Gordon Brown, meet Mr Dithers

It's almost beyond belief how much bad stuff has happened since Gordon Brown finally moved into 10 Downing Street. Attempted terror attacks....severe flooding....foot-and-mouth, bluetongue and avian flu....Northern Rock....the HMRC data fiasco....not to mention the fact that none of the home countries has qualified for Euro 2008.

Not all of these can be blamed on poor Gordon, of course, though that hasn't stopped the opposition parties from trying, and there is certainly a case to be made that the seeds of both Northern Rock and the HMRC debacle were sown while he was seething in the Chancellor's job. It's starting to look more likely than not that his tenure as PM will not be anything like as long as Tony Blair's.

There are some interesting parallels between Brown's career and that of Canada's last PM, Paul Martin. Like Brown, Martin spent many years in charge of his nation's public finances, and arguably each was responsible for the most lasting achievements of the Government in which they served (Blair's, in the case of Brown, and Jean Chretien's, in the case of Martin). Brown can claim to be the architect of Britain's longest-ever economic expansion, while Martin rescued Canada from an imminent fiscal meltdown. Yet neither actually got on well with his boss, with the result that in both cases, the handover of power came much later than expected, and not at the most favourable time for the new man.

When Martin became Canadian PM, the nation waited to see what he would do now that he finally had his hands on the tiller. The answer was: nothing. It seemed as if Martin had run out of either ideas or energy while serving under Chretien. He was so ineffectual that even the Economist noticed, and branded him as Mr Dithers. As soon as the next election came around, in early 2006, Martin was booted out by the same voters who had benefited so much from his tenure in the finance job.

Martin didn't have the same bad luck as Brown; he simply didn't know what he wanted to do once he got the job he'd always wanted. Brown is supposedly a man of ideas, but the pre-budget statement last month suggested that not many of them are actually his. Worse, the response to the Northern Rock crisis was inept, and the HMRC problems are not exactly showing ministers in a good light either. Brown may not be dithering yet, but he's certainly starting to flounder.