Marcus Wood

Comrade Brown and I both fail to conquor America ...

Rumours that I have been spying on Gordon Browns trip to the USA are wide of the mark. I have indeed been enjoying the Florida sunshine (but not the endless queing for theme-park rides with my children) but my trip was strictly R&R.

In contrast to the breathless manner in which the BBC have been covering the possibility of a woman ot a black man reaching the White House, very little news about politics seems to reach the media in America.

Worse news still for Gordon Brown is that his visit here was only mentioned once in any media that I saw or heard on two weeks; and then in the context of an apparent possibility that he might be ousted in a coup by disgruntled Labour MP's if his poll ratings haven’t improved by the autumn. I take much of what I read and hear in the newspapers with a pinch of salt at the best of times but this daft story surely wasn’t being reported in England... was it?

Curiosity got the better of me and by my second-to-last night I couldn't resist the temptation to take a sneaky peak at Politicalbetting.com where, sure enough, a book has been opened on the probability of someone else leading Labour into the next election.

It's all too predictable for the press, bored with the lack of news on the politics front, to make a story where there isn't one; I just don't believe that the Labour party have the guts or the organisation to even contemplate such a move and in any case their constitution makes removing a sitting PM almost impossible.

Which means the rumor must be based on the premise that Brown will 'do the decent thing' and fall on his sword; if asked to by his peers. If he ever believed that the best interests of the Labour movement would be served by stepping aside I suspect he just might consider it; but I cannot imagine that he would ever be so self-aware.

Gordon Brown suffers from the worst kind of arrogance: he believes his work is his purpose - his divine destiny- even more than Tony Blair did. I do believe the stories that Brown is not enjoying being PM; I don't doubt he finds the intrusive nature of the job difficult and utterly despises having his personality and character endlessly picked over by commentators (like me...) who he believes to be immeasurably inferior to him.

In fact the more the job is a trial, the harder he finds it, the more he will believe that it is the ‘right’ thing for him to be doing.

He may well be indecisive, mendacious and paranoid but he isn't a quitter. For some Labour insiders to hope otherwise shows a complete lack of understanding for the personality of their leader.

Good or bad they are stuck with him. Like most voters in England, America failed to appreciate Gordons greatness. In fact they failed to notice him at all.

Perhaps Lord Desai is right when he says 'Gordon Brown was put on this earth to remind everyone how good Tony Blair was."