Is this how “a fighter” (his words) strides across the stage?

The newspaper front pages (see here) are not good for the PM this morning and the most striking element is the above picture of Brown featured in the Guardian and Independent.

It reminds me of the shots of Michael Foot at the Remembrance Day event in the early 80s wearing his duffel coat. It created an image that seemed to sum up his leadership.

Looking back overnight the significance of the Indy’s ComRes poll is not the outcome but the fact that the paper commissioned a survey in this way. Normally you only put questions like the alternative leader ones for a purpose.

So much is now dependent on his big speech on Wednesday and whether that will be enough to change the media narrative? He did it last year in the context of the banking crisis – will he be able to do it again? In the past twelve months he has been damaged further by his handling of the MPs expenses issue and the Smeargate exposes.

I’m off to Brighton later this morning for a fringe event that I’m speaking at tonight. Hopefully I’ll get more of a sense of the mood amongst delegates and I’ll report back here.

Offensive comments. I don’t monitor the site 24/7 but I’ve had a few emails about the crude and personal nature of one post overnight. This was not acceptable and the ability to publish instantly has been withdrawn from the originator. This means that while this measure is in place all comments from him will be held up pending approval.

Mike Smithson