The sorcerer's apprentice
It can’t be much fun being Gordon Brown at the moment. Even on holiday, he’s faced with derogatory comments about his dress sense and looks about as relaxed as you would expect for someone who’s become a dead man walking.
It’s not much more than a year since he was crowned Labour leader and Prime Minister in a process which he and much of the party had rehearsed for so long. Gordon finally got the job that he had always wanted, yet was always so obviously unsuited to. So where did it all go so wrong?
Last Autumn, the country was at fever pitch, waiting for Brown to call a General Election. We passed through the incompetence of Labour’s party conference and the smug embarrassing posturing of the Tories gathering, still with no sign of which way he would jump. On 6th October 2007, Brown finally announced that he would not call an election, not from a position of strength, but from one of weakness. He had allowed the Conservatives to bully him out of an election which Labour would undoubtedly have won, albeit with a reduced majority, or as the largest party. Now, he must look back with longing to those days, when the worst thing that might have happened was to need to do a deal on proportional representation.
So what can Labour do to regain the political initiative or a few percentage points in the polls? Will Gordon jump – or will anyone push? It seems unlikely that he will go of his own accord. Whilst he has had a lifelong love affair with the labour movement, he is a stubborn and proud man. But would his exit do Labour any good? Who would they replace him with and what could that person do to not only to rescue the sinking ship that this government has become, but also to turn the supertanker of world recession heading straight towards it?
Even the MPs scared for their own majorities, have rowed back a little from the weekend posturing and positioning. Now the only MP willing to put his head above the parapet in Gordon Prentice, one of fewer than 40 Labour MPs to resist the pressure of the whips and refuse to sign Brown’s nomination paper for Labour leader. It is difficult to know whether they have retreated out of loyalty, because there is no-one else who could do any better, or because they are like rabbits startled in the headlights of an oncoming lorry.
Or is it that Labour have learned from another political party, who deposed a popular leader and crowned another despite concerns by many that regardless of his many qualities, he was not the right person for the job. When that elected coronation went sour, there was another rush to replace with another anointed son. It didn’t do the national position of that party much good, did it? Forcing Brown out will make Labour the nasty party and add to their already mounting probable losses at the next election. Let him stay and they’re sunk; push him overboard and they’ll be torpedoed.
In The Guardian’s Comment is Free, former Labour leadership candidate Bryan Gould, says that Labour had their opportunity to see if Gordon was really up to the job by ensuring that there was a challenger last year. Yet no-one was willing to come forward and take on the role that Gould had assumed in 1992 against John Smith. So Gordon never had to prove if he was really the sorcerer, or merely the sorcerer’s apprentice and those demonised brooms and buckets have taken the situation beyond his control.
Related posts:
- Does the Manchester Labour Party believe Gordon Brown is fit to be in Parliament?
- And it’s too late baby, now it’s too late
- Gordon’s real problem is his cowardice
Comments
Leave a Reply:
