BLACK MONDAY FOR GORDON?

I used to get paid for trawling the internet. It's called media monitoring and the Government employs many journalists and civil servants to judge the mood of the country - and feed back evidence accordingly. If I were in Number 10 press office ( I concur I have recently blown my chances of that one!) I would be telling Gordon Brown to take in the harsh fact that his attempted manipulation of a General Election has backfired disastrously and that he has to start listening to his backbenchers. The wooing of the Tory vote ( which sickened many of us at Conference) has to stop. Cameron, for the moment, has won back from what seemed imminent disaster to utterly wrongfoot the Government and his Party now loves him again.

On our side, even Tony Lloyd, chair of the PLP and usually a loyal Brownite, is critical of the PM today. Others like Peter Kilfoyle, David Winnick , Martin Linton and John McDonnell have spoken out against the posturing and political game-playing which has drained much of the goodwill which Brown was given on taking over from Tony Blair. Today, Brown faces his monthly press conference and later on he will be in Westminster and then at a meeting of the PLP. I would like to think that the PLP will call him to account and help steer him away from the rightwards course he has taken since June. But, from what I know about PLP meetings, this is probably unlikely to happen. I hope I am wrong.

I would hold my hands up and give Brown credit if he had been more honest about what has happened over the last few days in his interview with Andrew Marr. But no, he carried on spinning that it "would have been easy" to call an election and that he wanted the country to see his "vision for change." Oh, please....The fact is the public knows his vision is the one we have had for 10 long years. As the architect of New Labour, Brown masteminded the erosion of real Labour values - and continues that via more privatisation and neo-con ideology. There was a story in yesterday's papers that the Govt would back air strikes on Iran. Today, an outlawed anti-war march will defy the bans and we could possibly see the prospect of octogenarians likeWalter Wolfgang and Tony Benn being arrested.Not good PR, Gordon.

The official line is it's now business as usual and that Brown will just get on with running the country till 2009. But he has a major problem. No real mandate. A snap general Election called earlier this year would in all probability have resulted in a Labour win and Brown could justifiably say he was entitled to steam full-on with whatever policies he chooses. But brown is a non-elected Prime Minister ( and indeed non-elected Labour Leader) and unless he shapes up this will return to haunt him again and again. I will be watching BBC parliament with interest later this afternoon.......