Gordon Brown must be wondering how things went so very wrong, as it seems that every newspaper and commenter in the country has turned against him.
Robert Harris, I thought, had the most perceptive – not to mention amusing – analysis:
Gordon Brown is Labour’s Richard Nixon. That is not to suggest for an instant that he is a crook — far from it — but he has Nixon’s combination of immense political talent and utter clumsiness. The buttoned-up suit, the mouth slightly agape, the physical awkwardness, the alarming smile which seems to appear from nowhere as if a button marked “smile” has been pressed in his head, the nocturnal brooding on imaginary grievances encouraged by a group of chippy cronies — Brown, like Nixon, suffers from a kind of political Asperger’s syndrome. Intellectually brilliant, he sometimes seems socially barely functional: a little bit . . . odd.
I wonder if this could be Brown’s “something of the night” moment?