Gordon Brown's speech to Citizens UK: An "obvious fix-up"

Today's event organised by Citizens UK and involving the the three party leaders is being reported as a triumph for Gordon Brown.

Lenin's Tomb was there and did not see it quite like that:

The organisers, though noisily non-partisan and offensively civil toward their guest speakers, were ultimately facilitators for the Prime Minister's travelling stage show. Their questioning of him was laughably meek, and laudatory.

The only moment of real interest in the event was when a protester, whom I have since learned was an anti-nuclear campaigner, disrupted Brown's speech. The protester was pretty roughly man-handled and the audience booed the poor chap as he was being bundled off, before going on to chant "Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown..." until it reached a critical mass of embarrassment and everyone shut up. The sympathy for him was unreal. It was like: "first Gillian Duffy, now this...".

Brown eventually recovered from the shock and said, "I've had worse". And I watched in bewilderment as thousands of people laughed and cheered as if it was the funniest thing ever. It was like being stuck in a Joe Pasquale gig. It was like being stuck in one of those 'British Comedy's funniest moments' videos, with the scene of Del Boy falling over being played on a continuous loop, and the same galactically disproportionate canned laughter repeating itself ad nauseum. It was gruesome.