sticks. But evading awkward issues becomes a habit and would feature in few career guides as ideal preparation for the top job. And even the Chancellor's most Machiavellian sympathiser wouldn't extend such understanding to Brown's repeated shirking of responsibility for policies that are very much his own.

The Chancellor's two most significant contributions to how taxpayers' money is spent are tax credits and the private finance initiative (under which almost all public investment is now made). The policies have much in common: they involve tens of billions of pounds being spent every year; they're designed to flatter Gordon's books; they generate enormous bureaucracy and waste; and they are both hugely controversial. They cry out for their architect to be held accountable.

Yet Brown has not once debated either policy in Parliament - or anywhere else for that matter. Instead he sends in hapless junior ministers to thumb frantically through reams of briefings while the opposition