Gordon Brown - Back Door Man

When Gordon Brown got the big job this time last year he talked a good game. "In the weeks and months ahead, my task is to show I have the new ideas, the vision and the experience to earn the trust of the British people." This from a man who "accepts that mistakes have been made." Well I fed up with hearing about “the mistakes that we made” and we how “we will improve” from Labour cabinet ministers.

Yesterday Tessa Jowell was interviewed on the BBC and said that three things characterised our Prime Minister. Courage, Conviction and Vision. Well I know he wrote a book about courage, or at least had his name on the front of a book called 'Courage', but he continues to demonstrate a lack of it in his role as the country’s leader. Tessa Jowell and the others better start learning a lesson fast, mantras don’t actually make anything happen. Sound bites are just that, and fix nothing, and without a well oiled machine around him Brown looks increasingly beleaguered.

Crucially Brown shows none of the characteristics that mark out a real leader from someone who just craves the position. For me he has never shown those qualities that great leaders have; much as I was no fan of the Head Boy, he was so superior to Brown that it is almost frightening.

People talk of Brown's intellect, his work ethic, his brain, all the other attributes that he is supposed to have in abundance, yet has any one ever talked about his leadership skills? It's too easy to say, ah yes, but he was always been in Tony's shadow, but he’s had time to do his own thing and he’s been found wanting. No matter what Brown does he has not the charisma, the charm, the interpersonal skills - that special something that leaders have and those who are their number's two's always think they have - that's GB's biggest problem and always will be. He thinks he's cleverer than everyone around him, which he might well be in intellectual terms, but IQ, brainpower, cleverness, and being a bit of a know it all will never out trump someone who has that special something. Like it or not Blair had it and Brown will forever be the man in search of it.

Which brings me on to David Cameron. He clearly has things to learn but he has the mark of a leader about him. He definitely instils a greater sense of loyalty than Brown from those around him and that’s what is going to do for Brown. Over the coming months the Labour MPs who can see their ride on the gravy train coming to an abrupt end will start to get increasingly twitchy. Brown has not the ability to lead from the front. He is fundamentally ‘a back door man’ who will wheel and deal and connive and rant and rave….but he’ll never lead because he’s incapable. Stepping out the front door, inspiring people, and showing a sense of moral courage are what's needed, not his shifty, rather pasty looking politics.

Within a matter of days and weeks we can expect a speech that brings in family values and protecting the country for our children – I know about what that means because I have two little boys - can't you just hear him saying it? Whereas previously the one thing that people could say about Brown is they respected him for what he has done, now even that is unravelling. So what are we left with? A man who isn't actually very likeable, who is fond of telling us all how wrong we are and how he knows what's best. No matter what the fawning young nu-Lab clones do they will never be able to get this show back on the road. Gordon Brown will never a leader be.