Gordon Brown is a klutz, a jinx, fool whose every touch turns the object touched to shit. Where Blair had a Midas-like ability to hold the faith of at least the mainstream, he has been succeeded by a man capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at every conceivable turn.
Brown started off reasonably well, with the Conservatives on the back foot, deftly overreacting to another agricultural crisis and winning a reputation for the ability to make decisions. A couple of thousand needlessly slaughtered animals later, Brown was on top.
Three weeks later, after a couple of good Tory interventions and the lingering aftertaste of the cash for honours debacle, apparently someone put something in his tea and made him go mental. Cabinet ministers started briefing for a snap election, which chucked Cameron into war mode and hardened Tory rhetoric immensely. Brown frightened his own horses. Cameron, apparently reading the focus group tealeaves and hedging towards a clusterfuck which would lead to a small majority or a hung parliament, and eventually a Tory majority, called on Brown to bring it on. Brown read the polls, gently shat himself and began to brief that nobody had been considering an election. Nobody believed him.
The day the BBC said ‘no election’, Brown’s reputation as a decision maker was broken, and every decision he made became questionable; Cameron looked like a man prepared to seize his destiny, Brown looked vulnerable and a Conservative majority in 2010 looked absolutely viable.
Which brings us to February 2009, marked by three months of disastrous gaffe making by the great clunking fist.
Anyway, you really ought to check out the excellent http://www.order-order.com/2009/02/jonah-brown-curses-ericsson-wishes-jade.html on the astoundingly good Guido Fawkes Blog.
Already covered is the incident where the hapless caledon signed a Mini for charity, hours before the company announced a likely 850 job cuts, the visit to a Corus steel mill just in advance of the owner predicting a likely massive fall in production and jobs and the crash of HMS Vanguard, recently in receipt of the Prime Minister’s nuclear strike standing order, proving him the only man on earth with the ability to send bad luck through the post.
