It takes a particular kind of bloody-mindedness to climb mountains. Not everybody finds the adrenaline surge of vertiginous heights, the likelihood of losing one or more extremities through frostbite, or the prospect of being responsible for your own death or that of your friends, more appealing than watching the latest Bond flick. When we say someone has a mountain to climb, it’s usually a cliché whose jagged edges have been eroded by overuse. It tells us – and Gordon Brown in particular – that in our ascent of this particular Everest, we haven’t got far above base camp.