Gordon Brown may not be PM for the election ....

[Saracen]

It turns out there's been a bit of a revolt among Labour ranks, and in case anyone thinks this is an old thread, I mean 6th Jan 2010.

It seems that two previous cabinet ministers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, have called for a secret ballot over the leadership, to reflect that there is a significant amount of disgruntlement within the party about an "unelected leader", with the perceptions there are of his record and personality, being a hindrance in the next election that either might cost them the election, or at least, cost them seats regardless of who wins.

So they want to "settle the matter once and for all" with a secret ballot.

The letter (txt message, apparently) that has gone out to all Labour bankbenchers (and within minutes, was being read out on the BBC) doesn't express an opinion onwhether the party should banck Brown or dump him, just that the 'issue needs resolving'.

What's interesting in the timing. It waits for the new year, it waits until minutes before PMQs and then sandbags the PM.

It'll come as no surprise to anyone that's read my opinions hat I think Brown is an utter disaster for the country, and that if anything would give me cause to rejoice, it'd be him getting the boot. I don't particularly care who runs the country, provided they do a competent job, and I don't see Brown doing it. It's hard, personally, for me to envision a worse person running the place ..... except for the Evil Emperor himself, Mandelson.

But for such senior figures to be calling for a leadership ballot when a General Election is at most 6 months away, and probably more like 5 months (early May), which means it will have to be announced by early April at the latest because of the mandatory election timetable, seems utterly extraordinary.

It begs the question of what the point of this is? If Brown is OPM at the next election, then my prediction would be that if he wins it, he's secure as PM. Nothing could dislodge him in the immediate future, God help us. Bit if he loses, we'll see a leadership change in weeks, of not days or even hours. He loses, he's toast.

So why rock the boat now? It can only be seen as divisive if the party goes into a self-indulgent leadership bid, right now, just before an election and in the middle of an economic crisis when the money the government have pumped in to the economy look to be finally bringing us out of recession. So why do it? Are they running scared, and hoping to preserve seats that they fear will be lost of Brown leads the party into the election?

One final thought .... as I understand it, both Hoon and Hewitt aren't standing for re-election. If they're both leaving, maybe they're trying to clean shop behind them. It at least explains why they feel able to go so public with this, but it also makes me wonder .... why wait until now, which seems calculated to be about the most damaging moment they could find, right after the unofficial election campaign has got going?

And why, apparently, use a phrase like "we can't go on like this" which, to all appearances, is the Tory election slogan?


And the big question of course .... can it work? Could it unseat Brown? The answer, it seems, is it could unseat him, if it gets enough momentum behind him because a number of Labour MPs seem to feel he'd lose such a secret ballot, and that his position as PM would be unsupportable at that point, with not even his own party backing him in the job he'd be forced to resign.

Whether it will unseat him or not would require the ballot to go ahead, and that will depend on the momentum it gets, probably in the next day or two .... i.e. who else comes out and backs it, and especially, if any serving ministers do so.

But I wonder, whether it succeeds or not, how are the electorate supposed to feel about backing party led by a man that has faced, if my count is correct, THREE challenges from his own colleagues on the last few months to a year? If THEY want him gone, why the hell would we re-elect him, or rather, re-elect his party, most of us never having been given the chance to express a view on him?


So .... could we finally be seeing something that may dump him? Time will tell.

[kalniel]

And if it did, would your vote change saracen?

[Saracen]

And if it did, would your vote change saracen?

I don't know. Maybe.

My first reaction is, as I haven't yet decided how to vote (or if to vote) then it can't 'change' as I haven't decided how to cast it yet. Se the other thread (poll) where this is explicitly discussed.

But second, I said in that thread that I will never vote for a party run by Brown, as I consider the man an arrogant and politically dangerous control freak, virtually incapable of admitting error, despite having authored a catalogue of them over a long period.

But without him, then it becomes a question of how does lead Labour, and what their policies turn out to be, and for that matter, what their presentation of them turn out to be.

In other words, my decision, when I eventually make it, will be based not on political ideology, but on policy and my assessment of whether the party and leader will actually follow through on promises, a matter on which I confess to being highly sceptical.

I won't vote for Labour if it's led by Brown. I regard him personally as having a large culpability for the mess we;re in, having been Chancellor during most of the build-up to it, and especially during the last decade of the build-up, and the architect of some of the reasons for the mess.

I also don't trust a word the man says, and have given up even listening to him. Literally, given up. I watch political programs from recordings, like Sky +, even if I'm only minutes behind, and skip past anything the man says. I am so fed up with the self-evident crap he speaks that I won't waste my time listening to it. He is still trying to spin Labour as the party of "investment" and claiming real-terms spending increases when we all know full well the only way to achieve that is to be very careful indeed what you include on the figures you measure .... or by absolutely vast tax increases, and believe me, you simply can't raise that kind of money by bleeding the rich. It simply doesn't work, and the money raised, in terms of trying to to fund increases in overall spending, won't get anywhere near paying for it. The only way to raise that kind of money would be by hitting the masses, and hitting them brutally hard.

So, as far as I'm concerned, the man is condemned out of his own mouth. Either he believes what he says about spending and is a fool, or is deceiving us about spending and is a liar, or plans to hugely increase taxes without telling us and is a charlatan. In any case, I don't want him ruining .... sorry. "running" .... the country.


So as for my vote, I have no personal animus against Labour per se. It's about what they, or any other party, promises to do, and/or have done, and my belief in whether they mean it or not. Personalities are important to me only in as much as how I perceive it to reflect on how they'll perform the job.


Would my vote change if Brown goes? I won't know until I find out who goes in as interim PM, and what they say they'll do.

What it would do is put Labour back in with a chance of getting my vote. If Darling got it (unlikely), I might support them. If Ed Balls gets it, well my view of him is a mild version of my view of Brown and I can't imagine I'd support him unless he changes his tome significantly when he's out from under Brown's thumb.


But I'd also predict that if Brown does get tossed out, we go for an immediate election, as soon as it's legally feasible. Any replacement would have no mandate at all to govern without an election .... not that that ever slowed Brown up. So .... I might not get long to reassess my view of Labour's credentials before being forced to fish or cut bait.

[Singh400]

It won't change who I vote for, but I'd like to see Jack Straw as PM, maybe Alan Johnson. But definitely not David Milband (nor his brother Ed).

[schmunk]

But definitely not David Milband (nor his brother Ed).

Whyever not...?

[pollaxe]

Pretty extraordinary. I believe old Buff Hoon is still referred to affectionately in H.M. Forces by the acronym of T.C.H. (That and Hoon are the only words I'll fill in for you) and I've always regarded Hewitt as nothing but a hectoring old bag who personified the worst of the nanny state leanings of new Labour.

I don't think the electorate like this kind of thing. It may provoke more sympathy for Brown as a result (assuming he's not toppled.)

I really can't imagine Bumbling Jack as P.M. to be honest. Nor Alan Johnston (who had a reputation in the Post Office for being something of a chocolate teapot.)

I stand my belief that if you cherry-picked the leading talent from every party in the country then you still couldn't fill a decent cabinet.

Bah.

[Saracen]

One thing this does suggest is that if even, apparently, a significant chunk of the PLP doesn't believe in Brown, why the hell should the electorate?

Tory Central Office must have broken out the champagne, thinking Christmas had come twice this year.


EDIT - PLP, in case I'm not clear, is the Parliamentary Labour Party, i.e. Labour MPs.