Posted by Dharmaruci: I wrote in ‘Gordon Brown’s Chaos’ on 4th August this year: “There has been a remarkable run of uncontrollable national events in the mere 6 weeks since he has been Prime Minister [of the UK]. Within 2 days of him starting the job, there was a series of attempted terrorist attacks. Then we have had endless and unprecedented flooding in the UK . And in the last 24 hours there has been a confirmed outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease: when this last happened, it spun out of control very quickly and became a national crisis.”

Gordon Brown is known as a controlled, authoritarian personality. Yet he has Sun, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Node in 12th House Pisces. My suggestion was that these unacknowledged inner riches in his chart get projected outwards into uncontrollable events on a national scale. It’s a bit like the teenage poltergeist phenomenon being played out on a huge canvas.

In the last couple of months, there has been a new series of uncontrollable events, but happening much closer to home for Brown. It is as though the outward projection of his own romantic, chaotic nature is cracking, the nightmare monster has now reached the back yard, but it isn’t yet through the door.

What we have had is a media frenzy around an expected autumn election which he then suddenly called off; a run on a bank, the first for 140 years; the loss of confidential data (by his old department) on 15 million UK citizens; and now there is a major scandal over party funding involving his deputy, Harriet Harman. They’ve all been gob-smacking, like you can’t quite believe something like that could have happened.

In most of these cases Brown was not directly involved, but they have all reflected badly on the competence of his government (unlike the earlier uncontrollable events). And it is his competence more than anything that Brown prides himself on. If he can be super-competent, than the nightmare monster cannot (he hopes) get in; yet that is exactly what seems to be happening. It is his worst fear, his greatest humiliation.

It is funny how life sets us up sometimes to learn exactly what we need to learn. We’re allowed a certain amount of necessary achievement and success, and then (if we’re lucky) it all begins to go wrong: Pluto or Neptune comes along and pulls our life apart, it’s very painful at the time, but it means we can move on to the next stage in our life.

And I think there is a good case that this is what is happening with Brown. He has had his achievement, he had 10 glorious years as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now it is time for him to address some of his limitations, to become more whole. Pluto has set him up, if you like, by dangling in front of him a job he can’t resist, that of Prime Minister. But after 10 years of Labour in power, the job is now a poisoned chalice. Pluto is currently fast moving in on Brown’s Chiron-MC in early Capricorn and it is all starting to go wrong for him.

I like using keywords for the pairs of Houses, and the 6th-12th axis I call order versus chaos. As you can see, Brown has a very full Piscean 12th House, which he seems not to be able to acknowledge (as a good son of the Manse). In the opposite House of Order we find Saturn, in square to his Capricorn Chiron-MC. The MC is how the world sees us, and in Brown’s case it is Capricorn: responsible, competent, ambitious. But it is square to his 6th House Saturn, the ruler of Capricorn: this strengthens his MC, but also weakens it, it makes one-sided Saturn his undoing (Chiron is also saying this). As does Saturn’s 6th House opposition to his full 12th House. And Pluto at the start of the 6th suggests that it is through hard work that he feels his power and confidence, but being Pluto, it will also be his undoing if it is not authentic, if it does not involve his whole being.

So there we have it. A romantic, creative, indolent, compassionate man crippled by a one-sided adherence to Saturn: you are only what you achieve and are seen to achieve; you must be perfect; it is only through hard work that you will enter the kingdom of heaven. And Pluto (fortunately for him) will ensure that this one-sidedness ultimately disempowers him.

Uranus is natally conjunct Brown’s IC, making a t-square with his Saturn and Chiron-MC. Uranus introduces unpredictability and instability. He’s saying “Look Gordon, I know you want to pin everything down and create structure and order, but you go too far, and it makes me feel like I’m in a cage and I’ll just keep going off pop – I can’t help it, and I’m an outer planet, so I’ll come at you through outer events. It’s not personal, it’s just that I’m part of you and you’ve got to let me live.”

And it’s all happening in the next 2 to 3 years. In 2008 Pluto will conjoin his Chiron and square his Saturn, and 2 years later will conjoin his MC and oppose his IC-Uranus, by which time there has to be a general election – appropriately during his 2nd Saturn Return, a time for experiencing the consequences of your actions.

So the way it’s looking at present, Brown is going to keep trying to be super-competent and in control, and events are going to keep exploding in his face, and it’s going to get closer and closer to home, it’s going to hurt him and his personal reputation more and more. I think Pluto may be intent on destroying him over the next few years, but with his 10 years of success as Chancellor behind him, he may be able to take it and be changed by it. Unlike, it seems, his predecessor Tony Blair, who has had Neptune to deal with, and who seems to be becoming more messianic and fundamentalist than ever.