Tuxedo Junction

Gordon Brown has, lottery-winner style, begun splashing out on a new wardrobe to replace the threadbare lounge suit that saw him through his entire tenure as Chancellor. Gieves & Hawkes have supplied Mr. Brown with several made-to-measure suits, one of which he wore to step into Number 10. Rumour has it that he is now being fitted for a dinner suit at Gieves.

This will be a sartorial U-turn for Mr Brown, whose working-class ethics forbade him to don black tie at his first Mansion House speech as Chancellor, in which he disregarded a hundred years of history by turning up in a lounge suit. Now that he has landed the number one job in politics, however, his principles have been put away in a cupboard with his George Orwell books and his donkey jacket.

So while gentlemen are arrested for smoking their pipes in hostelries and public schoolboys run around executing the lower orders, our dear Prime Minister goes on a shopping spree in Savile Row. It makes Burma sound rather civilised.