Do read Martin Bright in this week's new statesman.
Having returned from a visit to Israel where the current Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert,is struggling with financial accusations and his performance in the Lebanese war,Bright wanders how Gordon Brown can be so badly off course
Not so much as a whiff of financial impropriety has ever surrounded the present Prime Minister, even when the stench of scandal has been swirling around him
Brown stands accused of
hesitating over calling an election after the 2007 party conference season, stealing the Conservatives' ideas on inheritance tax shortly afterwards, not reacting decisively enough to the Northern Rock crisis and failing to clock the full effects of the abolition of the 10 per cent income tax on certain lower-earning workers. Add to this Brown's suicidal stubbornness over extending the detention without charge of terrorist suspects to 42 days and it makes for quite a list.
But hardly on the scale of Olmert or for that matter Blair.
And he reminds us of a historical precedent in which
In August 1969, Wilson's personal rating fell to 26 per cent, about as bad as it got before the days of internet polling. But, somehow, he recovered. Like now, the public mood was extremely volatile. It is generally thought that both careful handling of the Northern Ireland situation and the gradual recovery of the economy following the 1967 devaluation contributed to a rise in Wilson's popularity. By October 1969 his personal rating hit 43 per cent, ahead of his rival Edward Heath.
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