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Even the Prime Minister's attempts to talk over the heads of the pundits have spectacularly backfired

A FEW years ago, as a Welsh Labour Party apparatchik I came up with the idea of calling the Plaid leader “Ieuan Whinge Jones”. It wasn’t very grown up, and I can’t say I’m especially proud of it today. But the idea took hold because our voter research told us that people found Plaid’s negativity off-putting. We also knew that branding Plaid’s leader as a lightweight whiner would do a great deal to damage Plaid overall.

How party leaders are perceived matters immensely. All parties know this, and work hard to mould and present their leader favourably, and their opponents’ leaders unfavourably. Focus groups are routinely asked to imagine what each of the leaders would be if they were items of furniture, animals and other objects. The reasoning is simple; by projecting their impressions of the leaders onto things which have themselves strong brand values, a much better sense of what voters think can be gleaned. One such group back in the summer of 2007 asked respondents what each leader would be if they were a car. David Cameron was described as a smart BMW. Ming Campbell was held to be a classic Jaguar. Gordon Brown was a tank.

Tanks, of course, have both good as well as bad qualities. But the perception of a big, blundering unresponsive instrument prone to crush all before him was an early indication that there was a problem with Gordon Brown’s public image. It resulted from the description – issued by Tony Blair but picked up with zeal by the Conservatives – of Brown as possessing a “clunking fist”. As irritating as the then-Chancellor found it at the time, I suspect he would gladly take such a perception over just about any with which he is now saddled. Among those are included someone who manages to be simultaneously weak and deeply manipulative, who is devoid of any vision and guiding principle, save for sustaining himself in power, and someone who is mentally unstable. And, just like the “clunking fist” characterisation, these are the result of a clear and deliberate strategy by his opponents.

In this, media commentators and pundits are willingly enjoined alongside backbenchers and bloggers to flesh out this grim public image. Since even before the election-that-never-was, Brown has been routinely presented as a brooding, vengeful, cowardly bully. As calamity, cock-up and procrastination mounted, the Prime Minister lurched into that most dangerous area for a leader, becoming a figure of mockery. But even the “Mr Bean” image captured by Vince Cable’s memorable phrase has given way to more serious accusations of unfitness for office. Writing in June 2009, the Telegraph’s Simon Heffer bemoaned the lack of a mechanism in the British constitution to remove a Prime Minister who “had clearly taken leave of his senses”, while the Independent’s Simon Carr described Brown’s “bi-polarity”. Polly Toynbee castigates a leader without “the temperament…for the top job”, while the Times’ Matthew Parris suggests that Brown “may be mad but he’s quite used to being mad”. Janet Daley is just as blunt, headlining a recent article with the question “Is Gordon Brown insane?” while blogger Guido Fawkes has run a “Is Brown Bonkers?” series of articles since last autumn, complete with the image of the PM as a clown.

Alongside this consensus has gone another, equally lethal in it own right, of moral vacuity. Christopher Hitchens, writing in this month’s Vanity Fair encapsulates the sentiments of a dozen pundits, condemning a man “in power only in order to be in power…in power only because he believes he has long had a natural right to be prime minister. For many years he waited as a resentful dauphin, swallowing his envy and bile. And then, like the fruit of the medlar tree, he went rotten before he was ripe.” Yet even these are not enough. From the Damian McBride dirty tricks operation has flowed an analysis of Brown as a mafia-style boss, breaking the political legs of Labour opponents and clawing his way to the top over the bloodied and battered bodies of his rivals.

This may be all fair game, the product a series of increasingly catastrophic misjudgements, both of presentation and policy. Yet there is also a remarkable consistency and regularity to these damning verdicts. Voices of support have now been reduced to barely a whisper, and endorsements of Brown’s character are now themselves routinely mocked. And all the while, of course, the excoriation of Gordon Brown plays exactly into the Conservative narrative, providing the most razor sharp contrast with the carefully cultivated ease, civility, decency and normality of the Tories’ own leader.

There is no conspiracy. Commentators like Jackie Ashley and Martin Bright are no more part of a dastardly Tory master plan to blacken the character of Gordon Brown than are pundits of the right and centre right. But equally, these are opinions canvassed and formed from a tiny caucus of other journalists, politicians, advisers and spin doctors. In some cases, the writer’s direct experience of Brown is limited; the product only of a place at a No.10 press conference, or some awkward pleasantries exchanged at a reception. Few know the Prime Minister well enough to pass an informed judgment on his state of mind, much less the condition of his moral compass. That is not to say that what they are doing is wrong – but as readers we have a duty to critically appraise the commentary we choose to read. Simply because enough of the commentariat say Gordon Brown is mad and corrupt does not make it so.

Ultimately, some of these characterisations are liable to be gross exaggerations, and most of us are probably smart enough to appreciate creative licence when we see it. But they also continue to be attractive to newspaper editors and proprietors because they are held to supply a nugget of insight. Eight years on from mine and Welsh Labour’s attempts to characterise Ieuan Wyn Jones as insubstantial and weak, he is the Deputy First Minister and will shortly become the longest serving leader in Welsh politics. Make of that what you will.