Gordon Brown As Seen In 2006

Reading Andrew Rawnsley back in March 2006, all the signs were there ...

A majority of the cabinet still wants to put off the day of a Brown premiership. The real fears revolve around the temperament and style of a Brown premiership.

There would be no check and balance to Prime Minister Brown because there would no longer be a Chancellor Brown. You can run the Treasury by concentrating on one big project at a time. You can also disappear from view when it is politically convenient. When a princess dies in the middle of the night, when a bomb goes off in the middle of London, there is no time to commission a review or draw up five tests to determine the response.

Gordon Brown is a hugely formidable Chancellor and yet we cannot be at all sure about what he would make of being Prime Minister. We don't know. What might just scare him a little is that he can't know either.