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3 May 2008

Tessa Jowell says Labour has to stop "all this wimbling around about leadership". She insists Gordon Brown is going to "confound his critics". That'll be quite a trick. 

Has Brown had it? Can he change? At his age? At the required level? The trouble seems to me insurmountable. Politicians can survive accusations of betrayal, deception, sexual misadventure and certainly of "not listening", getting things wrong, incompetence, stupidity, lying, fixing the evidence, overspending in elections, taking the wrong money (the list goes ever on)

 . . . but to bore the electorate is the unforgiveable crime Gordon commits every time he opens his mouth. 

An interjection here: The BBC 5 o'clock news has just carried eight minutes of Boris' inaugural speech at City Hall. EIGHT MINUTES, HARDLY EDITED! Brown wouldn't get eight solo, unedited minutes for the end of the world.  

The ministerial reaction to the catastrophe has been very flat-footed. Their world has collapsed and Jacqui Smith, Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell go on the radio to say the government has been given a "very clear message". What is that, actually? The only clear message I can discern is "Go away, we don't want to talk to you."