It was predictable that today’s press would be bloody, but, in the event, it exceeded all expectations. From a Labour perspective, it was absolutely dreadful.
A handful of cabinet members are being talked up as successors to Brown, specifically David Miliband, James Purnell, Ed Balls and Alan Johnson. Jack Straw is spoken of as both a potential successor and the man to whom it will fall to hand the PM the tumbler of Scotch and the pearl-handled revolver.
Both Miliband and Johnson have appeared on TV today pledging loyalty to Gordon, which, on the whole, must be bad news for him.
A gaggle of backbenchers are quoted, saying variously that he should go immediately, that he should stay the course and that he has up to six months to get his act together. Alan Whitehead MP says that he lacks something called the “phwoarr factor”, which is apparently a major shortcoming.
Margaret Beckett says that Mr Brown is the “right person to lead the country at this time of economic uncertainty” but also that he should change direction, which tends to suggest that she has little faith in his leadership.
Austin Mitchell, MP for Great Grimsby, is characteristically forthright:
“The Crewe by-election defeat was a brass-knuckled disaster. Everything has changed. The Tories are back in business. People are fed up with us.
“It’s totally disorientating for Labour MPs to discover they’re not loved. Gordon must listen to the people and the party, something he has not been good at up to now.
“We told him to go to the country last September. He fluffed it.”
It’s hard to say precisely how long the panic will grip the Labour party, but it is likely to persist for some time. It is also impossible to say what will happen to Gordon Brown, although the press has expended several small forests on speculation this morning.
What is certain, however, is that the spectacle of a governing party riven by infighting is unlikely to impress the electorate.
Divided parties are weak, and weak parties tend not to win elections.
A handful of cabinet members are being talked up as successors to Brown, specifically David Miliband, James Purnell, Ed Balls and Alan Johnson. Jack Straw is spoken of as both a potential successor and the man to whom it will fall to hand the PM the tumbler of Scotch and the pearl-handled revolver.
Both Miliband and Johnson have appeared on TV today pledging loyalty to Gordon, which, on the whole, must be bad news for him.
A gaggle of backbenchers are quoted, saying variously that he should go immediately, that he should stay the course and that he has up to six months to get his act together. Alan Whitehead MP says that he lacks something called the “phwoarr factor”, which is apparently a major shortcoming.
Margaret Beckett says that Mr Brown is the “right person to lead the country at this time of economic uncertainty” but also that he should change direction, which tends to suggest that she has little faith in his leadership.
Austin Mitchell, MP for Great Grimsby, is characteristically forthright:
“The Crewe by-election defeat was a brass-knuckled disaster. Everything has changed. The Tories are back in business. People are fed up with us.
“It’s totally disorientating for Labour MPs to discover they’re not loved. Gordon must listen to the people and the party, something he has not been good at up to now.
“We told him to go to the country last September. He fluffed it.”
It’s hard to say precisely how long the panic will grip the Labour party, but it is likely to persist for some time. It is also impossible to say what will happen to Gordon Brown, although the press has expended several small forests on speculation this morning.
What is certain, however, is that the spectacle of a governing party riven by infighting is unlikely to impress the electorate.
Divided parties are weak, and weak parties tend not to win elections.
3 comments:
Be careful David, gloating at Labour's current woes, or becoming complacent because you believe that victory is in the bag may be the Tories' undoing. Remember Neil "Oh! Yes!" Kinnock?
let us hope they keep him on!
He seems a stubborn bugger at best.
Alwyn - if I remember rightly, Kinnock’s hubris was expressed in the immortal, if unintelligible, clarion call: “Well, all right!”
“Oh, yes!” was John Major’s catchphrase, for which he was pitilessly pilloried on Spitting Image.
Appearances to the contrary, I’m genuinely trying not to gloat. Labour’s current problems have afflicted previous governments of all stripes - most recently, Major’s. They illustrate the essential truth of Harold Macmillan’s “events, dear boy, events” dictum, which, for anyone interested in politics, never ceases to fascinate.
They also underline the fact that Tony Blair, whatever one’s personal opinion of him, was undoubtedly a political operator of rare talent. It was he who turned Labour into an election-winning machine. He found a way to appeal consistently to middle Britain, something that had eluded all his predecessors and appears, for the time being at least, to have eluded his successor.
It’s a long way to the general election - maybe two years - so I’m certainly not counting any chickens. We have a lot of work to do before then. But, in common with most students of politics, I find the current state of affairs within the Labour party absolutely fascinating and I guess I’ll be blogging about it a lot more over the next few weeks.
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