A paranoid bully

Mr. Brown, in the library, with the knife
Originally uploaded by minifig.

And thus it’s been decided: Gordon Brown will be the next leader of the Labour party, and as a consequence prime minister of the UK. Unopposed – no challengers.

He received no less than 313 nominations from the 356 members of Parliament for Labour.

To me, that proves two things:

1. He is a bully. There’s no way anybody can get so many nominations without bullying people a lot, and indeed I read today in The Herald that lots of otherwise insignificant members suddenly received personal calls from Mr. Brown himself.
2. He’s paranoid. It’s a no-brainer that it would look better to the outside world if he won the leadership in a contest, even if against a weak candidate. To make sure the contenders don’t even get a chance to run shows he’s too paranoid to take even a microscopic risk.

It doesn’t bode well. An anonymous blairite MP recently said the plan at the moment was to give Brown enough rope to hang himself. I’m just worried how long the country will suffer during that exercise…