Has The Sun swung it for Mr Brown?

Backed by The Sun newspaper, she complained Mr Brown had mis-spelt names in a handwritten letter of condolence and she taped a telephone call the PM made to her with the aim of showing him up further.

But the move boomeranged on 47-year-old Mrs Janes, who lives in Portslade, and on the newspaper which has suddenly decided to support the Tories at next year’s general election.

Many people feel, as I do, that it was kind of the ferociously busy Prime Minister to find time for a personal letter in his own hand.

It was not clear whether he had got things wrong as his writing is poor and the name Janes must often be rendered as James. In an ironic twist, even The Sun had it as Jones on its website.

But what became all too clear was that Mrs Janes had become involved in a vicious vendetta being waged by The Sun against Gordon Brown.

Sympathetic

Public opinion polls show that after more than two years in office, Mr Brown is not rated highly as Prime Minister.

But the British sense of fair play also reviles attempts by a national paper to eviscerate a man, blind in one eye, who may have made one or two spelling mistakes.

People don’t like the way the phone call was recorded without his knowledge and then spread to the wider world.

They feel Mr Brown was being reasonable and sympathetic in the points he made.

And they are repulsed by the paper’s attempts to twist the truth, especially when the proprietor does not even bother to live in this country.

Everyone in this debate has sympathy for Mrs Janes in the loss of her son and her feelings that perhaps he could have been saved had better equipment been made available for the troops.

But in making an enormous outcry over Jamie’s death and the slaughter of other British soldiers in Afghanistan, critics are missing a fundamental point.

The Army exists to protect this country’s interests in times of war and it is inevitable in pursuing them that some people will be killed or injured by the enemy.

What is remarkable to me is not how many have been killed in Afghanistan but how few.

The death rates can hardly be compared with those in the First World War when 20,000 British troops died in one morning – the first day of the Battle Of The Somme in 1916.

Nor do they measure up against the international toll in the Second World War when 50 million people were killed at a rate of one every ten seconds.

If Winston Churchill had written personal letters of condolence to every grieving mother or widow, he would have quickly suffered from writer’s cramp.

There are those who attempt to take the moral high ground by proclaiming pacifism.

Plenty of people in Brighton and Hove go on anti-war marches.

But if Britain laid down its arms, it would be vulnerable to attack or invasion by any tin pot dictator, madman or both.

To me, the issue is always whether the war proposed is worse than the evil it seeks to eliminate.

Mrs Janes and The Sun may also have led to a reassessment by the electorate of Gordon Brown.

He has had a roller coaster ride so far.

When first assuming office in 2007, he seemed sensible and reassuring in dealing with crises such as an outbreak in the countryside of foot and mouth disease.

But that quickly evaporated when he dithered (understandably in my view) over going for a snap election in the autumn.

He also appeared maladroit in public speaking and personal communication compared with his predecessor Tony Blair and the Conservative leader David Cameron.

Now Mr Brown seems to have the public on his side following the Janes controversy.

He does not seek sympathy and pity can be fatal for a politician but he would like respect.

He may receive more of that in the next few months along with Chancellor Alistair Darling for their role during the banking and economic crisis last year.

In a famous slip-up, Mr Brown inadvertently claimed to have saved the world but it is certainly true that other countries followed Britain’s lead and that the international economy appears to be recovering.

Conventional wisdom for some time has been that Labour will get trounced at the polls but that is not by any means a certainty.

Tories may have a good lead but it is nothing like the one enjoyed by Tony Blair for months before he won the 1997 election by a landslide.

Revival

The Liberal Democrats should be enjoying a revival but they are not winning the protest vote.

It is going instead to parties like UKIP, the Greens and the BNP, who are unlikely to win many, if any, seats.

Only last week, Labour actually increased its vote in a Glasgow by-election almost certain to be the last one before the general election.

The Tories did not fare well there.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg looks a lightweight while Mr Cameron cannot shake off the widespread public perception that he and his colleagues are a bunch of toffs.

They must also fear that, early next year Gordon Brown will feel he has had enough and hand over to a successor such as Alan Johnson, who would prove more popular than other leaders.

I remember seeing John Major in Brighton, pressing the flesh in East Street a couple of days before the 1997 election.

He kept walking in ever-decreasing circles and there was a look of doom and defeat in his eyes.

Mr Brown appears permanently exhausted but he and his team have not yet thrown in the political towel.

The Tories must be worried at the perkiness of Alan Johnson and that fascinating if flawed figure Peter Mandelson.

Labour may not win the election but the defeat might not be too heavy and there could even be a hung Parliament, bearing in mind that the Tories need a huge swing to achieve an absolute majority.

If the Tories won by a small margin or even had no overall majority, it might not be a bad election to lose.

Mrs Janes may have unwittingly helped a process no one expected – the personal and political rehabilitation of Gordon Brown.

In an era when politicians are generally reviled, electors may feel Mr Brown is sincere, proving the point of the old saying that in the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king.

And the Sun may learn an unpalatable lesson.

It may have helped to win elections in the past for both major parties but there is no guarantee it can do so again.

The paper remains almost matchless for low-grade entertainment and for football reports but it has been rumbled by the public and, politically, I think The Sun is setting.