Never claimed he was perfect. You can find fault with literally every PM that has ever existed. But him and Major seemed to be relatively scandal free compared to many who have come before and after them.

Gold had been underperforming for decades before Brown sold it off though, you cant really fault him for not predicting the future.

I actually kind of think Cameron introducing austerity may have been worse, overall, over time. Brexit was a fumble, but austerity was malicious.

I was in Finance in Britain at the time.

He was the one who saved banks with unconditionally given public money, then turned around and put them in a special "hands-off" management structure where basically the bankers managed themselves.

Royal Bank Of Scotland did not restructure their Investment Banking operations for almost a decade and kept losing billions of pounds every year. I actually worked there for a bit during that period and they were spectacularly inefficient and chaotic compared to other Investment Banks I worked in and under no pressure at all to improve.

Oh and Zero Interest Rate Policy in the UK - that started under Gordon Brown too.

The 2008 Crash recovery was one of the slowest recoveries from a Financial Crash in History.

All this crap then led to Austerity (by then under the Tories), which in turn fed the mix of discontent and scapegoating of the EU that led to Brexit, which in turn put the UK in the sorry state it is today.

Gordon Brown did not repair even the British Economy, much less the World's.

I remember those claims back then already and they were complete total bollocks fed by a handful of opinion makers in British newspapers and New Labour politicians - as far as I know, not a single international Economist endorsed that idea that Gordon Brown saved the World's Economy: the whole thing was just one big circle jerk of New Labour politicians and supporters.

I think you've been watching too much BBC and reading too much The Guarding - they're the ones who invariably spin "Briton saves the world" stories out of British politicians swiping British problems under the carpet and leaving them for others to solve later.

They’ve had time. Half the cabinet registered domain names for possible campaigns months ago. They’ve been gauging support for a long time and will know if they are viable. Streeting certainly knew he wasn’t.

The nomination period is 1 week. I’d argue that’s plenty of time. Remember the maximum number of candidates is 5, but Burnham will have more than 81 signatures so it will be at most 4.

Waiting until 9th July to open nominations means it’s likely that the others will drop out beforehand and it will be a coronation in slow motion, which isn’t great either.