Mr. Brown is very, very sorry

LONDON -- As he stammered and shuffled his way through a profoundly awkward press conference at 10 Downing St. yesterday, Gordon Brown seemed a man who was nearing the end of his rope.

For the second time in a week, the British Prime Minister was forced to begin his day with an abject apology to the British people, this time for a political donations scandal. It marks the culmination of an extraordinary two months of errors and calamities, including the loss of computer disks containing personal data on 25 million people and the expensive government bailout of a failed bank, that have led to the most rapid fall in popularity of any prime minister in almost 20 years.

When he took office five months ago, Mr. Brown enjoyed the sort of public support that his predecessor, Tony Blair, had not seen for a decade. A poll published yesterday in The Independent saw the opposition Tories at 40 per cent and Mr. Brown's Labour Party at only 27 per cent, the worst gap since the final days of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.