I don't see him as quite the big failure some say they do, although he was no success either! To be fair to him he was very unlucky with other events, he inherited the leadership when that little weasel Blair had made Labour very unpopular with his illegal warmaking and lying, and then along came the world recession. Both catastrophes started in America, thanks!
But I felt he could have taken a far stronger stance against both these disasters. Instead the old servile attitude prevailed just as much as when Blair was up Bush's harriss. Then the big bank bail out - this is where he lost a lot of public support. Alhough he was fairly vocal in condemning the fat cats and their practices, he did not do enough about it, he is the PM for gord's sake, he should have passed a law just to stop 'Sir Fred' stealing more of our money for his pension - this would have earned him a lot of real respect.
He also failed to read the public's anger over immigration and came over as a poodle to the EU. He was so out of touch with the public's concerns that it was really worrying at times. Surely his advisers could have told him of our anger? But does he listen to them? He was labelled an autocrat and a bully by some and you can see their point.
His good points were that he was a serious man, a hardworker and he did have presence on the world stage. But he was sunk by the weight of his own gravitas, was far too rigid and stiff, and unfortunately struggled to steer his party more than an inch or two back to the left. He pandered to middle England far too much, trad Tory voters, and forgot his own grassroots voters.
