June 3, 2009

Prime Minister's Questions began with Broon gravely reading a list of those members of the armed forces who have died in Afghanistan in recent weeks.

The Commons listened in respectful silence, but the elephant in the room was another fatality much closer to home - the lingering, yet fascinating death of the PM's political career.

As his cabinet squirmed alongside him on the front benches - a particularly fed up looking Alistair Darling and strangely smug Jack Straw stuck out - he tried, and failed miserably, to demonstrate anything other than he is a busted flush.

He can shout all he likes at David Cameron with accusations that the Tories have no polices - and he's quite right to, too - but Broon is psychologically incapable of seeing the irony of what he's shouting about.

Cameron, he argues, won't tell us what his policies are. He's right about that. But Broon himself won't answer any question about anything, either.

He can't. He can only intone in that dull, Scottish bark - a bark that is no longer a roar -that he is the right man in the right job at the right time, doing all the right things.

Clearly his Home Secretary - another uncomfortable front bench face, but with an air of a weight having been lifted - didn't think so. Or his minister in charge of local Government. Or his children's minister. And the rest.

And clearly the country doesn't think so, either. When was the last time you heard anyone say: "Come on, give him a break"?

The man is a political, near-sociopathic menace. For the sake of his own solitary, selfish, survival, he is directly and solely responsible for the crises upon crises befalling this land.

All MPs of all colours have had their fingers in the till, he's right about that. But as the Prime Minister he's ultimately in charge of that till and all others containing public cash. And Alistair Darling has only ever been his bag man.

That he wouldn't just now say that his Chancellor would still be in place next week tells you precisely where he's intending to shift the blame for that, though.

Broon cannot understand why people won't just go away and let him get on with it. He believes he has an unquestionable, almost divine right to rule. And the fact that he can't rule, or certainly, clearly, can't lead, simply passes him by.

"I'm right, because I am," is his mantra.

He's always been a tremendous statesmen in his own eyes; an intellectual, politically gladitorial giant.

Now, though, the Colloseum is crumbling around him and the only man who can't see it is himself.

Come on, Mr Darling. Show us some spine. Be a man and throw in the towel, and drag the last piece of threadbare rug from under this wretched man.

He'll go down with a thump, and throw up a lot of dust, but goodness - we'll all feel better when its over.