The Ego Has Landed !

For the past 17 days the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has faced unprecedented protests calling for him to leave power. After 7 days the size and scale of these demonstrations forced him to announce that he would be stepping down in September in the hope that this would be enough the quell the protests.

Since then the protests have become larger, more frequent and more widespread across the country and hundreds of demonstrators have been killed or disappeared. Both Egypt's currency and credit rating have collapsed forcing Mubarak to close the country's stock market to prevent investors pulling all their money out of the country. Egypt is estimated to be losing US$200million for every day that Mubarak remains in power.

Today (10/2) this prompted sections of the Egyptian military to do their duty by the constitution and protect the country by mutinying. This forced Mubarak to flee to Sharm-el-Shiekh while the commanders of the Egyptian military held a meeting. At this meeting the leaders of the Egyptian military appear to have supported the mutiny and announced that Mubarak would be addressing the nation at 20:00 GMT presumably to announce his resignation. 20:00 GMT came and went with no sign of Mubarak but by 21:00 a pre-recorded message was shown in which Mubarak announced that everything was fine and he will be staying in power until September. Although with large sections of the military now against him I'm not sure how he's going to do that.

So it would appear that yes Mubarak is taking his cue from ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story Gordon Brown was overwhelmingly told to leave by the British people in March 2009. However rather then leaving with dignity he clung on to power until he was constitutional forced to hold a General Election in May 2010 and although it was clear that he'd lost that election he still refused to go until almost two weeks later.

He is now so hated in British politics that he is unable to show his face in public even though he is still, technically, an elected MP.