At PMQs today Gordon Brown quipped that when the Cold War ended David Cameron was still at school. Either Gordon Brown does not know when the Cold War ended, which could be argued started as early as Ronald Reagan's call to Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!", but is more normally dated to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Either way; David Cameron left school, after taking the Oxford University entrance exam, towards the end of 1984. In case the great infallible Brown claims he meant 'in education' not 'at school', David Cameron left Oxford University, after his three year degree course, in 1988.
So either Gordon Brown doesn't know when the Cold War ended or he can't do simple maths. Actually more likely is that he thought it sounded good and knew that no interviewer or commentator would pick him up on his mistake.
Every day Gordon Brown becomes a less impressive figure; he seems to live in a make-believe world where he bestrides the world like some intellectual colossus when in reality he is becoming a laughing-stock to most right-thinking people.
Says a lot for his history degree, and his interest in socialism, that he doesn't know these dates off by heart.
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