The retreat of Gordon into the bunker has happened faster than predicted even by his worst enemies. Yesterday’s FT article by Sue Cameron was spot on. Gordon doesn’t have a vision beyond stuffing the Tories, with no genuine sense of the national interest, just the narrow party interest. Soldiers forinstance are merely handy photo-op props, under-funded and under-equipped. Cabinet government means government by his cronies in the cabinet. The cabinet is fearfully inert, unsure whether to continue the New Labour reform agenda of Blair, with more choice and reliance on the private sector, or revert to the top-down, centrally planned 1940s model. The Brownie clique of second raters itself is unsure what vision to offer.

The promises of open government and a new Gordon who had changed after the long march to oust Blair now ring hollow. An emblematic example of this is the determined resistance to revealing who ate what on the Chequers menu. The LibDems and the Tories are asking on behalf of the taxpayer who is dining at their expense.

Brown is blocking, quite wrongly, FoI requests, parliamentary questions and such like. Why?

What paranoia stalks government that makes it is a state secret to know who Gordon breaks bread with on the weekends?