They might be spinning that the rebellion is over, but it's not

Billericay dave

So the spinning starts a closed meeting and brown delivers the speach of a lifetime do they think the british public are that nieve, or maybe they do and if thats the case they are in for a bigger shock than they think. MPs lining up to spout how great the leader is B*****ks

Bodie

The Captain stays on the Bridge

of his sinking Ship

mitch

So another 12 months of troughing and paralysed government.
Mandelson pulling the strings an gordon in office but not allowed to touch anything........wonderful

Anthony

The really hilarious thing is that, if it didn't seem stage managed and phony enough, this is playing out pretty much exactly as Nick Robinson predicted it would - right down to the lines being deployed by Brown's backers. They might as well have come out clutching scripts.

Ronnie

Its pathetic, almost Soviet.

We know its a farce. They know we know its a farce. We know thay know that we know its a farce.

Demeaning.

jaydeeaitch

At least I'm beyond the stage where I get my hopes up. Still a year to go, folks.

Thrasymachus

When will you fellows realise that Brown isn't a figure on the ledge of the body politic, who will either jump or be pushed to his end. He's a gargoyle which only time and the elements will permanently erase.

Given that Cameron is guaranteed a landslide, in the intervening time, it is the Speccie's responsibility to wake up and stop collaborating in this sickening Sonnex-like stabbing of Brown's lifeless corpse; it should instead be speaking truth to eventual power.

Simply, if enough of us tell David as often as we can, that the size of his majority is going to be so immense, he might realize that he can, if he wants to: actually be a Conservative.

Not a Blair Mk II with a different approach to the national debt. (Sorry Matthew despite your splendid intellect you're being incredibly naive.) But a proper Tory.

If he's capable of such a Damascene conversion perhaps he'll see that it is the very absence of a proper "Right" that has resulted in a three-way fragmentation of the right's vote.

If he modelled himself a bit more on Harold Macmillan and a bit less on Harold Wilson over 80% of every potential / undecided Tory, UKIP or, yes, BNP voter would flock to his cause.

And with the country truly fully behind him in this way, the only realistic possibility of removing Gordon might be precipitated i.e.: a quiet Tuesday afternoon word from the Sovereign.

The Offending Adam still There

There on the green 7.45p.m. Barry Shearman saying he is now convinced the PM will change and listen and consult and be considerate.BS back in the fold,all is sweetness and light.Then 8.oopm camera flits to Downing Street, PM gets out of car, and looking in a terrible temper storms into No 10., not turning to face the Press who has waited hours for a photo. Consideration! Ghosh how these Labour MP's are taken in, or have the whips removed their offence by some secret power.

Nicholas

Is that Ben Bradshaw the former impartial Labour activist propaganda spouting subversive BBC correspondent?

Silent Hunter

I would prefer to believe Tom Harris's version of events - he at least demonstrates an incredibly rare thing in the Labour Party - 'integrity'.

He has told Gordon in no uncertain terms - to GO.

hadrian

Well, so what? They've got the leader they want, it appears, so let them live with it! Bet the Tories are relieved!

Cottage Pie

Be what you would seem to be, or if you'd like it put more simply: Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

Gordon in Blunderland

Sir Graphus

I remember reading Ken Livingston raging about Peter Mandleson spinning these PLP meetings in the early 90s. Ken says he'd take part in these throughly friendly and constructive meetings; he'd emerge to find that Mandleson was running around briefing that once again Neil Kinnock had slain the left wing of the party.

I don't suppose we'll ever know what went on at this meeting, except that it wasn't anything like the official report.

hadrian

Interestingly I've heard of few Labour pundits spout the new orthodoxy that actually there is at least some a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel in so far as the Tories are not meant to have done as spectacularly well as expected.
Actually, if you think about this, it's highly delusory as well as misleading: just ask yourself, who came second? UKIP, and I bet a substantial number of their voters are natural Tories, so come a British Gen Election I think it's a fair bet a good number will revert to Tory so that the Tory lead will be boosted even more, not diminished as Labour desperately seem to be hoping.
And with the Independeny Poll tomorrow, it is also a fair bet Labour backbenchers have just chucked away a golden opportunity to save even a few of their seats. More fool them, the cowards. Listening more, Gordon? Nah, or you'd be calling an Election right now.

John Moss

Hadrian is right and the BBC and others ought to stop any Labour mouthpiece who spouts this line.

I was at the counts and saw Labour areas voting heavily Green/BNP and Tory areas voting heavily UKIP.

If you look at the totals and reduce UKIP and the Green/BNP vote back to its "normal" level, reallocating those votes to the Conservatives and Labour, you get back, roughly to the levels of the polls before the Euro elections.

Interestingly, looking at London last years and this set of elections. The Lib-Dems seem to have dound their "natural" level of about 13-15% as well.

helen wright

He still doesn't have a democratic mandate to rule over England. More and more people are speaking openly about it and they can only get louder.
Gordon might be out of the woods with the Labour Party, but he never will be with the English electorate. It won't affect his job in Scotland, but it will affect his supporters in England and serves them right.

hadrian

You're very wrong, Helen, that it won't affect his job in Scotland. It's just that the swing will be mainly SNP with the more traditional Tory pockets perhaps at long last reverting to their 'natural' allegiance. And I know may traditionally Labour people who're also voting LibDem up here now. Broon has well and truly wrecked it!

Frank P

Thrasymachus (8.15pm).

Exactly! You must remember when we had a real Conservative Party (and come to that, a real Labour party, too). Unlike the editorial staff of this magazine, I'm afraid, even though Matthew does bear a striking resemblance to Fatty Soames.