The oxygen of publicity

The blogosphere were right and wrong, Gordon Brown has not made a new policy announcement every day of the Conservative conference but he had to do something to take the attention way from the Conservative party. So he has gone to Iraq, nicely timing his visit for the reporting to coincide with David Cameron's speech to the conference tomorrow (Wednesday) and to take some of the heat off of his beleaguered Chancellor Darling. There is an unwritten rule that the political parties leave each other to get what publicity they can during their conferences, but as Labour have ignores many other unwritten rules (such as the alternating between Labour and Conservative Speakers of the House of Commons, a rule they broke when they imposed Michael Martin as Speaker), not to mention the written rules that have been ignored, I don't see why we should be surprised. It looks to me as though Gordon Brown does not like being on the back foot, he needs to take the initiative and show how he is the force for change by taking troops out of Iraq, or at least promising to do so, or at least promising to promise to do so. I wonder if the BBC will ask Gordon Brown when he decided to make this move and when he decided that the Government policy on Iraq was flawed, he was after all a member of the Blair cabinet, wasn't he?