The Spectator

Brown’s fatal flaws

The Spectator on Gordon Brown's premiership

issue 01 December 2007

As prophecies go, it had none of the ritual majesty of the Sybil of Cumae’s pronouncements, none of the blood-chilling qualities of Cassandra. But it has, in its own way, come to pass nonetheless. Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff to Tony Blair, once told our former editor that Gordon Brown’s political career would be a ‘Shakespearean tragedy’. And with every day that passes the tragic quality of Mr Brown’s premiership is underlined.

A politician of formidable gifts, powerful intellect and great passions is, nevertheless, finding that he simply doesn’t have what it takes to make a success of the most demanding job in politics — as the events of the last two months have cruelly exposed.

The latest funding scandal is only the most recent misfortune to attend the Brown premiership, after the debacle of the missing discs, the continuing reverberation of the Northern Rock collapse and the revelation that illegal immigrants were employed by the state in sensitive security positions.

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