This columnist's advice to the Parliamentary Labour Party is therefore simple. Give up. With the leader you've got and led as you are, all is lost.
And there's a second strand to the duff commentary that will be assailing us from today onwards. Having denounced Mr Brown and all his works, pronounced him terminally useless, doubted his ability to get his show back on the road and hinted that he has personality flaws so deep as to doom his premiership, many commentators are going on to say that there can “of course” be no thought of a challenge to his leadership. Labour's rules are too complicated and cumbersome, they say. Labour MPs “lack the killer instinct” shown by Tories and “don't do regicide”. The advice is then concluded with the suggestion that the Party will just have to get behind its leader as best it can, stop rocking the boat, rediscover discipline and carry on to the bitter end hoping for an improvement that the writer has offered reasons for doubting Mr Brown will ever be capable of. I was guilty of this myself last week.
Gee, thanks, Mr Columnist. So I'll end by challenging this wisdom, though my challenge is ventured hesitantly and with no great confidence.
It is possible to get bogged down in technical wisdom and miss the obvious. Colleagues don't walk willingly into the bonfire, whatever the rules may say. If it becomes clear to most where the path is leading then one way or another a means may be found to abort the journey. I have no idea who might challenge Mr Brown, or how; but, reasoning backwards from an outcome that many of his tribe must wish for, my instinct is that a way to produce it might be found. Things happen. Where there's a will, there's a bayonet.
Read the full article HERE.
21 comments:
What a load of cobblers, that Labour can't dump their leader. Ask Tony Blair, he's had first hand experience.
If Labour dump Brown they will still lose heavily at the next GenElec. The Labour government has 'outstayed it's welcome'. The funny thing is, if Brown called an election last year, Labour would have won and all the 'destabilisation' of GB would have ended-or subsided. Brown will cling-on to power until 2010 and the country (mainly England, then Scotland, latterly Wales) will turn on Labour with a vengeance (the defeat will be much worse than if they went now): mainly over the economy, stealth tax, 10p rate, lying, uncontrolled immigration, and having some weirdo from Scotland in charge. Looks like 2010 election night will better 1997 as a grand piece of entertainment.
Labour do need to get rid of Brown for their sake and the country's. But is that enough.
They need to get rid of the Brown mindset -- the whole notion on which they have governed (allowed Brown to be the defacto govenor of Britain) these last 10 years.
Will they do that. I doubt it - so getting rid of Brown will be like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
On top of which whatcould a new leader do? Listen? Big deal. What could a new leader actually DO?
The cupboard is bare -
Individual debt (mortgages/credit) is high. Indiviudual assets (house prices)are declining. Individual spending (inflation)is rising.
Government tax revenues (economic slowdown) are falling. Government spending (inflation/ mad policies/ benefits) is rising.
The government cannot whistle up new money or new policies, it will merely try to repeat its tired claped out routine of three card tricks.
The electorate will be dumber than I think if they fall for that a fourth time running.
Don't fall for the smoke and mirrors tricks shpould be the Conservative party motto
Well, for Labour it is now or never to dump Brown.
They have a fast-closing window of opportunity now. Leave it a few months to discover that Gordo's 10% tax U-turn will actually affect only a few and the heartland vote loss will stay, if not grow.
Moreover there are the Car Tax hikes ticking away to detonate next year.
P.S. I appreciated your blog coverage of the elections - hope you enjoyed a hard earned drink!
But kinda missing the point. This is the beginning of the end for Labour no matter what emergency measures it implements. It's a squalid, sad, smelly remnant of a twentieth century phenomenon but the final death throws have now commenced. Good.
Er, Iain, remind us, is it right that the Blairista Matthew Parris hates Brown from the tip of his toes to the crown of his head? Making "with a vengeance" look rather weak??
Chris,
Do you think that makes Parris's article wrong? If so, how (you don't refer to this in your comment) and if not, then what relevance does it have to Iain's post?
I think it is highly unliklely that Brown will go, short of a political earthquake. After all, he waited ten years for this job, and his autistic little persona will ensure that he hangs on to it till his fingers are bleeding from clinging on. And the other factor is - there's no clear successor for the Labour party to unite behind. The idea of either of the Milliband bros reduces people to helpless laughter; Balls is a thug, politically very naive, unpopular from his Treasury days and incompetent; Postman Johnson is beginning to get a little too old. Harman might be a possibility (don't laugh too loudly) as might Hillary Benn. But there's no stand-out candidate lurking in the wings.
My prediction? If Mc Broon makes it through the September Conference, he'll be in No 10 all the way to an election which he will call on or as close to the last day constitutionally possible as he can. Darling will be sacked in a reshufle as will several others in an attempt to restorte Brown as a strong leader. So Cameron et all will have to keep the brand minty fresh for quite a while yet.
BoJo as mayor - it's a wonderful result. Now he has to deliver. This is Boris' big chance to make a name for himself as someone of substance - as he singularly failed to do on the opposition front bench. I'm hoping he'll do so - and keeping my fingers crossed.
PS: Well done Iain, superb blogging over the past two days or so. It made a real contribution.
i have no idea who chris paul is but i assume he is of a similar mindset to that other idiot derek draper.they are so steeped in their student ideological juices that they cannot recognise that there is something seriously wrong with labour leadership policy(read gordon brown).even the normally pugnacious(though dreadfully shrill) yvette cooper struggled to defend labour from a mauling at the hands of krishnan guru murthy on c4 news.they really don't "get it".
Anonymous 12.46 pm
You're being a bit harsh on Chris Paul.
Chris Paul is sponsored by the Conservative Party as a living advert why people should not vote Labour.
This is the honest truth.
Can Labour actually fight the next election, regardless of CEO?
Party members are deserting in legions. Union support is crumbling - definitely unhappy with the 2 per cent over three years.
Meanwhile, Labour is 20 million in debt. Last week's exercise won't have helped that, where it contested 89% of the seats to get 24% of the vote. Not a very good ROI.
Hmmm. And peerages are out of stock.
Perhaps the kindest thing for all of us would be for the Co-op bank to pull the plug now.
It's not Brown that's the problem. Get rid of him and you still have the rest of these totalitarian puritans.
These are antismoking nazis (Richard Littlejohn's words) who have driven smokers and their friends from the pubs, some 1500 of which have closed since the ban. These are people who now want to target drinkers and fat people. These are people who create and persecute new minorities. These are people who have made the white working classes - their erstwhile core supporters! - strangers in their own country. Britain under New Labour has become a surveillance state, and with anti-terror legislation a police state.
Only one thing I want to see from Conservatives: a return to freedom, tolerance, and a cheerful live-and-let-live society.
frank davis @ 1:53
Yep, I think you've got it in one.
But who would take over from Bean? The only one with a chance is Jack Straw. The others - the Milibands, Hutton, Harman, Blears, Balls & spouses - they are all too much the monkeys to the organ-grinder.
But we know Brown won't go - "they don't understand me" he cries - no, he'll develop more and more fantastical relaunches until he is overwhelmed. Rather like that film of Hitler in the bunker on the TV last night. But who will play the role of Marshal Zuchkov? Cameron or Straw?
If you call your enemy an idiot stick by your claim and trust them to destroy themselves.
It's all getting very Italian in England. Factions within the governing party use a majority given long ago, almost in another political country, and certainly to another Leader and set of policies, to maintain themselves in power while taking turns at the trough.
A general election now, as it wasn't called at the end of Blair's term of office, or even last autumn, is the honest answer to the 1 May Vote.
There is a difference between the state and governance, and it is time that the Head of State told the government Leader that he has had long enough contravening the rules while he attempts to justify his leadership. The question of who governs the United Kingdom (or even who governs England in the face of the defection of Scotland, Wales and London) must be put to the electorate.
Dear all,
Let me put it in as succinct a way as I can, in just 4 (or is it 5?) words ...
'Brown's paradigm has failed'.
Discussing this with a colleague at work yesterday. The Tories need to be careful right now and not push too hard. The tide is going out on ZaNuuLiebour tsunami-style and, whatever, happens, the whole unedifying spectacle of this movement is dead in the water.
The economy is about to implode - house prices falling like a stone, BTL a one way street to Carey Street and millions in danger of negative equity and homelessness. But it's slow burn - the full effects will not be seen for 18 to 24 months. Which just happens to fall into line with the electoral cycle.
Nothing can be done about house prices - it's a bubble and bubbles pop. This is the biggest one ever. The Tories simply need to sit there and watch ZaNuLibour disintegrate in a squabbling blame game.
The last thing the Tories should want is power before May 2010. If they do, they'll take the can.
Hatfield Girl said, 'It's all getting very Italian in England.'
Happened to be reading Ammianus Marcellinus on the emperor Constantius in 354, when the Roman Empire was beginning to go seriously pear-shaped:
'At any hint of an encroachment on his authority, the emperor's harsh and irritable temper, prone in any case to entertain baseless suspicions, was further excited by the flattery of his bloodthirsty courtiers; they magnified every incident and pretended to feel unbounded grief at the dangers threatening the safety of a sovereign, on the thread of whose life, as they hypocritically declared, the fate of the whole world hung.'
"the Blairista Matthew Parris": my memory is that, from the start, Parris told us all that Blair was bogus and, from fairly early days, that Blair was mad.
Everyone has up to now been saying that there is no alternative "big beast" who could replace Brown.
Well there is now! Its probably too late for him to get the train up to Crewe, but I would not be surprised if an Inner London MP takes the Chiltern Hundreds before long....
More probable though is that Ken enters parliament and becomes leader of the opposition after the next election.
The electoral arithmetic is such that if labour suffer a major reverse it will be the old labour stalwarts who form most of the rump, and his City Hall speech last night was statesmanlike and supportive of the party - which was not what all the commentators were expecting.
Darling will be sacked in a reshufle as will several others in an attempt to restorte Brown as a strong leader
Reshuffle maybe - with what?
The dearth of talent in the PLP is staggering, the current line-up shows that clearly.
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