Brown's position looks more and more unstable

Jamal Akhbar

Brown is only hanging on for the IMF job he was promised in January. That's why he was doing the global tour.

Vulture

The only way that Bruin will go voluntarily is if he is persuaded by someone very close to him - presumably his wife - that his health is suffering. So he will likely soldier on until the bitter end ( and it will be bitterer the longer he soldiers). He would be long gone if there was any easy Liebour party mechanism for getting rid of him. As I understand their arcane rules, any rebel has to get the support of 20% of the PLP to stand. After the Gurkhas/expenses/MacBride debacles they might fight...but I don't think so. Collins is right : they haven't got the guts. Also I think Liebour will lose under any leader - who wants to be Liebour's William Hague?

Tiberius

"Brown is only hanging on for the IMF job he was promised in January".

So that's why he's piling on the UK's debt. He can run Britain from beyond the grave when Osborne is forced to give him a phone call, still without having to win an election.

Carrie

Iain Dale is saying that Brown is letting it be know he is not enjoying being Prime Minister. Well this country is not enjoying him being Prime Minister!

Grunt

They were selling a load of old tat on the Apprentice last night, including a brand new skeleton.

The New Labour Skeleton has been picked so clean I doubt there is even any marrow left to offer a disobliged public.

Ian C

It has been very clear for a long time that it is in Labour's self-interest to ditch the moron. But will turkeys vote for an early Christmas? Last autumn they would have but it was postponed by Lehman Bros et al.

But today it is less clear that they will - unless and until something 'goes nuclear' as you say. With this man in change that could happen at a moment's notice and the specifics not seen coming by anyone.

john miller

I think the Lasser curve applies to Brown.

He won't go for as long as he can, because something may turn up.

By Spring next year, even he will realise that he will lose catastrophically.

Before then, who would take the poisoned chalice?

So, boring as it may be, I reiterate that he will go blind in April, Johnson will take over - medical emergency dontcha know! - and Labour will rescue somthing from the imminent disaster.

If it doesn't work, then what could the new PM do in such a short time?

If there is a new PM before then, a general election would have to be called and Labour could not survive that.

Jonathan_T

My ideal scenario is this;

Brown clings on as leader until May / June next year and gets routed. (Tory majority of 140+)

Labour civil war breaks out between old style lefties and Blairites.

Blairites defect to Lib Dems, leaving an unelectable Socialist rump. Libs become HM Opposition.

Centre / centre right consensus embedded for 20+ years.

Unlikely but would be nice.

Chris lancashire

Brown will have to be torn from No.10 kicking and screaming. Will it be by the British Electorate or the Labour party?

Take a look at that Front Bench. Not a shred of courage between them, not a potential leader in sight.

It's down to the Electorate.

Censor of Petitions, Downing St

The expenses are due out in July, just before recess. If information from the row is damaging for key Brownites (Balls, Watson etc) then it will appear that the rot is factional. In this instance we could see different sections within the party spending their summer holidays doing nothing but plotting.

Given that it will be 'silly season', two blairites taking the same train will be seen as proof of a coup. This could turn into a feeding frenzy by August and Brown could get his visit from the men in suits at the beginning of September.

Richard Lowe

The nightmare scenario:
Brown running the IMF
Blair President of the EU
It’s like Glenn Close rearing up out of the bath in Fatal Attraction.

TrevorsDen

Straw?

A man of such perception that he was Browns campaign manager for the labour leadership

Disorganised1

If Jack Straw is leading a coup then Broon will be swept out of number 10 on a tide of blood. Straw is merciless if his position is threatned.

Thomas Cussans

He's toast. Burnt to a crisp. Fit only for the bin.

Even the dimmest, most self-serving Labour MPs – most of them, in other words – realise this now.

Self-evidently, they should have booted him out last summer – and how telling that they didn't – but even now it's not too late. Ditching Brown now rather than slogging pointlessly on to next summer and a GE that he cannot possibly win will mean the difference between a respectable defeat under a new leader and electoral extermination.

The key points are not just that he is guaranteed vote-loser, the polar opposite of Blair, not even that he is a lying, mendacious, bullying incompetent desperate to assert his threadbare authority.

It is that he now has no authority. No one is frightened of him. He and his gang of playground bullies have been reduced to simpering nothings.

If only for the sake of his own sanity – if he has any – to say nothing of his wife's, he should go now while he can still lay claim to a tattered, flapping shred or two of dignity.

The longer he clings on, the more complete will be his humiliation.

Forlornehope

What would you bet that Brown would go to the country rather than be ousted by a Labour coup? There is a certain bloody minded bring the house down on me quality about him.

John MacLeod

There is one young man in the Cabinet who could play the part proposed in this fascinating exchange and has abundant motive to do so - Douglas Alexander, so shamefully framed and marginalised for the 'election that wasn't.' And it would be the making of him. He is still only forty-two and, like Anthony Eden or Harold Macmillan, may find his long-term prospects greatly boosted by a well-timed resignation. He is a proven political operative and, almost uniquely, enjoyed the patronage and trust of both Blair and Brown. Alexander, if the present political climate continues and nothing is done, may also be vulnerable to the SNP in his own Paisley and Renfrewshire South seat. Why not break out now and go for broke?

Jim

He won't go, not even the IMF is dumb enough to offer him a job, he so obviously doesn't know anything about economics.
my money is still on British economic collapse before the summer is out, and a public lynching for Brown.

Kittler

The majority of the electorate probably blame the City, rather than Brown or the Labour Party for financial/economic meltdown. The City, as it now is, was the creation of the Tories. But that will not save Labour. They foolishly and uncritically embraced the City and will suffer the consequences. Is it not strange that the past demise of a Labour Government was as a result of their interlock with the Trade Unions, although the Unions were never the destroyers of wealth on the scale of the Bankers.

Austin Barry

Brown's departure will almost certainly be heralded by leaks about his declining eyesight.

TrevorsDen

Brown given a pathetic weak ride by SKY in an interview. And its reporter amazingly trying to apologise for the PM afterwards.

You would never guess that Brown had to withdraw the central plank of his policy - ie an attendance allowance. Not sure there was any opposition to any other measures. Plus he has had to bow to the Committee of Standards instead of bypassing it.

Browns semantics were tantamount to barefaced lies and the SKY reporter was so thick he did not recognise it.

Hoi Polloi

Probably all depends on the locals and more particularly on the Euro. A Coffee Houser probably put his finger on it yesterday when he wrote that if Labour finish fourth behind UKIP, Brown is finished.

Jock

TrevorsDen

Next on "History rewritten" :

Jacobites win famous victory at Culloden.

John Austin

The interesting thing is that Labour MPs don't believe that the Tories have much of a clue, either. I'd say that was absolutely right, they don't. We have two main parties stuffed by time-servers and careerists, professional politicians. The thing that really unites MPs from all sides is not the welfare of the country, but maintaining their expenses. To me, that says it all about the whole rotten bunch of them.

Oscar

TreverosDen - It puzzles me that the press is not going in for the kill. Just when I think they are really going to go for Brown's jugular, they meekly retreat soon after. This week the Times has run a series of spoiler stories about the Tories. The Sun has backed off and the other papers are mostly neutral. This dreadful usurper at No.10 could be finished off by a properly determined press. But they just won't do it. Post McBride they are the same old fellow travellers of this discredited, useless, embarrassing Brownite regime. Why? Maybe one of the Spectator journos could explain it. I just don't get it.

Chuck Unsworth

But it's not just his 'position' which is 'unstable', is it?

A deluded and highly unpredictable man, his irrational and autocratic behaviour is a major liability for us all.

Nicholas

"The polling is quite clear: a large part of Labour's unpopularity is caused by the leader. I also share the view of most Labour MPs that the Tories are not up to much - they have no great idea what they are for either."

Labour misread it again. The country wants change and Labour are tainted by the whole cabinet, not just Brown, and their horrible record. If this bunch of self--serving eejits had any sense of duty towards the country they would realise that the morale boost of a General Election and a change of government would do everyone the power of good.

If Labour did government a tenth as well as they do self-delusion we would be home and dry.

And you journos should be shouting for them to get out not pandering to their deckchairs on the Titanic circumspection. It is not all about Labour it is all about the country. In the circumstances their vanity and vainglory is quite fantastic.

Thomas Cussans

Oh Mr MacLeod:

Could you be a bit biased?

Wee Douggie was shamefully – and typically – shafted by McManiac after the election that wasn't.

But I don't think there is any serious reason to think this means he may be a future leader in waiting.

One, he is Scottish. Hardly his fault of course but nonetheless scarcely a recommendation, all things McNutter Brown considered.

Two, what has he ever done beyond position himself in the New Lab machine? This can be heady stuff, the kind that makes you think very, very fondly of yourself and of your prospects, but it amounts to more or less nothing in the wider world, ie the one all the rest of us live in.

Three, he is a non-entity.

And that, I think, is what we in the real world call a clincher.

That doesn't mean he wouldn't be vastly preferable to the great McInsane. Just that a worm shouldn't necessarily be thought preferable to a slug.

Good try though.

Oor Wullie

John MacLeod

Douglas Alexander? You must be joking!

A wee creep (another son of the manse) whose moral compass swings with the wind (if that's possible). No established competence in any Ministerial post(has never had a proper job himself).
No chance.

David Ossitt

Hoi Polloi

"Probably all depends on the locals and more particularly on the Euro". "If Labour finish fourth behind UKIP, Brown is finished".

Brown is doomed no matter the results; but he will not go willingly, he will have to be pushed and non of the other reprobates is strong enough to do the pushing.

But he now has less than 400 days to go. Oh happy days!