Ramsay Brown?

It's the 1930's all over again - slim majorities, divided country, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And Gord Saveus has offered jobs to the Liberal-Satanists - cunnign ploy to divide and weaken them before an election? genuine sympathy for their politics and the grand progressive coalition? The long game preparing for a hung Parliament next time? All of the above?

Gordon Brown is an odd creature, his Wikipedia article seems to suggest he's never had a proper job outside politics, his entire existence seems to have been consumed by politics, and he clearly is a highly cunning political animal - Machiavelli was just the patsy for book Gordon wrote (it was a cunnign ploy involving a time machine, OK?). After all, Paddy "Driller-Killer" Ashdown (Former Dictator of Bosnia-Herzegovina) was approached by Brown after this story broke and offered a Cabinet post. Cabinet.

Maybe, just maybe, Brown's detachment from Labour is something to do with the servile and unchallenged way he got the job - he owes none of the PLP anything, and certainly doesn't have any rival staking a claim to his job and stalking him.

That's where to throw the blame. Tony Benn always used to highlight the power of patronage the Prime Minister has, and Julius Caius Brownsar has proven how effectvie this is in spades - ministerial colleagues can drag a PM down, but it's a grinding game, and at the minute he doesn't have a cabinet to resign from under him and is thus untouchable.