Do you remember what it was like when Tony Blair was Prime Minister? With constant feuding between Numbers Ten and Eleven Downing Street, government became almost impossible. And as the handover to Gordon Brown neared, it seemed that everybody who had ever worked with him was lining up to have a go at him. So six months on, I thought I’d see if their assessment of his character was fair, now we have seen Gordon Brown in office.

1. Meaningless soundbites. ‘[Brown] is the master of the meaningless soundbite, an initiative a day… They are gathering eye-catching policies for the first 100 days, though he will also want to keep some back for the General Election’ (unnamed Brown supporter).

Well, if as Chancellor he was the master of the meaningless soundbite, as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has surpassed himself. When he promised “British jobs for British workers”, he knew that any policy that actually delivered that would be illegal. And now we know that of the 1.7 million jobs created since 1997, 1.4 million of them have gone to immigrants.

2. Stalinist ruthlessness. ‘You cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness of it all’ (Andrew Turnbull, former Cabinet Secretary).

What could be more Stalinist than Gordon Brown’s cynical approach to Tony Blair’s education reforms? When he was in his ‘counter-intuitive’ phase, he was keen to emphasise the fact that he was retaining Lord Adonis as an education minister, and he said he would massively extend the number of city academies. But then Ed Balls let it slip that they were going to quietly kill the academies, by restoring the role of local education authorities.

3. Control freak. ‘It's a controlling thing – [Brown] thinks he has to control everything’ (Charles Clarke).