Gosling's Grouse: Bye, bye Mr Brown

Bye, bye Mr Brown

When the former Chancellor and Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced he was retiring from the House of Commons last week, he was met with a series of political ‘obituaries' which were in no way glowing.

He will be forever dogged by the moment he did not realise the microphone was still on, and he described a potential voter as a ‘dreadful, bigoted woman’ after she asked him about immigration during the last election campaign. So Brown now has the dubious honour of having a faux pas named after him – just like ‘doing a David Mellor’ is getting in a taxi after having had too much to drink and deciding to tell the cabbie how to drive. But Brown should really have gone out on a high, having played a key role in the Scottish independence debate, and is credited with keeping the union inta...