When David Cameron agreed last June to let his chief strategist work from California for six months, it seemed a timely break from what was threatening to become a dull job. Gordon Brown looked finished, and his party too weak to depose him. British politics threatened to be a comedy of errors stumbling on until the middle of 2010 — leaving plenty of time for Steve Hilton to go abroad, get married and send email advice from beside the swimming pool. From there, he must have watched in horror as British politics changed utterly.
Even his fortnightly flights home will not have been enough to keep up with the bewildering speed of the Brown bust. Boarded-up shops and pubs are starting to scar high streets, alongside jumble sales from retailers who fear they won’t be here at Easter. Across the country 1,500 jobs and 200 homes are lost each day — Britain is expected this year to suffer the worst rise in unemployment of any developed country.
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