(Really Rather Long) Quote of the Day

Matthew Norman powerfully dismissing Gordon Brown's vengeful anti-NI appearance in the Commons:

And still he cannot see his complicity. "This is an issue about the abuse of political power..." he said of Murdoch's news-gathering tactics. Well, duh!, you might say. But oddly enough it isn't, or not as he meant it. At its core, it is an issue of the abuse of political power not by Murdoch, but by Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, David Cameron and every other elected quisling who supped with the devil not with a long spoon but from the devil's own satanic hands. "I came to the conclusion," Mr Brown went on of his urge for a judicial inquiry, "that the evidence was becoming so overwhelming about the underhand tactics of News International to trawl through people's lives, particularly the lives of people who were completely defenceless." Sweet Lord Jesus, isn't the point of a Labour prime minister to defend the defenceless? "I'm genuinely shocked to find that this happened," added the Captain Renault of Kirkcaldy. "If I – with all the protection and defences that a chancellor or prime minister has – can be so vulnerable to unscrupulous and unlawful tactics, what about the ordinary citizen?"

Frankly, it's a struggle to continue parsing this statement, because it feels like bullying a simpleton for being a simpleton. So it's worth recalling that Gordon Brown was the most fearsome juggernaut of a machine politician Britain has ever known – and here he is courting sympathy as the impotent victim whose "senior officials" overruled his request for an inquiry. The senior official to whom he refers, if subconsciously, is the ringer for Davros ("My vision is impaired," as his daleks often croaked, "I cannot see") who flew in on Sunday to smile at the cameras as he squired Mrs Brooks to dinner in Mayfair.

Makes the point perfectly, as far as I am concerned. Gordon was at the heart of government for 13 years, including a stint as a Prime Minister with a healthy majority. At any point he could have taken on News International; he could have tried to stop them at any time. It would have been a brutal battle and he would not have emerged unscathed. But had he taken on that fight, perhaps he would have made a real positive difference in Britain. However, his bleating at the moment is simply the angry revenge of a jilted man who cannot come to terms with the fact that News International stitched him up at a party conference by withdrawing support for him just after his big speech. He had his chance to take on News International in his 13 years at the top of government in this country. He didn't take it. So right now he'd be best off shutting the fuck up because all this sort of speech does is highlight what an inveterate coward he is since he did not, despite being on of the most important politicians in this country, take on News International when they came to fuck around with his family. Brown remains what he has always been - a spineless little weed of a man.

Is it wrong of me to feel remarkably little sympathy for Gordon Brown over this? The closest I can come to sympathy for the man is for his children, who genuinely may be innocent victims in all this. But Brown is the man who shamelessly sucked up to the press - including those rags controlled by Murdoch - at the same time as shamelessly trying to manipulate and bully the press while getting others to smear his rivals. There are innocent victims in the scandal engulfing Murdoch's UK operations, but I struggle to see Gordo as one of them.

Hating Gordon Brown

I’m always a bit surprised when I hear that people hate David Cameron. Sure, I think he is a vacuous chancer; an empty suit devoid of policies and convictions. And his larking around with huskies shortly after he became Tory leader remains, for me, the defining image of his leadership thus far; more interested in fashionable images that in real politics. I find him frustrating and lightweight – but I’m still surprised with the bile that some people feel towards him. Hate seems a bit strong when a certain level of eye-rolling and weariness is all Cameron needs. And I’m completely taken aback when people say they hate him more that Gordon Brown.

But then that begs the question – why do I despise Brown so much? Is he really that much worse than “Hug a Husky” Cameron?

Part of the reason for my Brown hatred is arrogance, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong, I think you have to be a little bit arrogant to want to become Prime Minister in the first place. If you aren’t convinced that you’re right, then why bother to put yourself in a position of power and claim that you know better than your fellow citizens? Cameron is arrogant, to be sure – as is Clegg and all the others who seek the highest of high office. Yet almost every politician I can think of wears their arrogance better than Gordon Brown. Not only is Brown certain that he’s right, but if you dare not to agree with him he’ll do everything in his power to bully and/or break you. He doesn’t just patronise those who don’t agree; he hates them and can’t help but let that hate ooze from every pore in his corpulent body.

But there is a far simpler reason why I hate Brown; he was (as predicted by so many, including his own colleagues) an absolute fucking disaster as PM. He screwed this country; he brought us to our knees economically and turned the drama of the recession into a financial apocalypse of a crisis. And he left us with nothing of any value from his years in Number 10; there is nothing to balance his financial failures against. Even a book like Brown At 10 - a tome desperate to appear balanced – cannot hide the fact that Brown basically had no successes as PM to his name, other than not being deposed by his cowardly, inept colleagues.

Of course, Cameron may yet prove to be just as disastrous, and I may grow to properly hate him too. But I suspect that he will struggle to match the arrogant incompetence that so defines Brown – and explains why I find him so utterly odious.

Gordon Brown: Loser, Not Hero, Of The Year

Been a while since I last did a good fisk. This article is practically begging for it - a piece of pap trying to make Gordon Brown - who this year, more than any other, made himself clearly stand out as a total loser - into a hero. Let's go take a look:

Unlike the current leader of the Labour party, I cannot imagine Gordon Brown being a tolerable person to make a snowman with.

I don't want to make a snowman with any party leader of any party ever. If I did, then both Miliband Minor and Brown the Cunt would be pretty low down on the list. But sorry, what is the point about this idea of making snowmen with party leaders? Is there one?

He would fuss about the precise placement of the carrot nose and pebble eyes, possibly employing a ruler and spirit-level, and fret that this was not an appropriate use of our intellectual resources.

Still struggling to see the point of this snowman shit. But anwyay, Brown'd probably chuck a mobile phone at your face for not agreeing with him that snowman should look exactly like him (which is like a fatter Richard Nixon, fact fans).

But, and herein lies the rub, I have never felt the need to imagine the potential for cold weather fun with the head of the party I'm supporting, simply to feel confident in their potential to lead it to power.

Then why the fuck mention the whole snowman thing? Jesus. Try reading back your own article next time. Just so it makes some sort of fucking sense, as opposed to just being padded out fawning and bullshit.

Brown, it has often been observed, was born into the wrong era. Paralysingly ill-suited to the territory of 24/7 performative politics, his stock would have been valued considerably higher in the olden days when moral compass, staunch resolve and attention to detail were as important as the ability to crack a genuine smile on YouTube is now. But Gordon Brown, as in so many other areas, had no such luck.

What moral compass, staunch resolve and attention to detail? None of this was shown in Brown's failed time in Number 10. He was a shallow opportunist, determined to cling to his unelected and undeserved position. His time in power is summed up by his odious slogan of "British Jobs For British Workers". He would say anything to stay in power; the problem (for him) was that he was shit at saying it.

He did not, of course, lead his party to power in May, but down to the doldrums of defeat which may well last much longer than this country deserves. And yet, though his inability to capture public confidence was personal as much as it was circumstantial, it is his dignity in defeat that makes him my hero of 2010. His exit from Downing Street was touchingly humble. No amount of nippy accounts of "22 days in May" can deflect from the power of Guardian photographer Martin Argles's shots of Brown with his family in their final moments at Number 10.

I'd rather read a million accounts of those 22 days in May than gawp at a photo of Brown strutting down the street like he is some sort of genuinely historical figure. After all, those 22 days - for better or for worse - gave us our incumbent government. Whereas that shot was of a man leaving a building he should have vacated days before. And he appears, for all the world, to be dragging his family with him.

Returning with them to Fife, he has embraced life below the radar as a constituency MP, surfacing only recently to offer his characteristically comprehensive thoughts on the potential for global financial restructuring in his book Beyond the Crash, serialised here.

Oh, please. Brown went from being Prime Minister to being an MP who could not be fucked to work for the constituents who elected him. He did nothing after being turfed out of Downing Street except write his book which has, to a large extent, been a failure - a dead weight on those bookstores that elected to stock it.

When he denounced Tory cuts as "immoral" and "economic vandalism" in an article for the Mirror last Saturday, he only echoed the sentiments of the thousands of protesters who had taken to the high streets that day to express their outrage at the national plague of tax avoidance.

Thousands of protestors in a country of 60 million? What a man of the people Gordon Brown must be. Particularly since he was just rehashing the muted attack lines of his replacement as Labour leader.

In his passionate belief in international co-operation to temper national insecurity, we see beyond Brown the caricature to Brown the believer.

Never seen this belief in international cooperation. What I've seen is Gordon Brown the believer in his own (undeserved) entitlement to power.

The country may not have wanted him as a fatally flawed leader, but it needs him now as a quiet economic hero.

In what way is the man who nearly bankrupted this country - and forced these cuts on the coalition - a fucking economic hero? And in what way is he quiet - this man who once blithely boasted that he had ended boom and bust? Jesus Titty-Fucking Christ, the last thing we need is to hear more from Gordon Brown. His time in power was an absolute fucking disaster, and his incompetence and malign policies will hurt this country for many years to come.

Gordon Brown's Book - A Failure

So, having checked the figures in my local bookshop, it appears that the “Right” “Honourable” Gordon Brown has managed to sell just 13 copies of his book in its first week of release. That’s less than two a day.

Of course, it would be wrong to compare the sales of his book with a high-profile release of, say, a popular fiction title (or, to put it another way, a book that people in large numbers might actually want to read). So let’s compare like with like – let’s compare the first week of sales for Brown’s book with that of another former Labour Prime Minister – Tony Blair. How did Blair get on? Well, he sold nearly 400.

Are there any mitigating factors that might explain Brown only managing about 3% of the sales of Blair? Well, we are in the run-up to Christmas, but that should work in Brown’s favour. After all, his book could be a bought as a gift as well as for the individual purchaser to read. Yet that just hasn’t happened. Once again, Blair has outperformed Brown.

The reasons are simple, as far as I can see. Even as someone who would rather cut out my own eyes and fry them than read either one of those books, I can clearly see that Blair’s self-aggrandising nonsense would be preferable to Brown’s pathetic excuse making. Ultimately, Blair won three elections and ruled this country for ten years. Brown won none and was in power for under three years. And he hasn’t even chosen to give the insider account of his time in power – instead, he’s trying to paint himself as the man who saved the world once again – even though we know he was just a pathetic shit who made sure that the economic crisis hurt each and every person in this country through his ineptitude.

And why does it matter? Because we paid Gordon Brown an MP’s salary to stay at home and write this fucking thing. Even when taking months of unauthorised paid leave from his job, Brown is no capable of turning out a book that people might actually want to buy. What a waste of space – both him and his book.

Reviewing Gordon Brown's "Book"

I can't review his book on the simple grounds that I never, ever plan to read it. But I suspect this is the sort of review (via Amazon) that I would write had I disgraced my eyes by reading it:

I've never been a great fan of Gordon Brown and this book just exemplifies why. A more useless damaging individual the country has never been subjected to.

His book is a litany of errors he inflicted on the British economy. If Blair had had the courage to throw him out of his cabinet he may well still be in power and the countries finances would certainly be in a better state.

Brown has written this book to hide behind, sadly for him it is turgid and unconvincing, not unlike the man himself.

Of course, I'd have said "turgid, unconvincing and utterly pointless" but the gist would have been the same...

I'm away for the next 24 hours or so graduating (for the second time - once just wasn't enough!) Therefore, posting on this blog is even less likely that normal. In fact, if I was a betting man (which I'm not on the grounds I'm shit at it) I'd say there is no chance at all of anything new appearing on this blog before Friday morning. In the meantime, I'd like to leave you with this thought - Gordon Brown's book, according to my deeply unscientific research in my local Waterstone's, has been massively outsold by the latest turgid doorstop of a novel from Tom Clancy. But that doesn't tell the whole story. On the first day of release, Clancy sold a massive 6 copies. Brown sold just two.

Make your own judgments on those stats. I know I certainly will...

After his book was released to widespread indifference at best, there were attempts by some to move Blair's book into the true crime section of book shops. It was a mildly amusing idea, stopped only by the sheer number of the tomes currently gathering dust on the shelves of the nation's bookstores.

But I have a question - if Blair's book would be better shelved in the true crime section then where would be the best destination for Brown's forthcoming self-serving pile of shite masquerading as a book?

Quote of the Day

"I'd rather be a child of Thatcher than a son of Brown."

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of Cameron but frankly he could not be more right on this one occasion. For all her flaws, Thatcher did a lot more for this country than Brown ever did, and I'd far rather politicians followed her example than that of the pathetic incompetent Brown.

It Could All Have Been So Different...

As Labour types continue with their asinine grumblings about the fact that they are no longer in power, they would do well to remember that it could all have been so different. There are two scenarios which, had they been pursued by the Labour party, could have had them still in power at the moment.

The first has been much commented on – the failure to call a General Election shortly after Brown became PM was a colossal tactical error. They would have won that election, and right now would still be in power as part of a five year term. Furthermore, Cameron – the first Tory leader since Major to be Prime Minister – would have been deposed, and the Tory modernisation programme would have been stopped in its tracks. That was the perfect time for the Labour party to win a fourth term, and they bottled it.

But there is another way in which they would have stayed in power. Had Brown been dropped and replaced by a more collegiate, affable leader such as Alan Johnson, then they would have lost fewer seats at the last election. They could never have won outright, but they would have been in a better position to claim that they were the ones that the Liberal Democrats should have negotiated with in the first instance. Furthermore, having a leader other than the egregious, arrogant Brown may have allowed for rather more successful negotiations between Labour and the Lib Dems. There would have been no guarantees about it, but a Lib/Lab Pact for the new millennium would have been far more likely with a Labour leader other than Gordon Brown. But again, the Labour party missed its opportunity.

So what to make of these costly errors? What can the Labour party learn from its mistakes? Mainly, I’d argue, that cowardice has a cost. Not going to the country in 2007 cost them the chance to win an election outright. Not replacing Brown cost them the chance of being credible coalition partners for the Liberal Democrats. Both were potentially difficult decisions fraught with risk – they would have been gambles, but they might have paid off with the prize the Labour party now seems desperate for – a continuation in power. But their cowardice stopped them, and ultimately led to them losing power. Which is perhaps the perfect epitaph for the Nu Labour years – they were ultimately kicked out of power because of the cowardice and aversion to risk that defined their time in power.

Pay Gordon to work for free

Gordo’s doing charity work. And he’s keen to highlight that he’s doing it for free:

“Each of these positions are pro bono and Mr Brown will not accept any remuneration. He will continue to write on global issues, as he has been doing recently with articles on the desperate plight of those in Pakistan and Niger."

The narrative is as obvious as it is tedious; good ol’ Gordon is doing charity work for free, while evil Tony charges for his post Prime Ministerial work. What a shit, eh? Just as well Gordon is around to be genuinely charitable.

Except, that’s not quite the case when you think about it. Sure, Gordon may be doing his charity work for free, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a healthy income. After all, he is still an MP, although not that you would know it given his criminal lack of attendance and therefore neglect of his constituents since he lost the election. So Gordon may be doing charity work, but he’s doing it at the taxpayer’s expense while ignoring the job he was actually elected to do. So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t praise him too much, or think that he’s in some way better than Blair – who, while be may be raking it in now, at least isn’t an MP anymore.

That’s Gordon Brown – even as he works for free he still expects you to pay for it.

Blair the Greedy vs Brown the Noble

From the Twitter feed of Gus Baker:

Tony Blair wants £150 4 a signed copy of his memoir. Gordon Brown affirms that all proceeds from his book will go to charity. #justsaying

Probably being a bit cynical here, but I rather think that the reason why Blair is charging £150 for a signed copy of his book is because people are willing to pay £150 for his book. Fuck knows why, though. However, I think the chances of anyone paying that amount for a signed copy of Brown's book is less than zero, so why on earth would he embarrass himself by trying to ask for it?

I think we're all supposed to be impressed by the fact that Gordon is giving the proceeds of his no doubt entirely self-serving and largely unreadable book to charity. I'd be more impressed is (a) Brown wasn't writing said book at the expense of the taxpayer while neglecting his duties as an MP and (b) if this book was destined to be in the remainder bins across the country within weeks of its release.

Just sayin' is all.

UPDATE:

And now Blair's got in on the charity act - he's giving millions to the Royal British Legion. I'm sure I won't be alone in noting that if Blair really wanted to help soldiers, then he might not have sent them into an illegal war without the equipment they so clearly needed.

What is nice about this, though, is that it is likely to be a yet another way in which Blair will best Brown. Since his book will almost certainly sell more than Brown's, he'd going to be better at the "giving book proceeds to charity" competition that he has just started. And what's the betting that's a big part of the reason for this announcement?

Rating the Post-War PMs

Here is an FT list, via Dale, of how "academics" would rate the post-war PMs:

Well, I'm in academia at the moment, and here's how I'd rate them (and why):

12: Brown: An odious, incapable man who should never have been allowed to become Prime Minister. He wrecked the country's economy, damaged our international standing and left our country in broken pieces for his successor government to try to put back together. I've said it before but I'll say it again - the only way for Cameron to be worse than Brown is if he actually declares war on the British people.

11: Eden: Massively over-hyped before he got into power, he wasn't up to the job and his raging paranoia over would-be aggressive dictators nearly got us into a shooting war with the US and made it very clear that Britain was no longer as great on the world stage as it had been. It also inspired a couple of unusually tedious Dennis Potter dramas.

1o: Callaghan: He may have been a genial chap from all accounts, but as PM he was pretty much useless. He bowed down to the unions and let them run this country pretty much into the ground, before committing a major strategic blunder and delaying an election that he could have won but that he would later lose.

9: Douglas-Home: Difficult to know what to say about Douglas-Home other than he lost an election. He's a non-entity - simultaneously neither a good Prime Minister nor a bad one.

8: Blair: A formidable election winner, Blair's legacy will, however, be constantly undermined by the Iraq War, the fact that his supposed economic success was built on shifting sands and his failure to prevent the clearly unsuitable Brown becoming his replacement.

7: Heath: He had the potential to be a genuinely reforming Prime Minister, but he took us into Europe, failed to win his battle with the unions and ultimately revealed himself to be a repugnant man both in No.10 and afterwards on the Tory back-benches.

6: Wilson: Well, he won more than he lost and he managed, despite the pressure from the US, to keep us out of Vietnam. But he did a lot to break the economy and hand the country over to the Unions, and he also managed to stay on at No.10 for far longer than he should have done.

5: Major: Yep, there was Black Wednesday. But prior to that there was one of the most spectacular electoral upsets in history, and after Black Wednesday Major's government did much to rebuild the economy (inbetween conducting a debilitating intra-party civil war). Crucially, the country he handed over was in better shape than when he got it. Just a shame, really, that he handed it over to Nu Labour...

4: Churchill: Ok, as a post-war PM he was largely inactive. He maintained the status quo and seemed to be slowly counting down the days until he was no longer able to do the job and had to retire. Nonetheless, he is the only one in this list who genuinely managed to become a British icon.

3: Macmillan: A caretaker PM in the best sense of the word - he did little to transform the country, but effectively managed it and rebuilt it and his party after the disaster that was Anthony Eden. Like Major, he left a country in a better state than when he found it.

2: Attlee: An odd choice for No.2 given I'm a Libertarian, Attlee is this high because he believed in a political ideology and actually set out to implement it, rather than just talking about it. Furthermore, his reforms may have created a bloated state, but they also helped to end communism as a potential alternative in this country. I'd doubt I've have voted for him, but Attlee scores highly in part because the vast majority of those who have followed him have been far less capable than him.

1: Thatcher: A socially conservative PM who grew increasingly loopy while in power and ultimately ended up shooting herself in the head politically with the poll tax, Thatcher at least understood the need to reduce the size and the scope of the state, albeit only in some areas. And to date, she is the only Prime Minister who has (a) understood this and (b) tried to do something about it.

And Cameron? He can't really be rated until he has ceased to be PM. At the moment, he would rate quite highly if only because he has yet to spectacularly drop the ball. I don't doubt for a moment that at some point he will, so only time will tell how badly he fares in future polls.

If/when you disagree, please feel free to put your thoughts in the comments section. If said comments aren't jarringly dull, I may even respond...

Gordon Brown's Work Ethic

Yep, Gordo has been writing his book and apparently we're supposed to be impressed:

Gordon Brown has reportedly been writing thousands of words a day since leaving office.

Great. Well done Gordon. Except anyone who has ever tried writing anything other than an essay will know that it is, typing skills permitting, possible to write thousands of words a day. The trick is writing a thousands of words a day that are actually worth reading - as opposed to writing thousands of words of self-serving arse.

I've always been surprised that we're supposed to be impressed by Gordon's work ethic. Sure, the man might work hard. But working hard is not the same as doing quality work. Ronald Reagan worked just a few hours a day, yet ruled the USA for eight years and helped to end the Cold War. Gordon Brown worked (if his spin is to be believed) eight days a week, yet he fucked up this country and his own chances of re-election.

So write away, Gordon. Keep on writing. Write thousands of words a day. That still won't make what you write worth reading.

David Miliband: Loyal Critic

David Miliband on Gordon Brown:

"I supported and voted for him. I agreed that we needed greater moral seriousness and less indifference to the excesses of a celebrity-drenched culture.

"I agreed with him when he said that we needed greater coherence as a government, particularly in relation to child poverty and equality.

"I agreed with him on the importance of party reform and a meaningful internationalism that would be part of a unified government strategy.

"I agreed that we needed a civic morality to champion civility when confronting a widespread indifference to others.

"But it didn't happen."

And:

"It was not just more of the same. Far from correcting them, failings - tactics, spin, high-handedness - intensified, and we lost many of our strengths - optimism born of clear strategy, bold plans for change and reform, a compelling articulation of aspiration and hope.

"We did not succeed in renewing ourselves in office - and the roots of that failure were deep not recent, about procedure and openness, or lack of it, as much as policy," he added.

That would be David Miliband who served as Foreign Secretary throughout the Brown years. That would be the David Miliband who refused to challenge Gordon Brown, even when it was clear that Brown was a failure. That would be the David Miliband who only now seems to be recognising what the opinion polls were saying for ages, and what the electorate told his party in May: Gordon Brown was an unpopular failure.

It would also be this David Miliband, so I guess we shouldn't be too surprised:

David Miliband, loyal supporter of Gordon Brown. David Miliband, passionate critic of Gordon Brown. David Miliband, Bananaman. David Miliband, still in his disguise as Eric Wimp.

Where's Gordo? Who Cares?

Gordon Brown - where is he now? asks The Daily Telegraph. I'd like to answer a question with a question here - who fucking cares?

The fact that Gordo seems to have disappeared off the radar since the General Election can only be a good thing. I mean, it took long enough for him to leave Downing Street after that election - normally, Prime Ministers go if they are defeated. Not Gordo. Showing a complete lack of dignity, he clung on until the Liberal Democrats made it very clear that they fancied the Tories more than the Labour party. Only then, when there was absolutely no case to be made, however tenuous, for his ongoing occupancy of Number 10, did he go.

And when he was Prime Minister (and, for that matter, Chancellor) the truth is that he was a complete disaster. Basically, he did more than anyone else across the 13 years of Nu Labour misrule to completely fuck up this country. Every decision that was made he was either at the heart of, or he failed to resist it - and he was consistently at the top of the Nu Labour tree.

Where's Gordon Brown? Sulking in Scotland - powerless and rejected. And you'll have to forgive me if I express the hope that we never, ever hear from Gordon Brown again. Unless he happens to come forward to offer his sincere apologies to the British people for his myriad failings while in power. And he should, preferably, offer reparations to the British taxpayer at the same time.

Gordon Brown: Petty Wanker

Via Mr Eugenides, I've come across Brown's final abuse of power before he was deservedly forced from left office: reducing the Prime Minister's salary so it affects... David Cameron:

Gordon Brown's failure to turn up for the State Opening of Parliament may well have been because he couldn't look David Cameron in the face. Mandrake hears that one of Brown's final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

On Brown's orders, the Prime Minister's remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to £150,000, but this was done with such stealth that no formal announcement was ever made.

This perfectly sums up Gordon Brown - petty, nasty and hypocritical to the last.

The Gordon Brown Song

A cheap shot? For sure. But still grand...

Brown to the Backbenches

He's out of Downing Street, but he's not leaving Parliament just yet. Oh no, Grim Gordon's going to sit on the backbenches:

"In case anybody was in any doubt because of the announcements that were made this week, I am wanting to do everything I can to work for people here, for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, as your Member of Parliament, and I will do that to the best of my ability for these next few months and years."

Hmmm. Maybe he does just want to be the best damned representative he can for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, but I rather suspect that Brown is deluding himself once again. I think that part of him reckons that at some point in the future, the Labour party is going to call for him. And because he's sat on the backbenches, he will be able to heed their call. Maybe even become leader again. And perhaps - whisper it - Prime Minister again. You know, a bit like Harold Wilson did.

Of course, Brown is no Harold Wilson, and Wilson himself was a Prime Ministerial also-ran if ever there was one. See, Wilson won all bar one of the General Elections he fought, whereas Brown has a 100% failure record when it comes to winning at the polls. Wilson also stayed as Labour leader when he lost in 1970, whereas Brown quit as Labour leader before he got round to resigning as PM. No, there's not going to be a call for Brown to come back off the backbenches. If anything, by staying in Parliament when his career is not only dead, but dead, cremated, and already being forgotten about, Brown will resemble the man Wilson was so good at defeating at the polls - Ted Heath: a foul misanthrope sat on the backbenches, bitter about his ejection from the political limelight and doing his level best to undermine his successors in the role.

Brown should heed the advice of another failed* Prime Minister - John Major:

"When the curtain falls, it is time to get off the stage."

Quite. Accepting it is over and moving on is a dignified thing to do. But it is probably the very definition of pointless to expect Brown to act with dignity now, when he has spent most of his political career being anything other than dignified.

*Major was a failure as Prime Minister, losing to Labour in 1997 in a landslide and managing to wreck the economy in 1992. Of course, Major was still a lot better than Brown, as he won a convincing victory in 1992 and managed to turn the economy round by 1997.

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.