The rebels musn't let this get personal

Disraeli's Ghost

Of course this is personal you bloody fool

Roger Thornhill

Neville Chamerlain signed away the sovereignty of a foreign country, which is bad enough. Gordon Brown signed away the sovereignty of his own, MY country.

Brown's policies are vindictive, grasping, personal. New Labour keeps shoving its unwanted pointy red nose into our lives were it most certainly is not wanted.

David C

Unfortunately Howarth is right.
If this was about policy then Brown would be dead and buried already; 'old' Labour would have reasserted itself and the country would be going down the tubes in a more classically socialist way.
There are few voices repudiating NuLabour - about a week ago, commentators were going out of their way to explain that there is no difference between 'Brownism' and 'Blairism', so there is no ideological split.
All that remains is personality.
Thinking back, I can remember the stunts by chancellor Lawson, pulling the occasional tax cut, like a rabbit, out of his red box. He did this because he could. None of them went against Conservative party ideology.
Contrast this with Brown.
The abolition of the 10p tax band hurt those at the bottom end of the payscale. Likewise, the retroactive imposition of increased rates of VED on certain vehicles.
These policies were brought in, quite deliberately, by Brown to wrong foot the Conservative Party and their effects are to hurt those that Labour is pledged to protect.

This rebellion was always about the man: how he sees himself; how he sees the Labour Party, what his motives are. If it suits the rebels to engage in a little hypocrisy then so be it.

James Forsyth

Test

Austin Barry

"The Labour party is reluctant to dump its leader, they really don’t do assassination.."

Eh? Wasn't Blair effectively assassinated?

Chuck Unsworth

It's certainly personal now. Brown is finally recognised as the architect of this economic disaster by the public, and the Cabinet are in no mood to share any responsibility.

In many ways if Brown gets the heave-ho that'll suit any successor very nicely. Then it will be 'getting on with the job' - as in clearing the Augean pile left behind. And, naturally, Ministers will be distancing themselves like crazy from earlier remarks about him being the 'best man for the job'. They've started already.

The Revisionist

Ah, but Chamberlain [reportedly] received a standing ovation when he entered Parliament after his resignation to attend a Churchill speech. Unsuited for war leadership, unarguably, but "unpopular"? It would seem not.

C Powell

James: instead of uncritically accepting their description of themselves as "rebels" perhaps you could tell us how many of them have actually rebelled on anything important: ID cards, 42-day detention, the budget introducing the 10p tax rate etc etc., etc.,.

I may be wrong but I suspect that most of this bunch of numpties were perfectly happy to go along with all manner of disastrous Labour policies and are only now whinging when they see the fast approaching prospect of unemployment. That doesn't make them a rebel. For that you'd need some principles, sone concern for your constitutents, a capacity for independent thought and a conscience.

GeoffH

Personal? Why not? His very presence in No 10 is a personal affront to me and millions of voters.

This weasel of a little (I use the word in the sense of moral stature) man deserves every bit of opprobrium that can be mustered.

Max Kaye

We should remember that these 'rebels' aren't acting out of principle - but in hope of salvaging their seats come the GE.

Still, it's nice to see the rats turn on each other as the wreck of the SS NuLab slowly sinks.

Andrew Forbes

They'll let him hang on a while yet, I reckon; the economy hasn't hit bottom yet, and it's useful to have Gordo copping the blame while it's still sliding.

Ironically, if it gets really, really bad, it could help Labour more than the Conservatives; the newly impoverished may well be a sizeable voting block, and a fresh Labour leader could make himself their champion with a lot of borrowed money in a way the Tories would not.

It must also be remembered that Labour MPs and activists are not having the same recession as the rest of us. They will mostly be public sector employees, and as such their pensions funds have not crashed, and their jobs are not threatened until 2010. They think they have a good 18 months to sort it out.

David Rossiter

Am I alone in noting that many of these "rebels" are as Scottish as a Fife feartie ?

Reminds of the way the Highland clan chiefs behaved in times long past...