Two years ago when Guido first asked the question “Is Brown Bonkers?“ he raised hackles in the unpopular parts of the blogosphere, Sir Michael White and others said it was an unpleasant smear and there was general condemnation for bad taste. Guido felt, once again, like the little boy who pointed out the emperor’s nakedness.

Yet senior Blairites were adamant, telling Guido that Brown was mentally unsound. In Westminster there was a muted but open debate in the margins as to Brown’s mental state; Was he autistic? Was it Aspergers? Did he have a personality disorder? Was he on medication? Even Andrew Marr asked him “Are you on drugs?“

Now Mandelson reveals that it was the view of Tony Blair, who had worked closely with Gordon Brown for two decades, that he was

“Mad, bad, dangerous and beyond hope of redemption… flawed, lacking perspective and having a paranoia about him… He’s like something out of the mafiosi… He’s aggressive, brutal…there’s no one to match Gordon for someone who articulates high principles while practising the lowest skulduggery.”

The national tragedy of Gordon Brown is two-fold; he blocked Tony Blair’s necessary welfare reforms not out of principle, but merely to frustrate Blair for his own personal political advantage. Secondly for purely political reasons he pursued Kamikaze economics that drove the economy into unprecedented levels of debt. The mad rivalry with Blair when the British economy was in the best shape to carry out the reform of the welfare state wrecked the best opportunity to ready Britain to compete in the global economy of the future.

Brown’s personality problems will be paid for over generations, this government is now implementing many Blair-like reforms that could have been carried out a decade ago when the economic conditions were far less difficult. The madness of Brown’s debts will be paid for by our children’s children.