The piece by PM Gordon Brown in Monitor magazine which gives a positive word to the Obama campaign is here.

It has caused a fuss. Bad form for a foreign leader to make remarks of this sort?

But listen to this:

Labour party sources have suggested may have in fact been written for Mr Brown by a junior official before being "signed off".

Yes. And?

Everyone knows that such pieces are drafted by someone senior in the policy chain before being ‘signed off’ by the person in whose name the article appears.

I have drafted plenty of such articles myself. But the key point is that the eventual work appears under the name of the politician concerned, and is written with that in mind. No 10 (either the PM or someone immediately in his team) ‘signs it off’ explicitly on that basis.

In this case the Monitor article leads thusly:

Rising to the challenge

The world has changed so much since New Labour came to power that it makes sense at this conference to rethink the way we govern Britain, writes prime minister Gordon Brown

And ends in a rather clear way too:

Author: Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown is Prime Minister

For ‘Labour sources’ to imply that somehow the Prime Minister is not responsible for this text is about as ruinously poor as it gets in general governance terms.

What is he responsible for, please?