"Gordon Brown’s fortunes have now slumped to the point where he is not so much living in Number 10 as lying in state."

"Any further decline will take Labour out of the province of psephologist Tony King and into that of historian Andrew Roberts, whose responsibility it will be to discover equivalent ratings for the Whigs after the defeat of the Exclusion Bill. If Gordon continues in freefall it will then be the mediaevalists’ turn, when some comparisons may be found with the popularity of, say, Richard II at the height of the Peasants’ Revolt, or Henry II immediately after the murder of Becket.