Gordon Brown: where did it go wrong?

It all started so promisingly. When Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister in June 2007, Labour were still popular, David Cameron had made very little headway in the opinion polls, and many people were happy to see someone they believed to be a successful Chancellor and a man of substance replace the gushing  informality of Tony Blair. 

Brown's first act, which removed the authority that 10 Downing Street's special advisers had over civil servants, signalled a move away from Blair's sofa politics. And when the UK was hit by three crises - severe floods, an attempted terrorist attack at Glasgow airport and an outbreak of foot and mouth - Brown acted decisively.

Writing in the Guardian, political commentator Neal Lawson enthused that, "The time is ripe not just for a better Labour government but for a shift in the centre of gravity of politics decisively to the left. Brown could be the first Labour leader since Clement Attlee to recast British society."

Then it all began to go wrong. Here, The First Post looks at the reasons why Brown is on the brink.

Blair, his other halfJonathan Freedland, the Guardian (June 2008): One fellow minister says Labour underestimated the co-dependency of the Blair-Brown relationship. Brown needed his rival, if only to push against. Without him, he is lost. Even the prime minister's closest allies say what has happened these past 12 months is "tragic".

James Forsyth, the Spectator (January 2008): In the British version of the 2008 American election, Gordon Brown is Hillary Clinton: the less talented half of a tempestuous political marriage who attempts to make up for shortcomings with a Stakhanovite work ethic. 

A question of character
Iain Martin, Daily Telegraph (January 2009): Gordon Brown would have made a great minister of the Kirk. He is the embodiment of the Church of Scotland in which his father preached with Presbyterian distinction: sparing of too much of the God stuff, heavy on the communitarian emphasis on moral authority and interested in the interminable troubles of Africa. To say that Brown is a "son of the manse" is an epithet, compliment or insult (take your pick), with no equivalent in England. Attached to it are notions of academic striving, exemplary achievement at an early age and pressure to "do good". On its own this can often breed a middling to serious moral superiority complex.

Rachel Sylvester, the Times (September 2008): Gordon Brown has always had something of a victim mentality. For years he was the plucky Labour underdog, fighting an all-powerful Conservative Party. Then, when Labour won power, he was the betrayed friend, denied the premiership by a double-crossing Tony Blair. Even now, he (or his people) occasionally lapses into this way of thinking - he is the class warrior, oppressed by the wealthy Old Etonian David Cameron, or the brave captain, struggling to hold a course against global economic forces that are beyond his control... Some think it stems from a lengthy period pinned to a hospital bed and brooding after a rugby accident that left him with only one eye.

Anatole Kaletsky, the Times (December 2007): Gordon Brown forgets that there are some much less appealing synonyms for determination, courage and perseverance. They are stubbornness and inflexibility, solipsism and tunnel vision. As a wise observer of human nature remarked about the Prime Minister: "When someone is this accident-prone, it is no accident."

Dominic Lawson, the Independent (May 2008): While the outside world sees a man of robotic self-discipline and imperviousness to normal human weakness, the real man is a ferment of emotion - almost out of control, in fact. Frank Field's extraordinary remark a few days ago about Gordon Brown's "indescribable tempers" was a piercingly honest description of exactly this aspect of the Prime Minister's personality. On a more mundane level - and visible to all - Gordon Brown's chewed fingernails are an indicator of this inner turbulence and anxiety.

Bruce Anderson, the Independent (December 2007): According to reports from No 10, the Prime Minister spends Monday to Wednesday morning brooding about the forthcoming Prime Minister's questions, and Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning brooding about his failure. The PM is also a source of misery in others. Working in Downing Street increasingly resembles being a courtier in Dunsinane during the final acts of Macbeth.

Matthew Norman, the Independent (May 2008): A year ago the world of letters greeted the official publication of Courage by Gordon Brown (Invertebrate Press, £0.49 from all good bargain basement bins; signed copies available at £0.07). And so to today, when, frightened by China, Brown will refuse to receive the Dalai Lama at Downing Street... There is a world of difference between the stoical acceptance of personal tragedy - towering human quality though that is - and the ability to risk oblivion in the cause of sacred beliefs; between a passive form of valour and an active one. Brown has the former in spades, and not an iota of the latter. 

Fighting styleNick Cohen, the Observer (September 2008): He doesn't understand the shifting times and seems to think he is in a bar-room brawl. If he can deliver a killer blow to his opponents, he will win. But the movement against him is not primarily composed of [Charles] Clarke and other old-fashioned street fighters. The opponents he needs to worry about are more often than not passive-aggressive spectators sitting on side tables and watching his behaviour with increasing abhorrence. The danger for Brown is not that Labour MPs will knock him down, but that they will follow Ruth Kelly and slip out of the door, one by one, until he is left punching the air in an empty room, exhausted and alone.

Lance Price, Daily Telegraph (May 2008): Gordon Brown has a very long past indeed and it's littered with the bloodied but breathing bodies of those he crossed on his way to the job he wanted rather too much.. Some, such as Frank Field, had cherished but expensive policies vetoed by the then chancellor. Others, like John Prescott, remember his intolerable bad manners with supposed colleagues. A few, such as Lord Levy, question his veracity. Rather more, like Cherie Blair, resent his failure to support her husband at crucial moments.  

Dress nonsenseMelissa Kyte, Daily Telegraph (July 2008): The British people like an underdog and are big-hearted enough to have given this man another chance. But the sight of him trying to enjoy his holiday while wearing a grey sports jacket and a pinstriped shirt with only one button undone will be the final straw for most people.

The vision thingIain Martin, Daily Telegraph (January 2008): In trouble, almost everything Gordon Brown now announces comes with a date such as 2011 or 2016 attached. Earlier this week he was talking about the "next 60 years of the NHS". Even Stalin's horizons were shorter than that.

Janet Daley, Daily Telegraph (June 2008): As terrorists rammed vehicles through airport entrances, and the flood waters rose, there strode on to the national stage a man whose solemnity and lack of emotional display seemed exactly right for the times. The turning point wasn't the decision not to hold a general election. Actually, it all began to fall apart at last year's Labour Party conference when the awful reality dawned on every journalist present: neither Mr Brown nor his ministers had anything of interest to say.

Matthew Parris, the Times (March 2008): After nearly a decade puzzling over routine references by journalistic colleagues to Mr Brown's "towering intellect", the penny has dropped. This is it. There isn't anything more. Citizenship ceremonies and plastic bags.

Steve Richards, the Independent (January 2008): On the BBC's Today programme yesterday Brown was asked whether he enjoyed being Prime Minister. He could not answer this simplest of questions. Instead he spoke awkwardly of the daily challenges in the job and the dutiful inspiration of his father, obtuse responses and ones that are so familiar they are already tediously formulaic. Why can't Brown answer questions in an engaging way?

Alice Miles, the Times (September 2008): There were some nice lines, but mostly it was a list, not a speech: thud after thud of meaningless proclamations - we will be the party of law and order, we will be the party of the family, this will be the British century. Voters wanted a sense of direction. He gave them health checks, broadband connections and nursery places for Mancunian two-year-olds. (You cannot legislate to end child poverty.) They wanted his personal journey. He told them how he was once not in danger of being half-blind - but of being completely blind. They wanted hope. He gave them a victims' commissioner.

Celebrity obsessionPeter McKay, Daily Mail (March 2009): Gordon told us in 2007 that we'd moved away from the time 'when celebrity matters' - a dig at the preceding Blair era. Like the perfectly evolved shark, he devours any publicity protein which might conceivably aid his survival, be it welcoming mountaineering show-offs [the celebrities who climbed Kilimanjaro for comic relief] at Number 10 or sending a message to the dying Jade Goody.

Martin Ivens, Sunday Times (May 2008): Brown was once beloved of worthy left-liberals for his concern for Third World debt, his intellectual hinterland and his Scottish bank manager's sobriety - which contrasted so vividly with that warmongering, celebrity-obsessed, flibbertigibbet Blair. As for celebrity-obsession, how about this homme serieux's call the other week to Shakira, the sultry, midriff-baring Colombian singer, to chat about education.

Alice Miles, the Times (January 2008): In between his world tour and not appearing in the House of Commons while his Chancellor announced the effective nationalisation of a bank, Gordon Brown made a little film to commemorate the retirement of Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq. He appeared after Basil Brush, who is a stuffed fox, and a couple of comedians.

His stubbornnessChristopher Howse, Daily Telegraph (March 2009): Imagine Gordon Brown settling down for the cameras, in an armchair next to an elegant table lamp, and saying, 'Sorry I sold the gold', while a lone tear coursed down his sad, battered face. It won't happen. ·