“Brown is psychologically unfit for the office he craves, suggests Oborne, because: 1. He has persistent difficulty in handling human relationships with anyone who questions his authority or criticises his plans; 2. He snubs, cuts, bullies or ignores people he works with; he displays shocking ingratitude and bad manners; 3. He confines all serious deliberation to a tiny inner circle; 4. He will not let even senior staff know his mind; 5. He excludes talented equals from his circle and promotes talent only in juniors; 6. He punishes the bearers of bad news and favours those who tell him what he wants to hear; 7. He’s a control freak; 8. He transmits but seems unwilling to receive; he will not engage; 9. He seems unable to negotiate, he just keeps restating his position; 10. He is vengeful, given to ancient feuds; 11. He divides the world into a tight entourage that he can utterly trust and relax with, and an outer darkness of sworn enemies and uncertain friends, among whom he treads with suspicion, treating them gracelessly; 12. He hogs credit for himself and hates others to claim it; 13. He leaves other to take the flak and ducks when trouble looms.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/
columnists/matthew_parris/ article1811270.ece

Speaking as a Brit, I feel we do know quite a bit about him – much of it not good. He’s known as a control freak and a poor communicator. Another connected point about Brown is that he has always been finance minister, so he has never properly learnt the habit of compromise and getting along with others: if you hold the purse strings, such talents aren’t at a premium. (This point was originally made by Matthew Parris http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris)

As regards foreign policy, if Brown had been Prime Minster when Blair was I don’t actually think he’d have behaved very differently. The point is that being a fraction to the left of Blair is what he has built his career on – and if you want to stay in with the left in Britain you can’t be seen as being too cosy with America. On the other hand, he’s no fan of continental Europe – far less so than Blair – so on the whole his Atlanticist instincts are likely to prevail, especially in a crisis.

As regards ZZ Mike’s claim that Blair has turned the country into a lunatic asylum, in part due to the huge number of CCTVs… it’s true, we do have a lot of them. But personally I’m pretty relaxed about it. Although any system can be abused, they’re basically there to protect people against crime – and in that respect they are invaluable both as a deterrent and as prosecution material. Every system has its downside: take the high levels of gun ownership in many parts of the US. Sure, allowing citizens easy access to firearms certainly does deter criminals in many cases, and if you’re a libertarian it’s clearly more palatable philosophically than CCTV, but… need I say more?

…..and then we have Howard in Australia and Harper in Canada.

http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/05/blair-out.html

All from a government far more to the left than anything in the United States.

The Labour Party has apparently run the country into the ground. For a while now, I’ve been referring to it as “Formerly Great Britain”.