Brown: The good points

Gordon Brown really did sink without trace, much as he promised he would if he walked away from politics (actually it was more like hounded out, but I'll try not to split hairs).

So I've been thinking of the good points and maybe doing a series of articles for some time now. The trouble is the good points are few and far between and barely cover one blog entry.

But here goes:

1. Stopping Blair from waltzing us into the single currency. Hard to believe it was ever on the agenda but it very much was in the early 2000s and Blair would have seen it as a defining moment of his time in number 10. Brown devised a few economic hurdles before he would consider it, I am not sure if they ever got much scrutiny - but they were a thinly veiled no.

His motivation here may have just been keeping Blair out of the treasury, or not losing power over the madness of joining the European experiment. But whatever it was it turned out to be the right decision.

And that's it, still it is a big one. I want to talk about his early months of prime minister where he looked steady but that does not stand alongside the first point.