Brown's bare faced lie

Once again Gordon Brown has demonstrated his total lack of judgement: this time in convening a Press Conference yesterday in the aftermath of awful Labour results in the local elections and a hasty reshuffle of the Government. So why did he do it? There's no particular reason or convention so far as I can see to have a televised session with the media in these circumstances. Any Prime Minister would find it tiring enough to do a reshuffle in a day without having to talk to the press but in this instance with the PM on the ropes and he not being able to carry out all the changes he desperately wanted to surely he was putting himself in a no win situation.

Brown prattled on about his honesty and almost in the next breath told a massive barefaced lie - that he had never had any intention to sack his Chancellor! Surely he must have realised that someone would raise this question, a question that no PM would feel comfortable about answering honestly. It doesn't make sense to put yourself needlessly into that position. I'm reminded of the times in 'Dad's Army' when Wilson would say to Mainwaring "Do you think that's wise?" when the latter was going off on some madcap plan. But it seems that in the Brown bunker there are only 'yes men' with nobody cautioning Mr Brown on his actions. The 'YouTube' embarrassment was another case in point.

How can Brown go on talking about cleaning up our parliamentary system when he is prepared to lie so brazenly. Many commentators now are flagging up his psychological flaws ( I think it was one 'A Campbell' who originally used the phrase "psychologically flawed" in relation to Brown). The worrying thing is that Gordon just cannot accept he can make mistakes, that others with a differing viewpoint just might be right. Whatever he says he will do things for narrow political purposes rather than what's right for the country, witness the 10p tax rate removal which was to leave millions worse off. It was only the courage of Frank Field and a few other backbenchers who were prepared to stand up to the government bully boys that saw this wrong being righted.

Gordon Brown is the ultimate 'Jekyll and Hyde' person. Those who know the private side of his character like J K Rowling and Mariella Frostrup speak highly of him but as a leader he is absolutely awful. People say he can't connect with the ordinary person but that might be down to shyness and insecurity. Yet he having had the misfortune to lose a child displayed massive empathy to the Camerons when their son Ivan died. It's interesting to compare Brown to the possible next leader of the Labour Party, the former postman Alan Johnson. Now the genial Mr Johnson is the sort of guy one would happily talk to over a pint in the local but as to Gordon ... It was the same with Blair and Brown, for all Tony Blair's many faults he was the sort of chap that could relate to a very large part of the population, something difficult for Brown to do.

With most of his authority gone and the Euro poll results out on Sunday evening how much longer can Brown survive?