"What You See Is What You Get." No Thanks Then Mr and Mrs Brown

'First God makes them and then he pairs them' is the rather cruel Italian version of 'A match made in Heaven'.   Mrs Brown, inevitably,   stepped out yesterday to comment inappropriately on  an enormous political row about the culture of bullying embodied by the Labour regime.

Mr Brown is not very quick on the emotional uptake.  Emotion seems to have a very limited expressive range  for him.  He has to be told about refinements of expression of feeling.  Rage and self-satisfaction are not really enough Prime Minister, the electorate you answer to expects comprehension elaborated in subtlety over every aspect of politics.  Which makes your obsessive fiddling with every aspect of politics rather than leaving others to get on with their jobs and, incidentally the people to get on with their lives, a fearful machine for displaying your inadequacies.

Mrs Brown is similarly without appropriate affect.  But while both display a notable disregard for dress and ornamentation, her emotional range is limited by the centrality of her perception of self.  Loud, large and graceless, she perceives herself quiet, elegant, unassuming but communicative.   Thrusting herself forward unaware of our surprise at her public behaviour, she 'speaks' for a non-existent constituency, a construct of her self-absorption and self-interest.

The art of spousal self-abnegation was brought to perfection by Dennis Thatcher - wholly  supportive in private.  When told his wife intended to challenge Heath for the Leadership of the Conservative party his reply is recounted in Campbell's book:

"Leader of what, dear?"  And then the dawning,  "You must be out of your mind.  You haven't got a hope."  But he never said a word in public.  That's how spouses should behave.