No more cover-ups or denials

It is official: Gordon Brown has run out of things to cover up. The Prime Minister whose reputation for double-dealing has flourished of late is now facing a crisis of confidence, as he searches for new departmental policies and secret deals to hide or to deny ever existed.

Brown is currently defending himself from claims by the Tories that he mis-led parliament during a month-long campaign in which he accused them of planning 10% cuts to public services. A recently leaked Treasury document shows that at the time officials were themselves forecasting 9.3% cuts.

The Prime Minister's determination to move away from the spin of Old New Labour to the straightforward lies of New New Labour has undoubtedly borne fruit, most notably in the case of the Al-Megrahi release where he denied that an oil deal with Libya was in any way involved. Since that time, Brown has more or less universally been acknowledged to be a double-dealer.

But is it possible that time is running out for the man who has governed Britain for the past two years on a diet of untruths, cover-ups and denials? Can there be anything left to hide for the man who is assumed to be lying almost every time he opens his mouth nowadays?

Perhaps, the man who started out as he meant to go on when he denied back in 2007 that he was planning an election, could have just one more card up his sleeve. The ultimate denial for this Prime Minister would be the denial that there is going to be a general election in the next nine months and that he is going to lose it. But in the case of Gordon Brown it is not totally inconceivable.