Brown and Dacre, the odd couple

Britishness is just one of the issues that unites these two driven men, says peter wilby

In his aspiration to lead the Labour party and become Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has one steadfast and surprising ally: Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail editor.

The Mail may be a Tory paper, and Brown a high-taxing Chancellor with a regrettable liking for statist intervention, but Dacre rarely loses an opportunity to praise Brown's personal qualities. He is, trilled a Mail editorial a few days ago, "head and shoulders above other possible candidates for the Labour leadership".

The love affair has a long history. The Mail has always been kinder to Brown's budgets than you'd expect - "Labour glimpses its man of the future" was the headline over last year's - and its insistence that Tony Blair should step down to make way for his rival has sometimes bordered on the hysterical. In a magazine interview in 2002, Dacre described Brown as "touched by the mantle