As bad as things have been going for President Obama lately - including another no good rotten day today - his troubles pale in comparison to what Gordon Brown is experiencing in England. Gordo's been on a losing streak for the better part of the last 18 months and his Labour Party is at all time low in the polls.

Simon Heffer of the conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph dropped in on the Labour Party Conference in Brighton and doesn't mince words in his analysis:

Most of us could not care less about the cringe-inducing embarrassment that was the Labour Party conference. However, it again highlighted something we should care quite profoundly about: and that is the hideous amount of damage these morons, sleazeballs and incompetents are capable of doing to our country before (as we must hope is the case) we boot them out of office in seven months' time. [snip]

Reflect, for a moment, on what a pig of a week Mr Brown has had, and upon how much of his misfortune has been self-inflicted. When I arrived in Brighton last Sunday, the atmosphere was like that of a pub with no beer, and it got worse. Many MPs could not bear to go. The Cabinet appeared to be there under sufferance. The rank and file were either trade unionists, waiting to mount their coup d'état when Mr Brown is finally pushed off the perch, or the deeply deluded, or in some cases both. Almost the only person who does not seem to know Labour is heading for the exit is Mr Brown. And he is almost the only person, too, who seems not to see that it is almost entirely his fault.

Double ouch. Heffer concludes with a rather ominous comparison:

It is not that long since 1997, when a Tory party that had stuck with a useless prime minister right to the end found itself thrown out of power for at least 13 years. Most of the Labour Party admit now that they face not just defeat, but possibly obliteration, and a period of ritual disembowelment afterwards such as we saw after 1979. With Alan Johnson biding his time, it doesn't have to be like that. But Labour remains too timid to tell the emperor he has no clothes, so oblivion it shall be.