Better Speechwriters Please

I’d been thinking that there’s no need to pile on further and that at some point the proper criticism the Prime Minister is receiving – wherever in the world he travels – starts to look mean-spirited and ends up being not much more than a pretty brutal case of schoolyard bullying. Happily – since scorn, like wrath, must be nursed to keep it warm – the Prime Minister keeps encouraging one to think the worst of him. Take, for instance, his speech to the European parliament during which, as Matthew Parris relates, Mr Brown said this:

“So I stand here today proud to be British and proud to be European: representing a country that does not see itself as an island beside Europe but as a country at the centre of Europe, not in Europe’s slipstream but firmly in its mainstream.”