Politics | 22 November 2008

Given that Gordon Brown spent his adult life plotting to get into 10 Downing Street, he has been understandably quiet about his decision to leave it. Tony Blair’s old office certainly brought him rotten luck, and his new open-plan base in Number 12 has far better feng shui for a man of his disposition. There he sits as the leader of the gang, within stapler-hurling distance of about a dozen aides. It looks and feels like a general election campaign headquarters, the environment in which, historically, Mr Brown has been at his happiest and most deadly. He is already at war.

For the second time in his career momentum is behind him, as unexpected as it is undeserved. Mr Brown’s audacity, his most remarkable characteristic, is serving him well. Here stands the architect of Britain’s debt pyramid and its inept banking regulation system posing as the solution to the problems he himself incubated.