The Labour leadership process is well underway now, and even with a rival candidate to Gordon Brown, it seems highly likely that Brown will be the next unelected Prime Minister.

 

It will be interesting to see how he behaves in his first months of office.  When we clearly know that he is the architect of much that has gone wrong with pensions, the economy and tax credits, he will have an incredibly tough battle to win the hearts and minds of the British people, particularly since he will not have been elected by them.

 

He has a difficult position to overcome: on one hand he may consider breaking from the past and distancing himself from Labour’s controversial issues such as the war in Iraq and the loans for Lordships scandal.  And yet, it is he who has signed the cheques to pay for these policies, thereby directly supporting them over the last ten years.  It will therefore prove very difficult, if not impossible, for him to distance himself from the past.

 

As Chancellor, Mr Brown has also been relatively hidden away from public gaze and it will be fascinating to see, once he is Prime Minister, what the man is really like when all the stresses and strains of full public life begin to take their toll upon him.

 

Mr Brown is in something of a catch-22 situation and I would not be surprised if he decides that he needs to let the British people decide by calling for a general election.  Let’s hope that’s sooner rather than later.