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Labour’s poster depicting David Cameron and George Osbourne as the so bad they’re funny X Factor twins John and Edward (”Jedward”) with the tagline “You won’t be laughing if they win” has got a good deal of press coverage, far exceeding the impressions the paid billboards will chalk up. In this sense it’s already a hugely effective piece of viral advertising.

But it’s another story that makes me think.

Jedward have faced huge public hostility, hate campaigns on Facebook, and deafening booing at X Factor performances. But last Saturday it was all cheers. The criticism became so unfairly harsh and personal, and they held up so strong, that they have become popular.

Could Labour do the same? The recent argument over Gordon Brown’s letter suggests it’s possible. If The Sun and others don’t want a Labour victory, they mustn’t victimise Brown.

Given the devastation of today’s political events the Napoleonic comparisons are easy, even more so given the fact discussed on Newsnight yesterday that now is the first time since the Duke of Wellington in 1834 that a Prime Minister has struggled to form a Cabinet. Of course Wellington didn’t have Glenys Kinnock and so had to appoint himself to most of the other ministries…

But Brown is no Wellington, even though in his period as Prime Minister - when he experienced an extremely high degree of personal and political unpopularity - his residence was a target of window-smashers and iron shutters were installed to mitigate the damage earning him the nickname “The Iron Duke”. So Gordon Brown may yet truly be “The Iron PM” as he once falsely claimed to be “The Iron Chancellor” in this way at least!

Gordon Brown is however not the Duke of Wellington - far more Napoleon - and today is most certainly his Waterloo or Trafalgar. the question now is which?

Many believe it’s Waterloo and he will soon be gone. Bookmakers Paddy Power believes Gordon Brown is toast and are already paying out on the Prime Minister leaving his post before the end of August. But to trigger a ballot requires 70 MPs, and with well over 120 bound by collective responsibility, the rest divided between Blairite and Brownite, and fears of infighting worsening the party’s chances, I can’t see it.

Plus who’d want to take over now? If they called a general election to take advantage of any honeymoon poll boost he/she would end up beating George Canning’s title of 119 days as the shortest period in office (and he can be excused…he died!). And it could be worse, with all the infighting and lack of suitable MPs the new leader might be like the Earl of Bath (2 days), who was asked to form a government however was unable to find more than one person who would agree to serve in his cabinet.

But with less than a year to go they’d have no time to really do anything even if they could form a government, but plenty of time to get associated and blamed. Either way they’d go down in history as a disastrous loser, and then be expected to quit as Leader after the election anyway (maybe have to due to infighting).

It’s a suicide leadership suited only for someone wanting nothing more than their photo on the wall by the Downing Street staircase, a Government car, and the ability to bore their grandchildren with the fact they was once the Prime Minister.

I might be wrong, but I think Brown will survive. This is his Trafalgar rather than his Waterloo; it’s over for him ambitions wise, but he will linger on until everything comes into alignment at the general election next year.

Things cannot get much worse for Gordon Brown and Labour: there’s an 18-19 point Conservative lead and voters are so overwhelmingly hostile to the government that even an economic recovery of mid-90s proportions would save them. Even in Scotland there is Tory progress! Like it was for the Conservatives in ‘97 Donald Trump’s favourite saying - “It’s not personal, it’s business” - can be reversed: for the voters now it’s not business, it’s personal.

As Hazel Blears wrote: “[Labour] approached the Ghurkha issue purely rationally and were mown down by a wave of emotion…we need to plug ourselves back into people’s emotions and instincts and sound a little less ministerial and a little more human.”

But Labour can never sound human, because socialism isn’t human. It’s the warped theory of people as numbers, statistics not souls. It created “machines for living in” and suffocating health & safety, a client state, choking bureaucracy, endless forms to fill and file, a broken society where someone else is always expected to foot the bill and someone else always to blame.

And this is why Gordon Brown wouldn’t know a good headline opportunity if it hit him in the head. You see there’s lots he could do - grant Citizenship to the Gurkahs, get angry with Laos, redirect EU funding to cancer drugs NICE rejects as “not cost effective” - but he doesn’t. Like a Cyberman or Dalek he is without emotion, so he cannot understand.

Labour supporters rank their greatest leaders

Just 2 votes behind Tony Blair was Michael Foot, author of the longest suicide note in history. I know they don’t exactly have a good range of options but I mean, really, 26% favour Michael Foot?!

Gordon Brown got 5 votes…himself, Sarah Brown, his two sons, and his housekeeper.

IF you can keep out of red when all about you
Are saying it’s just what you need to do,
If you can trust the people and let them do as they do,
But accept them and their failings too;
If you can wait for recovery, and not be tired by waiting,
Or not hire Mandelson-like creeps who pedal lies,
On banks being hated, not give way to banker hating,
And yet things don’t look good, but not plicate envied eyes:
If you can legislate - and not make yourself overbearing master;
If you can deregulate - so not make regulations take up all day;
If you can meet with Triumph, at least once anyway
And treat public and private sectors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve never spoke
Not set a tax trap or treat folk as fools,
Or watch the country they gave their life to, be slowly broke,
And not send their predecessors off with worn-out tools:

If you avoid making one heap of all our cash
And so not risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And so not lose our future on your gamble rash
And not nationalise every banker’s loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To accept them gone, the bankrupt firms broke,
And so not U-turn when that’s what’s easy for you
Nor spend our cash to nag adults not to smoke:

If you can govern and keep some virtue,
And speak plain English - not Double Dutch,
if you can avoid surrender to the EU,
And spend our taxes wisely, but not too much;
If you can avoid using complex accounts to extra debt hide
And save our country from Heathrow and ever sprawling town,
Yours is Downing Street and everything that’s inside,
And - which is more - you’ll be a darn site better Prime Minister than Gordon Brown!

The recent failure of the government to sell its gilts, thereby failing to borrow the amount it planned, has already started discussion on the possibility of a wider “guilt strike”. What if the government can’t fund its spending commitments?

As any failing business knows, no one wants to lend to a loss making firm with no realistic plans to stop losing money. This firm is UK Plc; Sterling has collapsed by 30%, there’s a 3.8% contraction predicted this year - the worst since comparable measures began in 1949 - and ourbudget deficit of 10% of GDP is higher than any other G20 country, indeed it’s 6th worst Worldwide (and they’ve mostly called the IMF). To add insult to injury the foolish bailouts and quasi-nationalisation of the banks means we are two large banks (near bankrupt ones) with a medium sized government attached, which isn’t an attractive punt.

The government has been buying up government bonds alongside investors with printed money for some time, so called “quantatitive easing”, but what if it needs more. Currently it plans to do £75bln of QEing, although the Governor has been saying he might not spend all the £75 billion, but the government deficit looks set to be over £150bln this year. What if they can’t raise the other ~£75bln? Will Brown throw caution to the wind and go nuclear, monetising the debt wholesale?

The only options besides this would be major tax hikes or major spending cuts, or a combination of both. To put £150bln into perspective, it’s roughly the combined cost of Health, Education and International Development. Total Government Expenditure is £557bln, so about 27%. Alternatively if you doubled Corporation Tax, Fuel Duties, Council Tax, Business Rates, Inheritance Tax, Stamp Duty and Tobacco Duty, without this tax hike affecting revenue (as it would) - you’d still be a £100m short! It’s just not possible.

So if the bond market doesn’t improve next month, what then?

The risk is the ever growing incentive for Brown allowing inflation to increase thus reducing the debt burden or the need to raise taxes or cut spending. With debt monetisation, government debt disappears and inflation takes its place. That £150bln seems a lot now, but not if a banana costs three million. While we complain at the high inflation and savers are ruined, the government escapes responsibility and the sort of cuts that caused the 1978 Winter of Discontent.

It’s not going to be nice.

Dan Hannan’s 3-minute assault on our “devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government” has had 1,200,266 views as of 17:37.