by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: September 16, 2008

A sense of relief seemed to descend upon the country when Tony Blair finally decided to call it a day, and after his farewell tour' of the world, left Number Ten Downing Street. Finally, the days of Blair's hubris and the spin which characterised his ten year time at the top were coming to an end. Instead, we were getting not flash, just Gordon'. It seemed, initially at least, people were prepared to give Gordon Brown a chance to set out his vision' for the future and to lay out his plans. After all, he couldn't be any worse than Blair, could he?

In the early days of Brown's premiership he had to contend with a number of failed terrorist attacks, atrocious weather and flooding in the country. There were no grand gestures: he just seemed to get on with the job. There was no mass hysteria as the government moved to calm people down rather than heightening the fear as so many of Blair's cabinet had done in the past, and there were no knee-jerk reactions. However, this honeymoon period was not to last long. Brown's problems seemed to start with Labour's Party Conference in 2007, when Brown's popularity led speculation to develop about the potential for an early election enabling Brown to obtain his own mandate. Instead of making a decision, and quashing the rumours, he allowed febrile journalists to get all hot under the collar in anticipation of an election which was never called.

Journalists love a narrative' and they decided that Gordon Brown's indecisiveness was a good one to adopt. The opposition leader, David Cameron managed to wow' the media at the Conservative Party Conference, and they seemed to decide that he would make a potentially better Prime Minister than the current incumbent. Cameron is more media-savvy and has less baggage than Brown, who ran the Treasury for over ten years. Cameron was a fresh face; a change, and the media seemed to love that.

Meanwhile, for Brown, things could only get worse. Regarded as having gone from Stalin to Mr Bean', he was having a tough time setting any kind of agenda, let alone laying out his vision'. Instead, he seemed to go from one crisis to another; often of his own doing, such as the ten pence tax fiasco, which was going to target the very people that Labour supposedly came into power to help. His actions seem to be dictated by the latest polls and by what he and his advisers think will be popular, rather than having any consistency to them.

The economy is in trouble, and Brown's time as Chancellor means that he is

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>