Adam Boulton: Gordon Brown Hasn't Got What It Takes

There's an excellent interview with one of my favourite political journalists in the Independent Media Section today - you can read it by clicking HERE. Adam Boulton has my perfect job. Three little snippets struck me as particularly interesting...

"I would say Brown and the people around him are the thinnest-skinned group of media-sensitive individuals you could meet anywhere. I sometimes get letters from them outlining grievances about things I said about Gordon Brown two years ago."

"There's a real problem about whether Brown has the aptitude to be a front-man to the extent we expect our prime ministers to be - to respond to events at the drop of a hat, to be easy in their social dealings with people, to know how to handle situations."

"Brown has not done a serious TV interview for two years. He'll do responses to Budgets, but not a sit-down, take-everything-that's-around kind of interview, which Blair, Cameron, and, up to a point, Straw and Prescott do. I do think that in the 21st century, if you want to be a national leader, you need pretty strong communication skills and I have yet to be convinced he has those."

Pretty damning, eh?