Plenty of people hated Maggie, but plenty of people admired her too. Jim Callaghan and John Major may have been failures, but this was tempered by a sense that they were decent men trying, however ineffectually, to do the right thing. When one sees the response to Michael White's comments on the Dan Hannan speech, it is clear that even Guardian-readers, many of them self-declared in the comments as socialists or Blairites, agree with many of Dan's points and feel that much of what he said spoke for them.
It is clear to those of the right that whatever Brown claims to have implemented, it is not capitalism or free markets as they know it. And it is equally clear to the left that it is not anything like the socialism that they dreamt of. The Third Way turns out to be No Way to run a country.
Is there any former Prime Minister who has been regarded with such united contempt after he left office as Brown will be when we get the chance to get rid of him?