An Obama? Pray do tell Will. Are you urging Diane Portillo to get up and stand as the brightest and most popular lefty of her generation. Or do you equate Miliband the elder, dragged up as a Marxist, with Obama and his combination of suave politeness, deft repositioning and arms length vicious astroturfing and dissing?

Or are you now backing Cameron?
 

PS Kettle is himself an astroturfer spreading the anti-Brown meme ... which has plus and minus points. But he hardly a neutral.
 

My position is this. No one has a right to the crown, least of all by uncontested acclamation. This is especially the case if the polls show they are less popular than the already unpopular incumbent.

The problem for Brown is that he is a known quantity in the public mind in a way that Major was not post Thatcher.

Now Brown does have a great many good qualities but that should not mean that people lose their powers of rational judgement. I believe there should be a proper contest. As things stand today I would vote for Brown but it would be wrong of me to view him as some saviour of the Labour party when the evidence in the polls is just not there to support that conclusion.

Therefore my ears are open to what other challengers have to say should they ever find the testicles to stand.

"Or are you now backing Cameron?"
F Off!