Let Them Not Weep

As Gordon Brown limps through the final few months of his premiership, he tells us what he has learnt during the past two years

On achievement
Imagine, being on the cusp of greatness. For most of your life you have wanted it, thirsted after it, toiled for it. You have betrayed friends for it; you would even have killed for it if necessary. And finally, you find yourself just before its beginning, struggling to conceal your impatience as you wait to assume the mantle that you have coveted for so long. Every fibre of your being compels you to snatch at it, greedily. But with superhuman effort you fight these urges, determined not to let anything destroy your hopes at this crucial moment.

And then it comes into view, though warped and clouded through the filter of your tears, brought hesitantly towards you in your predecessor's loving hands: your life's ambition, your glory. Trembling, you take it.

Now imagine that it's covered in shit and sick, that for the next two years the entire country is going to hit you repeatedly in the balls with it, and that forever after you will be remembered as Shitty Sickman.

And worse, when finally the time comes for you to pass on the baton, you shall see how miraculously clean it suddenly appears, sparkling and gleaming in the scrubbed and shaven hands of your successor.

On loyalty
Is there someone, or a number of people, in your life that you can trust? That you know you can rely upon, when you need support, or when you feel the need to confide in someone? Someone, or a number of people, that you know will never betray that trust?

Then I am afraid that you are an idiot. There is no loyalty in the cruel glare of brutal nature. These people want you dead. You are in their way. Your very existence denies them access to vital resources, mates and such. You are an obstacle to these people, and they to you.

Be prepared to fight, or else go away and hide, in solitude, for the rest of your life. They will be looking for you. And when they find you, you will want a quick death.

On luck
Luck has been a central character in the story of my premiership, and not a very helpful one. At least, not to me.

Luck is a fickle mistress, and one of strange tastes. For instance, let us say - purely hypothetically - that two men stand before her, competing for her affections. One of them plunged his country headlong into a war that is deeply unpopular and costly - both financially, and in terms of life. And let us say, for example, that he becomes almost as unpopular as that war, and leaves his position to the other man, who takes it, bathed in the warm glow of goodwill. Luck smiles on that second man.

But then before they have even done it or anything, she kicks him in the knackers, for no reason whatsoever, and impales his hand on her stiletto heel. Suddenly the first man is fucking goldenballs again, traipsing around, saving the world, swanning into Parliament when he feels like it, met with hushed awe, like a returning hero. And luck is right back in his pants.

And the second man can only hope that luck somehow secures for the first the impressive but essentially powerless role of President of the EU, where he will be revered, garlanded, perhaps even deified, but effectively neutered.

Again, this is all hypothetical.

On hope
Hope is a terrible thing: a curse, a harbinger of disaster, a demonic baby clinging to your neck, sinking its fangs periodically into the well of your clavicle until you give it what it wants. Hope has cast a long, dark shadow over my entire adult life.

I particularly look forward to the day after this election, because that will be the day when I can finally give up hoping.