Best Thing Brown Can Do Tonight - A Little Honesty

The best thing that Brown can do tonight in the BBC1 debate is to appear and in his opening statement say:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have proudly served the nation as part of the Labour government since 1997. Whilst there have been good times and bad, quite frankly: I'm tired. "

"On this basis, I am quitting my post as leader of the party and am instructing my candidates en masse to step back from campaigning. There is a great deal of regrouping and reconstruction needed on the part of the Labour party before we can be trusted to lead this country again."

"For the purposes of the moment, however, I will now surrender to the will of the Crown Prosecution Service and the International Court in the Hague and would recommend strongly that my fellow cabinet members do so. "

"I believe that I have acted properly but I understand that this is a minority position: on this basis, I will throw myself on the mercy of the Court."

Hopefully he'll get a custodial sentence and in a few years will be enabled to get out into the community on licence where he can become a Church of Scotland minister (like his father) and fade from public life, nothing more than a pimple on the backside of the last 13 years.

When I hear those words tonight, I and the great majority of the United Kingdom will rejoice -- and then be able to go about rebuilding. I was in Kuwait City on March 2nd 1991 and this rejoicing reminds me of what some of my colleagues were doing - shouting at the Kuwaitis thus:

"Stop it! Put down the guns, stop the party, get a broom and clean this country up!"