Brown is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

Just yesterday Brown gets criticised for sending in ‘our boys’ to free a kidnapped British journalist, when negotiators said that he was just days from release.  As this report suggests:

Defence sources said that intensive efforts had been made over the weekend to pinpoint the hostages and assess the strength of the Taleban presence. They said there were no guarantees that a negotiated deal would have led to Mr Farrell’s release and that there were fears he could be moved.

The point here is that there is not a scrap of evidence that Brown took the wrong decision, even though a soldier was killed.  We haven't a clue what intelligence briefings Brown received or what else was at stake.

Moving on, this morning the Indy leads with a story that the political consensus on Afghanistan is about to break down:

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are preparing to call for the Afghan election to be re-run amid growing evidence of vote-rigging and intimidation. Their move puts Gordon Brown in a difficult position, because Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, is utterly opposed to holding another election.

And the main worry for Brown:

Mr Brown is trying to prevent Labour activists staging a debate at this month's conference demanding that British troops be withdrawn from Afghanistan. Tensions over the war could dent Mr Brown's plans for a show of Labour unity at the last annual gathering before the general election.

This article is geared in such a way as to heap criticism on Brown, rather than to question Cameron’s motives calling for the election to be re-run.  Would he do the same if he was Prime Minister? The question will keep popping up as we near the election.

Anyway, back to Our Dear Leader.  The point here is that Brown is not only out of luck but the media have just written him off, even, as in the case of Farrell, there is little justification for the criticism.

Although unlikely now, even if Brown does pull a few game changing rabbits out the hat at the Labour conference, what chance does he have in ‘selling’ the cunning plan if the media have given up?