Why Gordon Brown is reminding me more and more of John Major

Chancellor takes over as Prime Minister. Has brief burst of popularity. And then it all goes wrong. Sounds familiar?

A big problem for Gordon Brown is that he now seems firmly fixed in the media and public’s mind as someone who took over as Prime Minister, failed and is now in trouble. Once you’ve got a particular image, it’s very hard to shed, as former leaders from all political parties and testify.

But what’s particularly dangerous for Brown – and reminds me of John Major’s fate – is the way that the past is now coming back to bite him. Under both Blair and Thatcher, the government behaved in all sorts of ways that political opponents derided, but which did relatively little harm to the government’s popularity amongst those it needed to win. But under Major – and now Brown – those past problems came back to haunt the government.

In Brown’s case many of these problems are personal. Under Tony Blair the Labour Party was deeply riven by personal animosities and disputes, including at times quite bizarre behaviour in the Blair-Brown relationship. It didn’t stop them winning three general election landslides – no mean achievement – but now these deep personal animosities are back, and feeding the media story of a government on its last legs and falling out.

Just take a quick flick through the Sunday newspapers – Charles Clarke being talked up as a stalking horse challenger, whispers of Jack Straw taking over as a caretaker leader, denials that Ed Balls has been setting himself up for a leadership challenge, and doom-laden prophecies of blood on the carpet if bad local elections results combine with crises over the abolition of the 10p tax rate and the attempts to introduce 42 days detention without trial.

As with John Major, is the only political future left to Gordon Brown now a constant struggle to keep the bad times at bay?