Carry on camping

Peter From Maidstone

Brown will never go, unless it is in the last weeks of the election campaign when he has been deserted by all. He will then play the brave but disabled card and insist that he would have wished to fight and win, but must pass the baton to another.

Beer Moth

Plotters, quitters, fighters.

Just one category will, thank goodness, soon cover them all: The Opposition.

john

When Brown does go, he'll first apologise for the concentration camps in the Boer War, then tell us he knows what it's like to lose a child, he's only got one eye, and, er, he's shy.

oldtimer

There is a fourth group, to which they all belong, the "We are the turkeys who will not vote for Xmas" group. These three sub groups, to which Robinson refers, are an irrelevance. Giving them names like "plotters", "quitters" or "fighters" suggests a wholly undeserved capacity for rational thought and action. "Turkeys" is the word you need.

The Jabberwocky

Q4 - and how many simply wont care any more because they will be standing down following expenses probes?

Edward Palmer

Cowardly Brown is the Conservatives best hope for a good working majority. With almost any other leader a hung Parliament is likely. Why rock the boat? Keep GB for the sake of this country's recovery and future!

David Ossitt

"plotters", "quitters" or "fighters"

Is there not a fourth group?

We could call them the “nutters”.

Gordon is in this group, I am not sure how many more are in the group but methinks that this does not matter because with Gordon at the helm the nutters will always beat off any challenges from the plotters, quitters and fighters.

Justicia

Its simply been too long. While its easy to sneer at Labour for their current self-destruction, its hardly any worse a situation than the trans/post-thatcher collapse of the Tories.

Any party that has been in power for too long will fragment and lose coherence; Disraeli's exhausted volcanoes accusation really does come to mind....

Gawain

The main category that Robinson missed is the unemployables. Most of the MPs facing defeat are men in their 40s and 50s. Their chances of employment in the recession don't look good particularly when their cv's are going to include Member of Parliament (or in laymans language, overpaid, untrustworthy, layabout) !

The ones who can find employment will leave, the rest will huddle together with the fighters as it's their best option. The plotters have already failed.

Beer Moth

Justicia

Yes, every long term government has a tendency toward staleness and we have the clear memory of the sorry Thatcher-Major plunge into farce. But as terrible as this was and as jaded as we might be by this and similar wind-downs, there is surely something especially disastrous about the state this lot are leaving us with.
The collective debt we now all have to shoulder, for one.
The simmering societal strife, for another.

Andy Leeds

I suspect Brown is there to the bitter end - and the end will be very bitter indeed. After he is defeated, AND I pray to God everyday that he is well and truly beaten in the election, I think the Labour Party will turn on itself in a far more ugly way than the Conservatives ever did.

What the Conservatives and the media need to do is turn Brown into a figure of fun. This will destroy far more Labour votes than anything else. I also think that after the election we should have a root and branch boundary review. Lets make a Labour vote have the same value as a Tory vote instead of the inflated value it now enjoys.

Justicia

@Beer Moth:

I don't think its quite fair to compare the severity of the current state of affairs to the early 1990s, as the problems we're going through as a nation are simply far greater than back then. That's not to say that Labour haven't consistently shown a lack of principle and coordination in their policy though.

Either way, I'd say the die is cast. Labour risk completely collapsing as a mainstream party *after* the next election depending on how the other parties that take any of their momentum present themselves; if they (against all odds) do struggle on for another term though, I'm absolutely convinced that they will be wholly and utterly finished as a political movement.

wrinkled weasel

I think it is possible to underestimate the level of denial Labour supporters are in. You mentioned Glasgow NE. It was an anomalous constituency that nobody seriously thought would go SNP, and yet there has been a lot of straw clutching over this result and talk of Gordon's fight back.

I think you are right about Mandy; he will pull the plug, if he hasn't already done so.

Brown's departure, as has been suggested, will be on the health ticket, the only positive way he can spin it. It will be swift and probably after Christmas. There are enough self-deluded chumps in the party to want a crack at being leader and the trigger for this will be the continued plunge into the economic abyss.

In2minds

Plotters and quitters. What about the phrase, “mind your p's and q's. Does it apply here to Brown?

Hysteria

you are right - pointless exercise

tim holden

The Titanic metaphor continues to apply. The band played on as the ship went down. The ship broke in two. Survivors crowded to the stern section, and even then there was hope amongst them. When the ship finally sank, the bottom was two miles down.

Pete-s

Does not mention the forth group; one that is the majority, the plodders.

These are the Labour lobby fodder that have passed every bit of crap legislation without question. Who now are hanging on for every penny of pension and parachute payment they can get their hands on before being dumped into oblivion.

strapworld

Andy of Leeds has the real answer and credit to him.

Humour is the DESTROYER of a politician. Make him the butt of all jokes. The morose figure of sarcastic wit (the lowest form of humour but the highest form of intelligence!) That will sweep through the country and demolish Brown and Labour.

Cameron could take lessons from Hague who can be devastating with his one liners! But my assessment of the weak, vain, cameron is that he believes he is all things to all men.

But humour would finish Brown off well and truly.

So come on Coffee House. Get the Brownie jokes started.

Vulture

We've trotted round this particular course more often than an old donkey on Margate beach, but its still fun. I think that the only man who could shift Bruin is Mandy - but why would he? Bruin's adoption of the dignified statesman role at the Guildhall suggests he still thinks he can pull offf a GE win. The polls - stuck for months on a 14 % Tory lead - suggest otherwise. I pray that Liebour will go down to a defeat so disastrous that - especially if the Scots go indie - will mean we never have another Liebour Govt. But with real power residing in Brussels, none of this really matters.

richardj

I hope all noticed the Prime Minister in his white tie last night - what a joke 10 years refusing to dress and once Prime Minister the full monty - what a carry on.

Ken

The pure, unmitigated evil that is the Labour party will seek to steal the election through postal voting scams.

The system is wide open to tribalist fraud and denounced as such in the courts.

All the jockeying you refer to is essentially irrelevant if the government does not intend to play the democratic game by the rules.

The other parties should be demanding postal voting be suspended until it can be properly protected from scammers.

Five more years of Brownian delusion would sink the British Isles.

The Bellman

I was tempted to write 'Carry on - Don't lose your head'; but, with McSnotty's generous and entirely unrelated to impending election disaster offer to host a photo-opportunity with Obama - I mean a summit on Afghanistan strategery, 'Carry on up the Khyber' seems more appropriate on so many levels.