Labour Leadership Rumours, Chapter 112

One positive thing that can be said about the Left media, I suppose, is that you do get a better quality of inside info., especially on the epic, Tolstoy-esque Brown [lack of] leadership saga. Just flipped through the web-pages of the Observer, (which is actually the same as the Guardian online but we are supposed to pretend it's the Observer when it's Sunday, which I happily do - I like the quaintness of this challenge), and stumbled upon an article penned earlier today by Toby Helm. It concerns the latest plot (allegedly) brewing against our poor, deeply depressed PM. He writes (rather well, actually - although in typical, Graun/Observer style, there seems to be some side-debate going on about how to spell the word "install"):

There are new and potentially fascinating developments on the Labour leadership front, I hear. Serious plans are being formed by some Labour MPs to install an "anti-Brown" candidate as the next chairman of the parliamentary party. It is all part of a fresh attempt to oust the prime minister before the general election.

The MPs – including several former ministers – are urging senior figures including the education select committee chairman, Barry Sheerman, to put themselves forward to replace the current PLP chairman Tony Lloyd, who is seen by rebels as too much of a Brown loyalist.

Sheerman, a very senior figure in the PLP, has turned against Brown recently and would be seen by the whips as a de facto stalking horse, no less. Crucially, the PLP election, which will take place when parliament returns next month, will be conducted by secret ballot, meaning MPs do not have to own up to their choice.

Last night, Sheerman refused to comment but friends made absolutely clear he could and would be persuaded to stand if they could provide him with evidence that he would get sufficient support. Soundings will be taken among MPs at Labour's conference in Brighton later this month.

One backbencher said a challenge to Lloyd from Sheerman would throw the party into another period of "prolonged and vicious" leadership infighting.

The rebels are clearly trying to gain a foothold in positions of authority to try to persuade people from within that the game us is up for GB.

"An anti-Brown candidate like Sheerman would be supported by the 60 to 70 or so hardliners who are known to want Brown out, that is for sure," said one Labour MP.

"The question would be, how many more would join? That would depend on how things go over the conference season. The whips will pull out all the stops to prevent this. If it happens it will be ugly."

During the last coup attempt against Brown in June, Sheerman, who described himself as a "serialist loyalist" by nature, suprised colleagues with vehement criticisms of the prime minister.

He said he believed the parliamentary party was no longer listened to and he was not sure Brown was the right man to lead the party into the next election.

Sheerman complained to Lloyd about the way MPs such as Ian Gibson, who was forced out of Norwich North seat because of the expenses scandal, had been treated by the party machine.

The rebels are also planning to field their own candidate for one of the seats on the influential parliamentary committee, which conveys the views of the parliamentary party to the prime minister in regular meetings held in deep secrecy.

Some senior Labour figures who want Brown out, believe that if they keep up the pressure, and instal their people in positions of influence at the top of the party, then they might be able to persuade Brown to leave No 10 of his own accord. One theory is that Brown might cite his declining eyesight as a reason for leaving before the election.

The difficulty for the rebels is that they still have no candidate with whom to replace Brown. Alan Johnson, the home secretary, is still regarded as the best choice by most MPs but he has insisted he will not move against Brown and does not want the job.

Another backbencher said that despite Johnson's comments, the intention was to leave him with no option. "If things go according to plan, Johnson will come under intense pressure in the next few weeks."

Ed Miliband, who was tipped as a successor to Brown by Unite's joint general secretary Derek Simpson on the eve of this week's TUC Congress, is also being talked up as a possibility although he, also, remains loyal to the prime minister.

Combine this with thrusting new Speccy editor, Fraser Nelson's, devastating article this fair morn, citing an earlier, even more devastating article by Trevor Kavanagh from the same publication, about the personal responsibility Brown bears for the decline in just about every area of British existence, and you have to say that James Forsyth's question yesterday, "Can Brown make it through December?" is looking a tad optimistic. I'm beginning to wonder whether he's going to "make it" much past the Labour Party conference.

It simply can't go on like this - not in terms of Labour (who cares what happens to them?) - but in terms of the country. Someone has to say it out loud: we have no functioning government in the UK right now. It's leading to corrosion and decline at home and humiliation abroad. And for what? So a clinically depressed, medicated incompetent without a shred of decency in him can keep the job for which he is so patently unfit right up to the bitter end.

I've said it before and I'll say it again until that wicked, unelected fool is gone: even if they don't give a toss about the damage Brown has done/is doing to the country, someone in the Labour party better wake-up to the damage Brown is doing to their party and get rid of him with all convenient speed or the electorate will never, never forgive them for putting some wrong-headed, short-term form of self-interest before the needs of the nation they are supposed to serve.

But if Helm and the others are right, then we won't have much longer to wait until Brown is finally, finally, gone.

Hallelujah!

Brownfall

Hattip to The Daily Referendum

Woodward Savaged By Boulton

Shaun 'Judas' Woodward, the most disloyal man in Britain, was savaged by Adam Boulton on Sky last night as he sought to explain why he was still 'loyal' to Gordon Brown. The millionaire turncoat and damascene socialist-with-a-butler was given both barrels by a Boulton clearly fed-up to the back teeth with the relentless mythmaking about Brown's role in the (his) financial crisis, and with the desperate spin being put on this latest chapter in the sorry saga of Brown's collapsing government.

Here's a taste:

Owned

I hate the term 'owned' because I'm too old to appreciate it and because I'm a snob. It's just too bloody YouTube for a cricket and rugger man like me. But there's simply no pithier term in current linguistic circulation to describe the total annihilation of Gordon-sodding-Brown and his royally pathetic journey to political Coventry by Matthew Norman in today's Independent.

Click through and enjoy it, I do implore you. But if you can't be arsed, here's some top tasters.

On Blears' damp failure to oust Brown:

Rats are smart and terrifying little vermin, however, while the only fear you'd feel on finding yourself in Room 101 separated by a flimsy wire mesh from Hazel Blears' gob is that she'd use it not to gore or gnaw, but to bore you to death with her cretinous "sunny optimism". The self-righteousness in yesterday's crude assassination attempt (technically, letter of resignation) suggested an excommunication order issued against his useless, dithery bishop by a cleric about to be unfrocked for choirboy interference.

On the causal connection between Brown's woes and Cherie Blair's shopping habits:

Onto even the most joyous of vistas the odd drop of sadness must fall, the one here being that no one will be loving Gordon's torment more than Cherie Blair – the half woman-half supermarket trolley mythological hybrid whose fill-your-boots avarice did so much to create the culture of greed that has all but destroyed him. The lone shard of poignancy flying forth from his shattered administration, meanwhile, is that the PM is so uniquely ill-suited to take what comfort the vaguely normal would extract by way of gallows humour.

On why Gordon is no tragic hero:

The days when pretentious gits like me invoked tragedy in a Gordonian context have long since passed. Tragic heroism relies upon a certain largeness of spirit, or at the very least a sudden moment of self-knowledge so acute that it induces intolerable psychic anguish. Ajax slaughtered his sheep when made aware of his fatal flaw, Oedipus put out his eyes when faced with his. Despite his ocular head start in that direction, Gordon is as nugatory a figure as Nero, fiddling with ritualistic lines at yesterday's PMQs while his government self-immolates.

On why Brown deserves his inescapable fate:

It's the smallness of the man, the lack of grandeur in his dreams, the pathetic dressing-up of rank self-interest in the translucent cloak of dutifulness, that makes guilt-free schaudenfraude less a temptation than a moral obligation. For this has become a morality play – specifically, the first morality high farce in politico-theatrical history - about a system so deranged in its complacency that it gifts such power to one whose personal ambition is surpassed only by his lack of talent, without any mechanism to remove him once that power has drained away.

There's quite a bit more of this rich ore seam of an article even though it might seem to some that my barefaced, copyright-busting comprehensive lifting dressed-up as quotation suggests otherwise. Well, you know, there's a little bit more.

But in my defence I've done this not just because I'm utterly lazy and devoid of original thought, but because in its own way, it's one of the best, most entertaining and most damning pieces on Brown's total unsuitability for the power and office he grabbed I've ever read.

I guess the 21st Century junk-thought but totally apt term would be: "epic pwnage". Or something. Today's elections will reveal just how deeply that reality has seeped into the popular imagination. "Totally", I would hazard.

It's Over, Brown. You're Surrounded

Labour backbenchers organise the coup

Benedict Brogan has written a fairly revealing discourse on the Last Days of Gordon Brown for tomorrow's Tory?graph, amusingly comparing the besieged auld fraud, currently barricaded-in behind the blast proof front door of Number 10, to a desperate fugitive hell-bent on evading capture.

...after another day of political comedy, the Prime Minister is still locked away in Downing Street, refusing to budge. Westminster thinks he's finished, but he's still there, like a gangster shouting: "Come and get me, coppers!" He has no intention of making things easy by walking away.

It's like that Edward G Robinson 30s gangland flick: "Is this the end of Rico Gordon?" Well yes, mate. It is.

Brogan speculates which Labourists will play SWAT teams and break down the door, flush-out and then bravely disarm the wounded outlaw now that negotiations have broken-down (aware, obviously, that the serial perp. has at least released a couple of his female hostages, the smaller of which is currently recuperating in one of her 94 houses in Salford).

From the conversations I've had in the past 72 hours, I have no doubt that someone can be found to do the deed. Even now, I am told, there are at least three senior figures in the Labour Party who are contemplating whether to step forward and say what no one in Cabinet has yet found the courage to declare out loud: that it is all over for Mr Brown.

There is one name popping-up, apparently. He's a big-eared man who's been hot on the case since what he considers to be Brown's worst crime of all: the 2007 assassination of Tony Blair.

Charles Clarke and others are understood to be gathering signatures for a letter from backbenchers, demanding that the Prime Minister be removed and a timetable set out for his replacement in time for the summer holidays. The total so far is claimed to be north of the 70-odd needed under Labour rules, and Mr Brown was last night said to be ringing backbenchers to plead for support.

If true, this to me is scary news but revealing about why Labour really is a totally busted flush. Who can imagine the rump of disaffected champagne socialists like Bob Marshall-Andrews or hardline, working class Trot good ol' boys like Dennis Skinner rallying around arch Blairite Big Ears' call to arms? Or the raj of Scottish-Labour émigrés still revelling in the presence of their champion in the top job, and still gratified by the unspoken thought that they rule the English? Or the other 40%: the dumbass Nulabour crop, too stupid and supine to know what to have for breakfast without a memo from the whips' office, let alone dare to act against 'The Leadership' (eek!)? Exactly.

If Brogan is right and I was wrong about this being a Left-wing uprising (and let's face it, he actually talks to them and I'm just yer common-or-garden Joe-blogger with a bee in his bonnet), then Labour really is staring into the abyss. One more year of Brown, then! Truly horrifying for us and catastrophic for them. I suppose it would be some consolation that there will subsequently be conclusive proof after all this summer madness has reached its denouement, in whatever form, that Labour fully deserves to be facing generational political oblivion.

As the Times says tomorrow:

The Chancellor’s future rests on a knife edge after Mr Brown referred to him in the past tense on Monday morning. But mistreating Mr Darling — who has been a loyal servant at Mr Brown’s side for many years — could misfire spectacularly. He is letting it be known that he would walk out of government if removed from the Treasury. Would he do such a thing and then turn on Mr Brown? Any hint of an attack from Mr Darling could well prove fatal.

Somehow I doubt it. But stranger things have happened.

All in all, though, I give not one hoot about whether or not this bunch of perfidious, thieving, backstabbing layabouts wipe each other out this week or this year. This whole parliament is finished and there must be a General Election before the autumn. Beneath tomorrow's Times article, a lone voice of reason sounds in the comments box:

Shouldn't this be resolved at the ballot box by the people of Britain?
-Thomas, Austin, TX, USA

You know what, Thomas from Texas, yes it bloody well should.

But in the absence of that GE, whatever else readers do tomorrow, get to a polling booth, work out how you can hurt Brown the most and then vote accordingly. Show him who he really has to fear: YOU.

Death By Email

Sky has just released the Labour backbench email currently being circulated calling for Brown to piss off. Here it is...

Dear Gordon,

Over the last 12 years in government, and before, you have made an enormous contribution to this country and to the Labour Party, and this is widely acknowledged.

However we are writing now because we believe that in the current political situation, you can best serve the Labour Party and the country by stepping down as party leader and prime minister.

And so allowing the party to find a new leader to take us into the next general election.

Yours,

xxxx

So the plot is real - in spite of Mandelson's lies and spin to the contrary. And they only need 50 names.

Things are accelerating...

==Update==
According to the Grauniad, Labour rules require 72 names. The rebels apparently have 80 probables - and rising.

Labour Poll Nightmare

Politicalbetting has the latest Ipsos general election poll. It's an epic shocker for Brown. And after his car-crash interview (motorway pile-up, more like) this afternoon, it's hard to know how he can cling on any longer.

The Speccy thinks Charles Clarke is stirring his lardy frame on the sidelines in anticipation of the post-June 4th bloodbath. They reckon that no one in the cabinet has the Balls to pull the trigger and oust Gord. So it'll have to be Clarke. I still don't buy that meself. He always seems oddly over-rated by the right-leaning press.

But yes, folks, this is how desperate it's become for the Labourites. Oh joy unconfined!

CON 40(-1) LAB 18(-10) LD 18 (4)

Read it and weep, Brown.

Brown Ousting

Lefty Independent journo, Steve Richards appears to have had enough of Labour leader (and usurping PM) G. Brown. While everyone else is going after arch trougher and pisspoor speaker, Mick "I wannit all" Martin, Richards has his crosshairs fixed firmly on the thick head that co-ordinates the clunking fist. Writing in low-circulation leftish rag, The New Statesman yesterday, he said:

The Prime Minister is exhausted, abused and hapless. Labour MPs have one final opportunity to remove him this summer, or accept the consequences...

Some ministers watched Brown’s inept response to Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas with particular alarm. As one said to me: “Gordon did everything the wrong way around. He failed to deal with the crisis in advance of the Commons vote. He lost the vote. Only then, when everything was too late, did he hold a meeting with Joanna Lumley. Why didn’t he meet her at the beginning of the sequence rather than at the end? It is a case study in how not to handle an issue.”

Brown's equally flat-footed handling of the expenses scandals, which have hammered Labour's already precarious standings in the polls, and his palpable inability to gauge the public mood or modify the tone of his hate attacks on the Tories, has led to deep disquiet in the ranks of a parliamentary Labour party now utterly demoralised by the prospect of imminent unemployment and the loss of the attendant perks. Ousting him before a general election which now could (and should) happen any time is now a priority. The calculation is that if he remains, inevitable defeat will become total wipeout.

Now he has lost the media and it is difficult to see how he can change the narrative, not least when morale is so low, both his own and the government’s. One minister tells me, not surprisingly, that the mood among ministers is joyless. No one, he suggests, feels part of a team.

If Brown were to go, the problems associated specifically with him – Damian McBride, elements of economic policymaking, his personi­fication of a tired, long-serving gov­ernment – would go, too...

says Richards. While this is probably true, it seems the electorate might have simply moved on from Labour completely, whoever is in charge, and mentally prepared themselves for a Cameron government. The latter has, after all, been fairly light on his feet about the expenses debacle - though how he expects publishing expenses on the Conservative website will limit the constitutional damage that's been done to parliament by these revelations remains to be seen.

One thing is certain, though, regardless of the threat of a 'fresh face' to the Tory resurgence, Brown must go - not merely for the sake of a Labour party wishing to remain a political force, but for the sake of a country in deperate need of decontaminated or, perhaps, uncontaminated leadership for however short a time. But the equation - or gamble - is much simpler for the average Labour MP currently defending a marginal seat (ie: any majority below 10,000 these days):

If the wretched sequence that began with the McBride emails continues into the summer, I would not altogether rule out a change. After all, what would you do, if there were one more throw of the dice that might just save your seat?

True enough, but all you gather from this, ultimately, is that Brown's dithering disease has spread to the left commentariat. They or the cabinet will not convene the firing squad, let alone pull the triggers, even when the final appeal has been refused and Brown is bang to rights as the traitor he is - to Labour and to Britain. Cameron, head of a bunch of criminal piggies though he might well be, is now in charge of the agenda. He should exercise this power and force an election after June 4th - thus bringing to an end the dark chapter in British history which has been Gordon Brown's stolen premiership.