Purnell sets up a summer of trouble for Gordon

Jonathan Cook

Purnell has backbone, whereas Miliband has totally flunked his leadership opportunities.

Purnell is also correct. Their are some very serious questions over the governments track record. If Labour were honest about these, they could still salvage a win at the general election. However, as we all know, honesty is in short supply in Downing Street.

Finally - anything that makes Brown less comfortable, I am wholeheartedly in support of. Brown has been a disaster for Britain. The sooner he is reomoved the better.

Vulture

Don't bother, Peter. We've seen enough! Any time wasted on Purnell would be rather like analysising William Hague's policies in June 1997 : supremely irrelevant for the next 12 years and least - and in Purnell's case, hopefully forever. Nu Liebour are indeed, as he suggests, history.

Westmorlander

@Jonathan

"If Labour were honest about these, they could still salvage a win at the general election"

What do they have to be honest about? "We screwed up the economy and we don't know what do do about it; we bankrupted the country and you're all going to pay BIG TIME, and we're pursuing class warfare dressed up as equality.

Yep, that should go down well in the country. A Labour win is assured.

CM

Love the way Purnell's eyes are glowing red in that photo....

Labour unravelling

Maybe Purnell should defect to the Tories. If he wants a guarantee of a cabinet post in the very near future, why not?

Ray

It is sometimes possible to salvage an election by confessing to and ditching a failed policy (as the Conservatives did with the Poll Tax in 1992).

However, the problem is that so many of Labour's policies need to be confessed to and ditched (mass immigration, the public spending splurge and the further entrenching of welfare dependency being just a few) that it is difficult to see how the Party could conceivably do it without admitting that their government has been, in effect, twelve wasted years.

Carol-Ann

Even if you don't agree with Purnell you've got to admit he's got cojones which one D.Miliband absolutely lacks. Milband is a coward and that banana shot will haunt him forever. Whenever you see hime with counterpart Clinton he looks like her spAD.

DM

Where is Purnell's constituency? Is he likely to make it through at the next election?
What's his background - is he Labour through and through, or in through the Special Adviser route? WOuld appreciate a short profile on him...

Laura K

Fraser will be having kittens, his boy Purnell is doing him proud. Although the last thing the Tories want/need is for Brown NOT to fight the next election as Labour leader. And considering Brown has never fought a REAL election in his life, I think he might bottle it again....watch this space!

Shameful

The Guardian is a despicable newspaper. They threw all their efforts at trying to force out and smear Coulson and it spectacularly backfired. Now they are going back to what they do best stoking up dissent and attempted coup within the ruling Labour party.

Brightonia

It seems sensible for James Purnell to begin to think about what the Labour Party should be about post Blair/Brown. If Milliband and Burnham had sense, they too would facilitate the end of the rump Brown administration and get on board with Purnell to start to plan Labour's future - to begin after 2018!

David Duff

I do hope 'Vulture is right. Any politician who can write this:

"Purnell likens that period in politics to the dynamism and excitement of the music scene generated around Oasis and Blur. 'All those Blairite, New Labour labels … for me it's a bit like Britpop – I feel nostalgic for it, it was absolutely right for its time, but that time was 1994.'"

deserves the oblivion which one trusts will engulf him.

The Oncoming Storm

DM, Purnell's seat is Stalybridge and Hyde and he's defending a notional majority of 8,348 (23.6%). On a 1997 style result for the Tories then this could well turn blue, however I think Purnell will gain kudos from the voters for his resignation and he should survive but with his majority reduced significantly.

J H Holloway

On Brown quitting....Abbott floated this on This Week. She suggested Brown might 'look in the mirror' early next year and decide to quit.

She also acknowledged that Brown had never really fought for anything ('he was fastracked into university at 16 and into a safe seat..').

Could his wife's sudden high-profile be tied into the fact that Gordo is preparing to leave and head for international academe?

As ever, keep an eye out - post the Labour conference - for stories about either the health of Brown's son or Brown's own eyesight.

David Ossitt

Labour unravelling

"Maybe Purnell should defect to the Tories. If he wants a guarantee of a cabinet post in the very near future, why not?"

Because we do not want the prat, that's why not.

Mark C

The Oncoming Storm - you are right. It's curtains.

Carol-Ann, can we please drop this "oojones" nonsense. I know it started with the editor of the magazine (but does anyone bother to buy or read it now?) but the word is "balls".

But back to Purnell. Fraser has had a love affair with him for some time (not physically of course). But he's dodgy - remember the photo of him with fellow Labour MPs at a hospital. He also seems to forget that he did his A levels at a public school (RGS Guildford) preferring to say he was educated at France or at a "grammar school". If he is the future of the Labour party, then the Labour party has no future.

TrevorsDen

You are correct Ray.

The Tories ditched Thatcher and the poll tax and won in 92. It caused them problems of course and Major suffered for it, but that really was because they did not get out of the ERM soon enough.

With labour they ditched Blair but only pretended to ditch his policies and the worst ones were all down to Brown anyway.
Brown talked of change non stop after he became PM but as usual with Brown this was to hide the fact that there was no change - except that he was now PM.

I think that watching Browns speech at Camp David on his first meeting with Bush is salutary. It is an example of BrownThink - the notion that by saying something, by putting in place a stated position of a view, then the real world will somehow fit into that scenario.
His speech to his favourite audience, the Democrat left, the Kennedy clique, at the Kennedy Library, Boston was another extended classic of the genre.

This latter speech was politely called 'almost idealistic' by the BBC. In it he called for - "an international stand-by capacity of trained civilian experts, ready to go anywhere at any time to help rebuild states".

No doubt if he was making the same speech next week he would be calling for more helicopters instead. There seems to be a mountain of detail for any budding PhD in politics here.

Believers in the Cult of Jonah Brown will have noted Senator Kennedy's relapse immediately after his meeting.

JohnAnt

"he was fastracked into university."
JB, many of us would love to have him racked again, but very slowly this time.

Carly-May

OMG I've just read the Guardian article. I am astonished! He seems to have gone mad. He says he wants to let prisoners OUT and as many immigrants as wants to IN! He also wants an end to capitalism. I think he's totally lost the plot. He is not a serious leadership contender, not now not ever!!!

Hysteria

"Purnell sets up a summer of trouble for Gordon"

Good....