Who’s on the Ropes Now? 
Ross McKibbin
That a week is a long time in politics is one of those wise sayings which usually turns out to be untrue. Not now. All those articles written only a couple of weeks ago and giving entirely good reasons why Gordon Brown was on top and David Cameron on the ropes now look faintly embarrassing. But at the beginning of October Brown was on top and no one can be faulted for failing to see his impending humiliation. Nor could they have predicted that the abandonment of a premature general election would lead directly to the resignation of Menzies Campbell as Liberal Democrat leader, even though his position had for some time been uncertain. Yet little more than a week later, Brown is on the ropes, Cameron on top and Campbell has gone.
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Ross McKibbin is a fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, and the author of Classes and Cultures: England 1918-51. His edition of Marie Stopes’s Married Love is published by Oxford.
Other articles by this contributor:
Make enemies and influence people · Ross McKibbin tells Tony Blair what to do
Mondeo Man in the Driving Seat · Blair’s Government at Mid-Term (1999)
Why did he risk it? · Blair, Brown and the US
Sleazy, Humiliated, Despised · Can Labour survive Blair?
An Element of Unfairness · the Great Education Disaster
Nothing More Divisive · The Great Secondary School Disaster
The Reshuffle and After · Why Brown should Resign
How to put the politics back into Labour · Origins of the Present Mess
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