Gordon Brown: "Of course I put an end to spin!"

This was the Prime Minister's irritated response to a question posed by Evan Davies a few moments ago during an interview on BBC Radio 4 'Today'. I regret to say that I consider that statement to be one of the most bald-faced pieces of misinformation I have ever heard from a public official. In fact his whole 'performance' this morning, and yesterday on the Andrew Marr Show on BBC 1, was blustering and entirely unconvincing. Evan Davies' interviewing style is rather more robust than poor old Andy Marr's (whom one always suspects to be a bit of a left-wing 'luvvie' himself); quietly persistent and with a better understanding of economics (and probably politics, too) than most, he elicited the statement I headline, from a Prime Minister pushed into a corner by unanswerable questions Davies asked repeatedly, for example about a Cabinet Minister (the Home Secretary) voting as recently as January this year to try and prevent release of MP expense data under Freedom of Information legislation.

Gordon Brown thinks that people like this are 'the best people' to see the country through the economic and political crisis we are undergoing. Do we really want a man like him proposing and carrying though his choice of 'reforms' to our constitutional systems that we need? Sorry, Mr Brown, if you genuinely believe this then you are completely out-of-touch and unfit to be or to remain Prime Minister for a moment longer! Otherwise you show yourself quite blatantly to be the master of spin that most people believe you are, despite your attempted 'spin' to the contrary. The idea that Gordon Brown is 'the right man' to sort out our economic woes, with or without a General Election, is so absurd it makes me splutter. This from the man whose economic policies ever since May 1997 have been so disastrous; he may not single-handedly have caused our particular piece of the global recession, but he played a pretty major role in it. He has to call a General Election and let the real power in this country, the electorate, have their say. Who knows, they might vote Labour back in! Bill goes off cackling and guffawing to get breakfast ...

(Now, just before I pushed the 'publish' button, I heard Nick Robinson saying that 'there is no sign yet that Gordon brown is cracking up' in his media appearances in recent days. Have I been hearing/watching the same interviews as Mr Robinson?)