
Once the paint dries, there will be blood on the tracks. Never have so many been duped by so few.
To paraphrase Robert Browning's aptly titled The Lost Leader: never glad confident Gordon again!
That's why he chose to announce his cowardly retreat on the BBC. Gordon's going to need Auntie over the next two years.
His fair-weather friends in Fleet Street will exact a terrible revenge for being left with egg dribbling down their faces.
He can't spin his way out of this one. The ludicrous lies of fourthraters like Jack Straw and Hazel Blears are being laughed out of court. If they think this is going to be forgotten in a hurry, they're kidding themselves.
The carefully constructed artifice of trust and competence has been blown apart. All the King's Horses and all the King's Men won't put Grumpty Dumpty together again.
Gordon enjoyed an extraordinary and completely unwarranted tide of goodwill, which he has now flushed away. It's easy to pose as resolute in the face of terrorism when the bombs don't actually go off. Cancelling a casino which hasn't been built isn't exactly a high-risk strategy.
Making a statement on foot and mouth 20 minutes after a sheep sneezes in Lanarkshire doesn't turn you into Winston Churchill.
Come a real crisis, he's the Invisible Man.
During the Northern Rock panic, a mess partly of his own making, Gordon once again did his celebrated vanishing act.
The big domestic story this week is the post strike. Royal Mail has one shareholder: G. Brown. What has he had to say on the subject? Not a dicky bird.
As the Mail on Sunday noted: "Last night, Mr Brown left Downing Street by the back door." Of course he did.
His Press conference yesterday was the usual tissue of farragoes. The idea that his MPs in marginal seats were gagging for an election because they thought they'd win is a whopper which would do justice to Burger King.
Just about everything he said was an insult to our intelligence. Brown claims he decided not to go to the country because he wanted to lay out his vision for the future of Britain.
In the summer, he had six weeks trolling round the country campaigning unopposed for the Labour leadership - more than enough time to explain his "vision".
He could have laid out his vision during a full-scale General Election campaign and then let the people decide.
But Gordon doesn't trust the people, which is why he's still refusing to keep his promise at the last election to hold a referendum on the European treaty. His idea of democracy revolves around gimmicks like directly appointed Citizens' Juries, which will have the power to decide precisely nothing.
The only vision Gordon has is a blinkered vision of Gordon, to the exclusion of all else.
He spent 13 years in an incredible sulk because he didn't have the job he considered to be his birthright. Since Labour won the 2005 election, this entire parliament has been about him.
Almost immediately, Gordon's gormless groupies mounted a bungled palace revolution. He spent two years banging on the wall of Number 10, shouting at Blair to go. The governance of Britain came a distant second behind his burning obsession.
The decision whether or not to call an election was not about what was good for Britain, it was about what was good for Gordon.
His ridiculous posturing as the father of a grateful nation is shot to pieces. The indecision and naked spivvery of the past couple of weeks have exposed Brown as just another grubby politician on the make. It's going to be a long walk home.
This was his Black Wednesday moment. His reputation for honesty and competence has tanked. His graduation gown lies in rags at his feet. He won't get up from this. People aren't as stupid as Gordon thinks.
One thing he has achieved - which many thought nigh on impossible - is to have reinvigorated and reunited the Conservative Party.
Unless I am sorely mistaken, the Tories won't lose that discipline and momentum any time soon. They're now on course to win the next election, whenever it is held.
The scent of power concentrates the mind as much as the fear of losing it.
The Conservative front bench compares more than favourably with the bunch of talentless Muppets round the Cabinet table.
Gordon will try to trash the Tories' tax-cutting strategy, but it won't wash. The political wind is with Call Me Dave.
The Prime Minister spent the Labour conference boasting about his "strength". His weakness has now been his undoing.
One of the reasons Tony Blair hung around as long as he did was because he knows Gordon is a loser. Not up to the job.
Now the country knows it, too.
So the chicken starts to admit that he was wrong, still a craven unelected by the voters coward, a rogue unfit for office, a liar, a merchant of spin and misery...I shall have to quote Leo Amery to Chamberlain in 1940:
Tags: Gordon Brown, Homosexuality, New Labour, Amoral Cunts,
2 people have spoken:
Well said Fido.. Lets hope the public are seeing through all this and will put the collective boot to his ass in the future. Gordon Brown will probably hang on till the bitter end.
I would like Gordon to hang on, no sorry I meant that I would like Gordon to be hung from the neck until he was dead...
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