Blair is right about one thing — Brown would make an impossible prime minister

Gordon Brown’s defects are under scrutiny. His critics identify petulance, vanity and vaulting ambition. Much of Westminster, including many Labour MPs, several Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister, now agrees with Alastair Campbell that Mr Brown is psychologically flawed. But this is a serious underestimate, both of his strengths and of his weaknesses. He is more accurately described in another phrase of Mr Campbell’s: ‘An out-of-control colossus.’

Gordon Brown’s intellectual self-confidence is certainly colossal. This is a man who believes that he is not only a practical politician but the most important political theorist of our times. He thinks that he has created a new socialism, based on a new theory of the state and of the relationship between economic management and society.

This is also a man who believes he can run everything. Since he became Chancellor, he has doubled the size of the Treasury. He has also doubled the size of Tolley’s Tax Guide, the tax accountants’ handbook.