Writing in her column yesterday Janet Daley, a writer who I always have time for, sounded a word of warning about David Cameron's treatment of Gordon Brown. Her view was that the Prime Minister is clearly in the middle of a psychological crisis and that putting him under sort of pressure that Cameron has been exerting at PMQs was needlessly cruel. She was also mindful of the potential political price that could be paid if Cameron had come across as a bully. Of course, she has a point. If Cameron was perceived as picking on a man in a state of collapse then he would face criticism, and rightly so, but the thing she misses, or appears to miss, is the context. We are not talking about some David Brent figure going over the top at a junior member of staff. This is the Leader of the Opposition versus the Prime Minister in the Mother of Parliaments. Both men should be the products of a Darwinian selection process that arrives at people who can represent the whole country's interests in peace and war, to find those few characters that can take the unimaginable pressure of the very top job. If they can't then they shouldn't be there. Put simply, Brown should be able to hack it. If he can't then he should never have put himself forward for the job.
To put it another way: big boys games, big boys rules.
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