Gordon Brown: A Failure.

Ordinarily, I'd try to avoid kicking a man when he's down. But when that man happens to be Gordon Brown, I'm afraid I'll have to make an exception.

There's no nice way to say this, but it needs to be said nonetheless. Gordon Brown was a failure as Prime Minister. Every single test he met, he failed at. His departure from Number 10 yesterday wasn't some tragic curtailment of an otherwise flourishing career - it was the inevitable end of a premiership that, in retrospect, should never have happened.

Furthermore, Brown's legacy of abysmal failure began long before he set foot in Downing Street. He set himself up for a fall while still Chancellor, with his talk of ending "boom and bust" that turned out to be nothing but hot air. It is true that he was perhaps the most effective opposition to the odious Tony Blair within the Labour party, but that was not out of ideological difference or political conviction, but rather about naked lust for power. Gordon hated Tony because Tony had the job Gordon felt he deserved. Brown's time as Chancellor does not show a principled conviction politician at work, but rather a calculating power-seeking oaf desperately plotting to bring down the man who - rightly or wrong - was placed in Downing Street by the electorate.

Then Brown became Prime Minister. Basically - and as far as I am concerned unforgivably - he was handed the keys to Number 10 without any meaningful contest. Brown's unjustifiable sense of entitlement was so large that he didn't think anyone had a right to decide whether he should go into Number 10 - not the electorate, not his own party. No-one had a right to choose Brown as Prime Minister other than Brown himself. In most countries, that would be called a coup.

Like most Prime Ministers, Brown had a honeymoon period with the press and with the public. But the supposed "successes" of this period were actually anything but. The terrorist bombs didn't go off because of the failure of the terrorists, not because of any intervention by Brown. The only reason why the foot and mouth outbreak was handled relatively well is because the state had worked out how to handle the disease better after the nightmarish fiasco of 2001 - a fiasco that was mismanaged by the government of which Brown was the Chancellor. And the response to the flooding couldn't quite hide the fact that Brown, as Chancellor, did not authorise sufficient funding on flood prevention. But as we shall see, Brown's record as Chancellor would come to haunt him in a much more pronounced way.

Brown really screwed up by not calling an election in the autumn of 2007. He'd have won - possibly with an increased majority - and in doing so given himself the legitimacy that was ultimately never present throughout his term as Prime Minister. Perhaps he might even have displaced Cameron as leader of the Conservative party in the process of winning. Who can tell? The coward in Brown - that side to his personality that we now know oh so well - came to the fore, and he bottled it. From then on, he was Brown the bottler - the illegitimate Prime Minister who was afraid of the public. And as the economy went into freefall, so that public - who did give Brown a chance to begin with - turned resolutely against the Prime Minister.

Brown's attempts to manage the public perception of himself during the financial crisis was a masterpiece of failed spin. He attempted to wash his hands of responsibility for the crisis, despite having been Chancellor for the decade leading up to it. And his pathetic attempts to paint himself as a leader bent on saving the world was critically undermined by his inability to effectively manage the crisis in this country. Gordon Brown's economic policies stand as a rebuke to those that state that government spending gets you out of recession. Government spending can help in a financial downturn, but throwing money at the problem doesn't make it go away, and actually creates another problem - a massive government deficit that will force cuts in future government spending. Some argued that Brown knew he was going to lose the next General Election, and so he was involved in a scorched earth policy to screw his replacement in Number 10. His economic policy was so bad that this idea actually seems credible.

There were other scandals that dragged Brown into them, like the loss of the personal details of millions of people in the country by a bloated and incompetent bureaucracy, and the expenses scandal that chewed up and spat out so many MPs. Brown stood at the edge of scandals like these, desperate not to get involved but missing the point that, as Prime Minister, the buck stopped with him. He ended up involved in the scandals, and came across as utterly impotent given he could do little about them.

Then we had the constant plotting and coup attempts against Brown. This was partly down to his policy and electoral failures, but also down to the question of legitimacy. Brown was never really elected by his own party, and he certainly wasn't chosen by the people. The coups failed but were constant reminders that not even his own party had faith in Gordon Brown.

Brown eventually faced the electorate, but only when he had to. And an election campaign where the Prime Minister appeared frightened of talking to an old lady even though he found her views "bigoted" could only have one outcome. The once invincible Labour election machine crashed into humiliating defeat, leaving Gordon Brown as the man who bottled an election contest for Labour leadership not just once but twice (once in 2007, when he effectively refused to allow any opponent into the competition, and once in 1994 when he handed the leadership to Blair) and lost the only General Election he was forced to fight. Brown was the cowardly, unelected Prime Minister who when he did face an election, was soundly rejected by the people he purported to represent. And even then he didn't go. No, he tried to stay on, and when that was no longer possible, he went on scheming to keep himself in Number 10 for as long as possible and his party in power despite the verdict of the electorate. The arrogance and the unthinking sense of entitlement was with Brown to the very end of his time as a political leader.

Brown was a cancer on the Labour party; a malign disease that eventually overtook the party and turned it into an arrogant organisation disrespectful of the people it was supposed to represent. Gordon Brown represented everything that was wrong with the Nu Labour project, but without the supposed charm of Blair. The cancer has been painfully removed from the Labour party, but it now falls to them to find their way again. The scars will be deep, and difficult to heal - particularly given the party's atrocious behaviour after it was defeated at the polls. It needs to see Gordon Brown not as the brave and courageous leader that unthinking acolytes and lazy hacks are now trying to make him out to be: instead, he must be seen as he actually was - an arrogant, cowardly, bullying failure.

There'll be occasions moving forward, when the next Labour leader falters or when the coalition struggles, when people might be tempted to look back on Brown favourably, through those rose-tinted glasses that always seem to make leaders more popular once they are out of power and no longer a threat. Those people should remind themselves that Gordon Brown was the worst Prime Minister we've had since World War Two - unable to govern, unable to get the legitimacy to govern, and without even the most basic charm to aid him.

Brown's greatest gift is actually to Cameron, for in a sense Brown has made Cameron like Obama, since both Obama's and Cameron's predecessors in their respective jobs were so appalling that they can only but look good by comparison. The bar has been set very low for Cameron by Brown - in order to do better, he just has to best the worst Prime Minister in generations.

Gordon Brown: a failure.