Always good to see a writer going for a big shot and sending the ball loftily out of the ground.

Meet Nick Cohen weighing in to the current British leadership.

But his concluding point is the key one:

But Britain isn’t a police state or anything like one. In real dictatorships people suffer for their beliefs. The only true suffering Brown has inflicted is on Britain’s idea of itself.

We think of ourselves as a free, plain-speaking people – "a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious and piercing spirit," as Milton said. Yet we accept a PM who achieved power not through the ballot box but by bullying his critics and rivals. As with any other bully, all it would take to stop him is for his opponents to call his bluff. That for years hardly any have, says more about us than it does about him.

Alas.