Brown's greatest mistake was to underestimate just how leftwards public opinion had shifted on economic matters during the financial crisis. In 2008-9, people didn't just want speeches denouncing bankers' bonuses, they wanted to see bankers hanging from lamp-posts.Reader, knowing Clark I think he means it. Saying something threatening half-seriously on twitter resulted in one Paul Chambers (not the long deceased jazz bassist) receiving a punitive fine. Just the kind of behaviour Clark occasionally objects to.
But there is more. In my edits of the Wikipedia article on Clark I was menaced by an editor, soon banned, going under the moniker of 'Citylightsgirl', who thought I was Oliver Kamm or a "close associate" of his. Alas the rest of this demented material has gone from the web, as has the article on Clark from Wikipedia itself, though a late version is preserved elsewhere.
Clark puts up the pretense of being a 'democratic socialist', but much of his writing, and all of the pieces by his wife Zsuzsanna Clark, suggest this is a sham. His comments on the election provided an irresistible opportunity to satirise their politics. Naturally I was rumbled, I had 'forgotten' to log out of Google, but Clark still appears to think Philip Cross is a pseudonym for a prominent person who is out for him. The truth is very prosaic. Clark may assume deceit if I claim never to have been a customer of Tiscali, the internet service provider. But it is a fact, though I know of a public figure who has.
