Could we ever learn to love Brown?

You may laugh now, but once he's gone we may start talking about Gordon Brown in Churchillian tones.

By Ian Dunt

You're always more popular once you're out of power.

It's a truism, but it's also true. Think of John Major, who somehow adapted from a dull, inept leader of a sleaze-strewn administration to a charming, cricket-loving teddy bear out of office. Think of Michael Foot, or Tony Benn, who was considered a real and present Communist danger in government, but later an appealing parliamentary socialist whose lectures and speeches are regularly attended by enamoured true-blue Conservatives.

Today, the visceral national dislike of Gordon Brown is deafening. It's on every internet message board and every call-in radio show. Even his own party appear to hate him.

But there is a possible future we shouldn't write off, a future where he is mentioned in Churchillian tones. It may seem unthinkable, but it could still come to pass.
It would go like this: Brown loses the general election in May, just as the economy starts to improve. Today's green shoots become next year's tentative recovery.

The consensus grows that Britain's quick emergence from the downturn still beseting the rest of the world is the result of an early panicked reaction from the Bank of England and the Treasury, specifically the stimulus package and quantitative easing. But Brown loses the election anyway, and the Tories take over.

Think back to Thatcher. She ran a Tory government, making severe cuts in the middle of a recession. We forget now, but at the time she was almost universally despised. And then came the Falklands. A fascist dictatorship tried to take control of an island full of British subjects, and the Americans told Britain to lie low and not do anything about it. Thatcher refused and her proud response earned her unprecedented approval ratings, allowing her to sail through a previously unlikely general election victory.
But imagine the Falklands hadn't happened. Then you've just a got a Tory government cutting through a recession. This is the position Cameron will be in - barring McMillan's unforeseeable events. No one likes the man who hurts them. Labour would have had to do the same of course, but that doesn't matter anymore. The Tories cut. That's what they do.

And then people realise something: they have no idea what Cameron believes in, or what he wants to do with the country. He makes progressive noises at home, but in Europe he allies himself with homophobes and borderline psychotics. His rhetoric on green issues and 'hugging a hoodie' melts away entirely. The lukewarm defence of civil liberties made in opposition is nowhere to be seen. The realisation that Cameron's campaign was based simply on not being Gordon Brown sweeps the nation, as does the realisation he never bothered to tell people what he wanted once he was in Number Ten.

It's a short step from that to seeing Brown himself in a different way. No matter what else you say about him, he's a genuine British patriot. Similarly, no-one ever questions his motives, his commitment to public service. The need to be media friendly - marked out by his pathological smile and the tedious comments on celebrity fads like Susan Boyle - are gone with the responsibilities of office. His dark side - the briefings against colleagues and mobiles thrown at walls - become irrelevant. Instead, we have this patriotic Raith Rovers fan, drinking ale while the economy improves around him - because of what he did.

Suddenly, journalists and historians are almost coerced into making an unthinkable parallel: Gordon Brown is like Winston Churchill.

The narrative will be just too strong to for us to withstand it. He led Britain - and the world for a month or two - during times of great upheaval, and because of his decisions we pulled out of it. But once it was over, the British people dumped him.

Will it happen like this? No-one knows. It's still too early in the economic cycle to make any solid predictions and the flip side of Cameron's silence on his actual agenda means he could turn out to be a great prime minister. Perhaps the hatred of Brown is so strong the nation will never grow to love him.

But it is possible. And every day the economy improves - or stops getting worse to the same dramatic extent - makes it more likely.