Can the Prime Minister recover from his self-inflicted wounds?

Andrew Rawnsley’s column in The Observer on how Gordon Brown undid all the good work of the early months of his premiership with the election that never was is essential reading. As Rawnsley puts it,

“the election debacle was shattering to his credibility and authority. It was like one of those sci-fi movies where a mad scientist throws a switch and all the polarities are instantly reversed. Virtually overnight, Gordon Brown had alchemised his positives into negatives.” 

Today, a Labour overall majority after the next election is far less likely than an overall Conservative one—this is remarkable given just how many seats the Tories have to win to obtain a majority. The big question of 2008 in British politics is whether Brown can recover or not, his position after only a few months in charge is now as bad as Blair’s ever was. There are good reasons not to write Brown off, as Matt argues. But Brown has to demonstrate at some point soon that he knows how to get out of this rut as the longer it goes on, the more likely his eventual defeat becomes.