I haven't slept well for about a month now, and that won't be the only confession in this post.
I would like, here and now, to officially announce that I am a wimp. I am scared to death of many things. In fact, such is my horror at certain animals and 'experiences' that I suspect I shall always be a wimp. So, you ask, how much of a wimp are you?
Well, allow me to give you an example. Yesterday (having walked home from the nearest village) I came across a dog. It was in a garden but I secretly suspected that at any minute the beast could easily jump the wall and rip my throat out. Such was my nerves I tried several things.
Firstly, I tried to walk towards the dog: hoping it would back off. It didn't. So, then I tried walking on the other side of the country lane. I quickly realised this lane was far too narrow to afford me adequate time to run to safety if the dog decided to take a running jump. In the end, I waited half an hour - stood at the top of the lane - until the owner called the dog in for its tea.
That is a feeling I suspect a certain Mr Brown may now be feeling.
At no time in his premiership (even during the aborted EU elections coup) has the prospect of Brown being replaced seemed so real and so dangerous. And it seems others know of Brown's fears as well now.
Monday 12th October is the date, reportedly, penciled in for a re-run for Team Brown Out. The worry in Downing St. though (so near an election) is that it won't just be the usual suspects, Team Brown Out, so to speak, now but this time the wider parliamentary party.
Why? Well, there are a number of factors pointing towards this latest set of plots being potentially the most dangerous.
Firstly, unlike Thatcher, the point at which Labour could have installed a new leader and had a good run-up to a general election (with a fresh feel and honeymoon period) is well and truly shot. Brown saw pains to that when he bottled out of calling a general election after he gained office.
Instead, Brown is now an electoral liability. The Guardian and ICM polls of recent months and weeks have hardly made for 'improved' reading in Downing St and crucially with failed plotters.
For Labour to install a new leader some months ago would have, undoutedly, required an almost immediate general election. This I suspect was then Brown's saving song. Now though, with an election impending, this could be his undoing. With an election due anyway, why not swop for someone claw back some of the electoral loss and (hopefully) provide a strong basis for future direction? (I speak, of course, of Labour being the opposition, rather than the governing party in such a prediction).
One telling extract from Kettle's analysis highlights the current predicament for Brown:
"Yet even this minister, no rebel, acknowledges that the mood could still change. Another Brown loyalist says the prime minister's position depends on the public, which, when you think about it, is hardly a ringing endorsement. A third loyalist says that if he thought Brown was dragging the party down, he would tell him he must do the decent thing and quit. One Labour official whom I texted yesterday for his current assessment of "the Gordon question" replied simply: "Aaaaaaarrrrgggghhhh!""It remains to be seen yet whether those key players from the June reshuffle (and those not so key) will have anything like the gusto to swing the axe this time around, but watch this space....
2 comments:
Parliament returns Monday 12 October 2009 and will sit for 16 days that month, including Friday 16 October. First PMQs will therefore be Wednesday 14 October.
If they are going to get rid of him, they would have to coordinate it at the Conference Tuesday 29 September - Thursday 1 October, and would be best-placed to strike on Monday 5 October. They'd have to act quick and concerted - that was the mistake they made last time and the palace coup failed.
I'm not an authority on Labour procedures, so I don't know how fast they could act. Theoretically it's their rule book so they can do as they wish.
Indeed, the time frame you set out seems workable (from a plotters point of view).
I wonder as well, as with last time, what role 'the bastards' (as John Major referred to his plotters) will play. Will Miliband or Johnston be able or willing to mount a campaign, rather than simply allowing others to snipe away from the side-lines.
I suspect a good deal shall also rest with another question - one which our 1st Sec. of State has been pushing today - how quickly the economy can recover and who is seen to lead such a recovery.
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