Gordon Brown's Cones Hotline

I suspect that his proposals on loft insulation may well have finished off Gordon Brown. He spent the whole summer briefing that he was going to re-launch in the autumn and then...well, he came up with a fiddly scheme to give people a discount on their lagging. It is hardly surprising that even his few remaining supporters lost the will to live. It is a rather like the cones hotline in the dying days of the Major administration - a decent enough, well-meaning idea, but completely devoid of the inspiration needed to save a government. In many ways it's a shame. I was looking forward to the beating Brown would take in an election campaign. But it's hard to see him surviving now - particularly when you think about how awful his conference speech will be.