Really, Brown is awful, and the only reason there hasn't been a serious challenge is that no one can think of anyone they want.  Labour's brightest lights have all died or moved to Australia.  The rest of us are just praying that someone real suddenly and miraculously emerges during this unstable moment to break Brown's apparent hold on the position.

Tariq Ali has an appraisal: Adieu, Blair, Adieu

Tony Blair's success was limited to winning three general elections in a row. A second-rate actor, he turned out to be a crafty and avaricious politician, but without much substance; bereft of ideas he eagerly grasped and tried to improve upon the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. But though in many ways Blair's programme has been a euphemistic, if bloodier, version of Thatcher's, the style of their departures is very different. Thatcher's overthrow by her fellow-Conservatives was a matter of high drama: an announcement outside the Louvre's glass pyramid during the Paris Congress brokering the end of the Cold War; tears; a crowded House of Commons. Blair makes his unwilling exit against a backdrop of car-bombs and mass carnage in Iraq, with hundreds of thousands left dead or maimed from his policies, and London a prime target for terrorist attack.

On Gordon Brown:

Blair's half-anointed, half-hated successor, Gordon Brown, is far more intelligent (he reads books) but politically no different. There might be a change of tone, but little else. It is a grim prospect with or without Blair and an alternative politics (anti-war, anti-Trident, defence of public services) is confined to the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. Its absence nationally fuels the anger felt by substantial sections of the population, reflected in voting (or not) against those in power.

But I am disillusioned with Labour.  In 1997 when Blair's Labour ended 18 years of Conservative rule, there was much celebration.  Things could only get better, they promised us, and for a while, they did.  But all this cosying up to Bush and refusing to not just admit wrong-doing in Iraq but act on it has made the public tired of them.  All that money spent following new-best-friend GWB into countries that have far from welcomed us with open arms could have been better spent at home in school or tackling crime.  If Gordon Brown is to turn around public opinion, he certainly has his work cut out.  Even slightly sympathetic people like me are viewing him with sceptical eyes.