What utter tosh.

Blair has spent years desperately scouring around for someone other than Brown to hand over to. He has tried building David Blunkett, Alan Milburn, John Reid, David Miliband and others. But each one has either imploded or ruled himself out, leaving Brown as the last man standing.

And for his part Brown has made Blair's life a misery because of his feelings of betrayal at being outmanoevred after the death of John Smith. Will the British public take to Brown as PM? I've always thought that whatever the polls predicted in advance that Brown would get a honeymoon period when he took charge. Now I'm not so sure.

Certainly he will be accorded saturation coverage by the media and some people will think it only fair to give the new guy a go. David Cameron will, on the other hand, have to work hard just to stay in the news and not become a forgotten man.

But this handover to Brown just feels so contrived and that will surely produce a backlash against him in some quarters. He says he will "listen" and is trying to be humble, but that does not get away from the fact that he has no electoral mand...

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