Gordon the barmy PM with barmy ideas.

First up the effect of an inept and possibly mentally ill leader at the helm.
Gordon Brown is running a weak and dysfunctional government that peddles 'barmy ideas', according to a damning report by senior civil servants published today.
The withering critique of the Prime Minister's leadership found that the Government has a 'conspicuous lack of a single coherent strategy' and that Downing Street is a bully with 'few tools beyond the brute force of political edict'.
The report by the Institute for Government reveals widespread frustration in Whitehall at what is seen as Mr Brown's obsessive micro-management and lack of vision.
It was drawn up after interviews with 60 senior mandarins and funded by Labour's largest donor Lord Sainsbury.

Add to which Mr Brown's credibility as premier suffered yet another blow last night as Parliamentary Questions revealed that 12 Parliamentary Private Secretary posts remain vacant following last June's Cabinet reshuffle, apparently because Labour MPs are refusing to serve under him.

Then we have his paranoia:.
Gordon Brown has banned television cameras from the unveiling of a portrait of Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street amid suspicions he is terrified of unflattering comparisons of their records.

Baroness Thatcher will effectively stage her own No 10 reunion when the painting by distinguished Royal artist Richard Stone is displayed in public for the first time. Most of the guests served with her in her Downing Street heyday - with Mr Brown the only Labour politician present.

No10 could not explain why the ceremony would take place behind closed doors. Friends of Lady Thatcher said she had no objection to cameras being there.

His petty minded temper tantrums: Gordon loses his cool in public, yes The Prime Mentalist became furious as he conducted a string of interviews, claiming he was not being allowed to talk about policy, issue endless tractor stats or give avoid giving answers to questions.

At one point, Mr Brown tried to walk off at the end of a fiery exchange with Sky's political editor Adam Boulton.

Even Complaining about how he is shown by cartoonists.
Cartoonists have claimed that the Prime Minister is more thin-skinned than his public demeanor suggests, and repeatedly complains to them in person that they portray him as overweight.

As a new exhibition of sketches and caricatures chronicling Mr Brown's first 18 months in office opens, some of the UK's leading political cartoonists have revealed how they were taken to task on the subject.

Childish temper tantrums as Gordon loses his cool in public.

Could all this be part of a deeper problem by a flawed man who is in no fit mental state to be running this land?...

Is Gordon Brown still fit for office? A blog posted today by the journalist John Ward on his websitenotbornyesterday.org suggests that the PM may be in worse health than the public realise. He claims there are signs the PM is taking powerful drugs to control both depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Ward bases his hypothesis on a tip-off from a senior civil servant that Brown has recently been given a "long list of forbidden foods". The civil servant, who works regularly with the PM, told Ward that Brown had been banned from eating and drinking several specific things "because of the drugs he's on".

Top of the list of foods that Brown can no longer touch, the source told Ward, were cheese, Chianti and over-ripe avocados - which immediately rang alarm bells for Ward. "Every doctor in Britain would recognise these contra-indications instantly: for they are the great verbotens for people taking MAOI drugs."

MAOIs - which stands for Mono Amine Oxidase Inhibitors - are generally a last line of treatment for major depression, when other anti-depressant drugs have failed. They can also be very effective in treating OCD. But they are potentially extremely dangerous. If the patient eats or drinks the wrong thing, they can result in death – hence the PM's "long list of forbidden foods".

The civil servant who told Ward of the banned list apparently wrote it off as quackery and "nonsense", unaware of its potential significance.

Ward readily admits that, without a doctor's note to absolutely prove the PM's state of health, his hypothesis is an easy one for Downing Street to refute - or frame as yet another anti-Brown smear campaign. But Ward makes the point that, if he's right, it won't be long before he gets his proof. "If it's true," says Ward, "Brown's entourage must be sending out strict dietary requirements ahead of his regularly catered public engagements; one could even monitor what he eats on such occasions."

There have been rumours about Brown's health and mental state for several years, of course. In 2004, Simon Heffer wrote in theSpectator that the PM displayed many signs of Asperger's Syndrome, including obsessional behaviour patterns and humourlessness. And it is well documented that Brown, already blind in his left eye, has been losing sight in his right eye.

If Ward has got it right, then the pressure on Brown this autumn could become severe. After a miserable first week back at the office – the Megrahi controversy, more deaths and disagreement in Afghanistan - there are already growing rumours of an October putsch, with Martin Kettle suggesting in today's Guardian that we might be approaching an "in the name of God, go" moment.

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