Madder By The Minute

Brown sends emissaries to Washington to talk up his idea of a Tobin tax. Sends emissaries to European capitals to drum up troops for Afghanistan - a plan for which he says he has 'taken responsibility' and is 'close to President Obama's intentions for Afghanistan and follows 'his discussions with President Obama'. He claims a great victory at the Glasgow North East by-election which was resoundingly won by the None of the Above Party. And that's just in the last couple of days.

All this frenzied displacement activity is additional to a determined presentation of poll data, economic data and statistical returns on unemployment and continued economic recession (bottom of the heap in his G-somethings, and in the EU) as 'putting Labour in with a chance' in any election that might be held (including a general election in the UK) but, most particularly, that most restricted election to high office in the European Union.

No one wants to deal with Labour in Europe; social democrats across the Union are finding themselves in ever sharper decline at every vote that is taken and Labour is up for the same kind of beating as the German social democrats got last September (not to mention the Italians and the French earlier). Why ever give a job to deadbeats from a deadbeat Party?

Now a serious proposal for a serious right of centre UK politician might get some consideration - but proposals come from Brown, the man who sends out representatives to flog dead horses.