Britain’s Brown in a spot of trouble

If foulmouthed, champagne-swilling Patsy from “Absolutely Fabulous” can shame and defeat your government, then is it time to throw in the towel?

The answer from Britons of all stripes these days is an increasingly loud “yes” as Gordon Brown flails to stay afloat after possibly one of his worst fortnights as Britain’s prime minister.

There he was Wednesday in Parliament, looking as dark as a thundercloud as the opposition mercilessly baited him and brayed for his resignation. His own Labor lawmakers staged an embarrassing revolt last week, and they whisper all too loudly about replacing him. Commentators are starting to refer to Brown in the past tense.

It’s all very dispiriting for an ambitious, intelligent man who waited a decade, as the charismatic Tony Blair’s No. 2, to become prime minister, only to be dragged down by a nasty global economic downturn, blunders by his Cabinet and his own inability to connect with the British people.

Public exhaustion with the Labor Party is almost palpable. And if, as the polls suggest, he suffers a spectacular defeat in parliamentary elections that he must call sometime within the next 12 months, then his government’s tussle with actress Joanna Lumley during the last two weeks may go down as the first sounding of the death knell.

Lumley is famous for her portrayal of pushy, boozy, drug-sniffing Patsy in the TV comedy “Absolutely Fabulous.” But she has also been a dogged, and admired, advocate on behalf of the Gurkhas, the storied Nepalese soldiers who have been serving in the British army since the 19th century.

Lumley’s father served alongside Gurkhas, and she has embraced their campaign to loosen restrictions on their right to settle in the country for which they risked life and limb.

Many Britons agree with her. But Brown’s government did not, resulting in a showdown last week in the House of Commons. In a shock defeat for Brown, more than two dozen Labor lawmakers revolted and dozens more abstained, leaving the government humiliated.

A plan put forward by Brown to reform lawmakers’ perks was also partially shot down last week, even after he made a YouTube video to promote it. Never one to inspire warmth or adulation for his oratory, Brown apparently thought a YouTube appearance could help him shed his image as dour, scowling and out of touch. Instead it invited derision.

The Times of London gleefully pointed out that the link had attracted only a few thousand hits, whereas one of Brown picking his nose had drawn hundreds of thousands of viewers and another video of an obscure Conservative politician bad-mouthing Brown in the even more obscure European Parliament had gotten more than 2 million hits.

To many observers, Brown’s government now looks like a beast in its death throes, and the prime minister himself appears tired and bewildered, a leader increasingly without followers and seemingly unable to put the right foot forward.

After he appeared on a Sunday talk show last weekend, Anne Treneman, a parliamentary sketch writer, described Brown as resembling “a shipwreck.”

“Oh, Gordon. Look in the mirror. The eye bags are so heavy that, on an airline, you’d be fined for excess luggage. Do you look tired? No, you look exhausted,” Treneman wrote.

With his authority compromised by his defeats in Parliament, Brown’s energy is now being used in part to defend his position from potential challengers within his own party. In an extraordinary display last week, Cabinet ministers were trotted out for TV talk shows to proclaim that they had no interest at all -- at all -- in becoming prime minister themselves and that Brown was still the best man for the job.

That voters will agree with them, whenever the general elections take place before next May, is looking less likely.

In Parliament on Wednesday, during the weekly verbal boxing session known as Prime Minister’s Questions, the Conservative Party leader and likely next premier, David Cameron, told Brown to do the decent thing and call elections now. Other opposition politicians also got up to mock a leader whose blood they smell more strongly than ever.

“Bears in Tudor times, [substitute] teachers, the Elephant Man -- they all got taunted dreadfully and it was an unpleasant, disconcerting sight,” Simon Hoggart wrote in Thursday’s Guardian, a newspaper that sides with Labor. “It isn’t much prettier when it’s done to Gordon Brown.”

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henry.chu@latimes.com