Pie

Gordon knows that he faces three great problems - first that he isn’t “popular”, second that his automatic shoe-in as prime minister is seen as side-stepping democracy, and third that he has to distance himself from a failing Tony.

It appears that he sees humility as the way around these problems. And, on paper, humility will certainly be a good approach. The humble are always popular, by being humble he exercises democracy because he takes on board everyone else’s views, and Tony was definitely not humble.

However when we look at how that humility is exercising itself we find that it has its own inherent problems. In Basildon, at a meeting of the Labour faithful, he went around asking members what they thought and what they would want for the future. Whenever someone had a good idea then he would write it down. Those there lapped it up, after all they were being listened to.

But is this what we want of our prime minister. That he has to ask us what we individually want and then that he has to write it down. He is the one with the political training surely. If your dog needs a splenectomy then you wouldn’t expect me to go around the waiting room canvassing opinions on where I should make my first incision. You would be even more worried if I then had to write it down.

Either the ideas weren’t very good but he was writing them down to demonstrate that every word counts, in which case we are simply looking at spin, or they were good ideas but he needs to write them down because he is devoid of ideas himself and can’t remember all the good plans he is being told. Neither option marks him out as the next great hope.