Gordon Brown's rise to power explained

Can Gordon Brown's rise to power within the Labour party really be explained by Erasmus's saying: "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is King."?

Was the Labour party so bereft of talent that a man, who seems to have little understanding of economics and confesses to being poor at mathematics, can become Chancellor of the Exchequer and then Prime Minister. Maybe another quotation may help: "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time." That was Abraham Lincoln.

In Gordon Brown and Labour's case since 1997 maybe the quotation should read: "You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. However you should be able to fool enough of the people enough of the time to get re-elected, especially if you have enough of the media on-side."