Brown has shot himself in the foot - again!

Back in January I posted about how for all Brown's supposed political acumen he seems to have a knack of shooting himself in the foot.

I cited the examples of the government's bullish predictions for the economy recovering from recession half way through 2009 (although announced by Darling he was doubtless a cipher for Brown). This always seemed very unlikely and they will have these predictions thrown back at them time and again in the run up to the next election. I also referred to his constant claims to have abolished "boom and bust" through years of boom until we hit the bust.

My point was that he always seems to favour short term tactical advantage over the opposition to properly thought through strategic positioning. They are also usually hitched to hostages to fortune.

It has happened again in the last few months. He has been banging on for a while now about how there will be global action to tackle the crisis and took every opportunity to rub David Cameron's nose in the "fact" that mainstream world opinion was with him and his fiscal stimulus plans. From my perspective it was never clear to me that world opinion was on board with him and it has become ever clearer in the last couple of weeks that world political opinion is moving against him (e.g. France, Germany and a fair proportion of the political classes within the US although Obama is still vaguely with him).

The G20 which was being puffed as a great event to sort the problems out has been downgraded again and again through his rhetoric to now being something approaching a photo opportunity which is all it will really be but it is too late. His previous attempts to spin the meeting are already on record and it will now inevitably be a damp squib.

I just wonder how many more bullets he will be allowed to fire into his own foot before he gets stretchered off the field of battle.