Gordon Brown: you’re fucked.

My elderly mother has never voted anything but Labour, all her life. But today she announced that after the abolition of the 10p tax band and Labour’s blatant arselicking of the rich, she will not vote Labour at the next election (the shoddy treatment of adults with learning disabilities under this government has eroded her respect for them, too - in a kind of turned-to-venomous-contempt way). That’s someone who has voted Labour for half a century. I know a single case doesn’t make a trend, but if they’re losing diehards like her, Brown really, really is in the shit. Even without backbench unrest.