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Judging by the article the Prime Minister’s had ghost-written for him in the Observer this morning, you’d think it was he who was newly-elected and not, rather, running hard to keep up with the Obama bandwagon.

This is a man who’s been pulling the levers of the UK’s financial and economic machinery for the last fourteen years eleven years. The man in charge of city and financial regulation. So then, it takes a mighty pair of cojones (or possibly a staggering lack of self-awareness) to declare ‘markets need morals’ and ‘we are seeing not just the collapse of failed institutions but the collapse of a failed laissez-faire dogma’.

Did Gordon slap his head after watching Obama’s victory speech the other night and shout ‘My God! Markets do need morals! What was I thinking?’ This of course, has nothing to do with Brown being perfectly happy with a lack of morals in the markets and a glut of failed laissez-faire dogma until they went tits up and threatened his own job prospects.

And ‘while the very privileged can look after themselves in times like these, the rest of us need to know we’re not on our own,’ says Brown. Who’s this ‘us’? Who’s this ‘we’? You’re the Prime Minister, for crying out loud. You don’t get much more ‘very privileged’ than that. Does anybody feel better for this ‘I feel your pain’ schtick? Where was this spirit when he was abolishing the 10p tax rate?

Still, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who don’t need to repent. Not that’s he’s really repenting, mind.