By this stage in the campaign, you’d have thought that Gordon Brown’s nails would be chewed to the quick. But as this picture from the Observer shows, they are longer than ever. He’s broken the habit of a lifetime – and not even the run in with Mrs Duffy triggered a relapse. Perhaps he is more at peace with the prospect of defeat than we assume (or more confident of victory than we could ever imagine).
Here is a reminder of how Brown’s nails used to look.
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Jim Pickard is the FT's chief political correspondent, having joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the FT since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
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