Quote of the day

For all our sakes, let us hope that this report in The Independent is an exaggeration:

According to reports from No. 10, the atmosphere is sulphurous. There are a lot of difficult decisions to be taken. For the key civil servants, this means endless, gruelling, stamina-sapping days of hard thinking on little sleep. Even under the calmest PM, that would be a stressful business, and there is nothing calm about Mr Brown. His constant foul temper makes everything much harder than it need be. Junior officials are afraid to speak their minds. Vital stocks of nervous energy are diverted, to the task of hating the boss. Meanwhile the boss micromanages and dithers. Mr Brown lays claim to morality. During the gravest crisis in modern peacetime history, he is running his government in a profoundly immoral fashion. There is a further problem. As the risible 100 per cent mortgage pledge revealed, Mr Brown’s main priorities are not economic. They are electoral. He is determined to exploit the G20 summit in April to enhance his prestige.