The Sketch: Boring Gordon - lots of noise, but little sense

Some tittle, first; or is it tattle? A colleague ran into an ex-cabinet minister who said, with no obvious irony: "Gordon will be prime minister soon and I'll be in the Cabinet."

Who knows what to make of such remarks or how much weight they carry? I can't believe that Gordon Brown would prosper as prime minister, if it ever happens. Having watched him for four or five years now, his one disabling defect has become widely apparent, for those with ears to hear.

The poor fellow has the substance, the knowledge, most of the experience and all of the votes to lead the Labour party. He's just too boring to be prime minister. You disagree? You haven't had the full hour of him in the House of Commons. You haven't sat through a whole morning of him in Treasury committee. You haven't heard the full-length, top-volume, high-energy physics of his big occasion speech. The pre-Budget report. The Budget. The post-Budget Report. The Comprehensive Spending Review. The post-Spending Comprehensive Report. They are, in a strict, literal sense, unbearable.

Rupert Murdoch was on the top table at some event recently; when Mr Brown was called to speak, Mr Murdoch put his head deep into the heel of his hand and went to sleep. I felt a mixture of emotions when I heard that; envy, primarily, mixed with admiration.

Poor Mr Brown has the same sort of problem of public perception as the First World War had. The noise, the violence, the intricate and unintelligible system of defences, the brutal righteousness, and the psychotic inability of central command to admit fault or error: "Come on! One last billion will do it!" he cries as he forces an extra 20 per cent of GDP over the top to disappear in a fiscal wasteland.

The Tory MP George Osborne quoted a Public Administration Committee report that disparaged Mr Brown's tax credit scheme. It was "disastrous".

The MPs must have had their reasons. They claimed that £700 million a year was being wasted in over-payments. Think of that! We could have had a Dome in five major cities!

The Chancellor bellowed that the poll tax had cost £1.5 billion! And that was the reason he wasn't taking any lessons from anyone! The bombast, the bellowing, the roaring boy, bar-fight culture is no sort of example for the younger members of the ministerial team.

"The New Deal has created a million jobs!" he said wildly. Of course it hasn't: no more is the wind created by trees shaking their branches.

The Liberal Democrat Vincent Cable, a qualified supporter of the Chancellor, made a perfectly reasonable point about the complexities of the child tax credit, which had resulted in late payment and over-payment and clawback of payments from hundreds of thousands of people. He was told to commit himself to the eradication of child poverty and stop undermining people's confidence in the system.

Boring we expect, but this sort of rhetoric is morally feculent as well.