"Alas Poor Gordon...

…I knew him." A bit anyway. Certainly not well.

Always did think that Mr Brown’s skull would make a fine Yorick. All in good time of course; not seeking to haste his mortal as well as his political death you must understand. Rough and knobbly I rather assume the phrenologists will in due season be finding it, quite the thing for an Elizabethan working man.

Well yes, all right, more strictly a semi-professional stand-up comic, roped in to any a court banquet to take the guests’ minds off the ropey meat, plus the ever present hanging rope should His High and Mightiness fancy a spot of light courtier culling. (You think modern politics are rough? Try the Tudors.)

But let us not be waylaid by any impossible image of Our Gordon as a man given to - let alone giving to many - much mirth. Our point is merely this: whenever some smooth shaped skull is shipped in to bear the silent part of Yorick, I do so wish to cry out how wrong they have it there on stage. We have indeed, it can be owned, some family previous on this, for it was none other than great-great Uncle Griswold who so famously, in Victorian times, attempted to set Othello right to the error of his ways with some sound, shouted advice from the stalls.

This is, of course, where it all went so hideously wrong for us with Mr Brown’s predecessor, that slippery-skinned snake-oil salesman of a fellow Tony Blair. Yes that’s the one – the chap we all thought looked and sounded so utterly plausible, a man in whom much trust could and should be placed. We were, so many of us, utterly fooled into believing in him; believing in his integrity, his passion, his commitment. (How could we have been so stupid?)

That Blair skull I bet is as silky as a soap-bubble. Fleas could ice skate his pearly pate in perfect peace. But when we saw through the transparency of his lies, treachery and deceit; as Isaac we yearned for a hairy not a smooth man. Brown clearly was that man it seemed. Out with the grinning buffoon and in with the granite-hewn troll – pretty pug-ugly it must be said and, quite in his favour, a veritable bruiser. ‘Psychologically flawed’ even sounded rather wonderfully attractive, all growly and grisly in a right and proper way.

‘Son of the manse’ integrity too – bit boring if stuck with it in a lift, but the sort of solidity perfectly handy when dealing with those beastly Brussels’ charlatans.

Ghastly cliché that ‘manse’ ‘son’ malarkey, of course, and believe me absolutely no guarantee of any moral probity whatsoever. Nonetheless we wanted to believe in a different idol and so we did. Out with that sweet and nasty – H thinks evil but I’ll settle for seriously sinning – Tony Blair and in with the really, really nice troll that is Brown. Wrong again. Should know by now and by scripture that idolatry gets you nowhere – or rather it takes you quite to a bad, bad place you don’t want to be.

And so it has transpired. ‘Big Bully Broon’ has proven to be quite as mendacious, as harmful and as downright dangerous as ‘Pants on Fire Liar Blair’. Exposition is unnecessary. Poor Mrs Duffy – ‘that woman’ she, the lady and he no gentleman, said hurt far more than being called a bigot – must stand as sign, symbol and signifier of all the stalinistic contempt with which we all have been held by the most commanding and controlling Government in recent times. Bad commands too for being stupid. Being bossed is bad enough – we all have our Bishops to bear – but being bossed by a numbskull is galling beyond enduring.

There really then you have it. Brown is after all a numbskull and nothing more. Alas poor Yorick again, but no jest even finite and nothing left to fancy.

So exit Brown - pursued by a bear would be nice – and enter Milords Cameron and Clegg:

“I rather would entreat thy company to form the wonders of political power, than living dully sluggardised at home in perpetual opposition…”

‘Two Gentlemen of Whitehall’ then shall have its run it seems. To rave or to rancid reviews? We shall see. (“O That Shakespeherian Rag” as that nice Mr Eliot so wisely and wittily would have it.)