Much good it will do him. The public was never going to acquit Gordon as readily as he does himself. They are already looking beyond his premiership to what might come next and whether the Tories are up to the task. The Tories, for their part, are privately wondering which of his prospective successors they should fear most: as it happens, Alan Johnson, interviewed in the current issue of The Spectator, is the figure who bothers the Cameroons most, although the Tory leader believes Harriet Harman is the Cabinet member running most aggressively for the job. An era has ended but the PM does not know it. And while the rest of us look ahead to the post-Brown world, the increasingly isolated Prime Minister sits in No 10 and broods angrily over whom to invite to dinner.