HAS ANY PM HAD A MORE DIFFICULT FIRST MONTH?

Many prime ministers have had to deal with serious crises upon taking office - but most of those could have been foreseen. Gordon Brown's first few weeks have been different 

If you eavesdrop outside No 10 you might hear a few f-words floating from the famous windows. Gordon Brown's first five weeks in office have been dominated by floods, foot and mouth and Islamist fundamentalism.

Since taking office, Brown has had to deal with an attempted terrorist attack, the worst floods for 150 years and, most recently, the possible return to the UK of a disease that cost £7bn last time round. Has any other PM been kept so busy so soon? 

Patrick Dunleavy, professor of political science at the London School of Economics, cannot recall another prime minister in the last 40 years who has had visitations from three, albeit very modern looking, horsemen of the apocalypse.

"My students recently did simulations of how governments react to crises and worked up deliberately absurd situations. They never came up with this, three crises in one month."

Brown's problems are certainly not on the scale of those faced by Winston Churchill - who came to power in 1940 to face the fall of France and the Battle of Britain - says Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, press officer to Wilson in the 1960s and government minister in the '70s. 

"But of peacetime prime ministers? No, I can't think of as difficult a first month. And, to be honest, if I can't, no one can." 

Vernon Bogdanor, professor of government at the University of Oxford, has a go, mustering one nightmarish first month to rival Brown's.

"[Clement] Atlee in 1945 had a bad time. Lend-lease ended immediately." The second world war was over but the UK was broke and the Americans wanted the money they had lent back.

"They didn't foresee how bad Britain's economy was. Nor that the Americans would end it so quickly." Roy Hattersley, a former deputy leader of the Labour party, agrees.

"Atlee didn't know, nor did the president of the US, that they were going to call back the money. That was a bigger political crisis than what Gordon Brown is facing." 

Lord Hattersley remembers one crisis days after the 1964 election when he first entered parliament.

"We found out two days after the polls closed that the Chinese had exploded an atomic bomb and I remember [Labour colleague Tony] Crosland saying to me that if it had gone off before the polls had closed we'd have lost the election."

Prof Bogdanor comes back with another example.

"[James] Callaghan's first autumn in power was difficult: he faced the collapse of currency, and the sight of Denis Healey [then the chancellor] called back from a conference in Manila to help is now famous." 

Sunny Jim is the prime minister whose tenure at No 10 might be uppermost in Gordon Brown's mind.

Callaghan was the only Labour chancellor before Brown to go successfully from the Treasury to No10.

But possible prototype premiership or not, Callaghan's crisis was months into the job. Of course, there have been bad first weeks in No 10 - but most of them were due to problems that had been big issues throughout the preceding election campaign: the troubles of 1974 made Wilson's first month tricky; Macmillan inherited Suez trouble from Eden.

But, says Prof Bogdanor, "there is no parallel period when so many unforeseen events hit a premiership so early. I think it is fairly unique." 

And that may end up being the point, says Anthony Seldon, biographer of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair.

"Gordon Brown is a very, very lucky man. I can't think of a luckier premier in his first six weeks.

"Thatcher's crises didn't happen till years into her premiership; Major had to cope with the Gulf war from the beginning but this was an American problem.

"Blair had a complete dream. Diana was a 10 out of 10 crisis. It had all the ingredients. It was heaven-sent." 

Tony Blair spent years agonising over what his place in the history books might be. 

In just over one month, Gordon Brown may have earned his place with the trickiest peacetime first weeks these historians can remember.