Is Milburn planning a leadership challenge?

Paul B

My gut reaction and I claim not knowledge or evidence either way, is that this will not come to pass. Milburn will known that Brown will use every sling and arrow in his armory against him, he will not go quietly and without the mother of all battles.The first person to put his/her head above the parapet will feel full undiluted force of Browns attack and is not likely to survive.

My opinion is, if there is to be a party leadership battle, there will initially be a stalking horse candidate, even someone relatively well known (Byers) who will step aside when Brown is badly wounded. Frankly the fallout will be very nasty, lots of collateral damage and the eventual winner will stand no chance in the next GE. For that reason & calculation alone, Brown (barring ill health) will lead Labour into the next election

Gary Monro

It could be true but what of it? Labour is caught all ways. To stay with the current leader looks like a losing proposition but if he can somehow turn it around then his rehabilitation might be Labour's best hope.

On the other hand, to simply bring in their third leader in a year who will go on tv to promise - guess what? - change! is going to make most of us scream at our television sets because we've heard that word so very many times and yet everything's still rubbish.

Labour should do what the Tories ought to have done when, instead, they got rid of Margaret Thatcher. Fight hard, expect to lose, and when you do lose lick your wounds, change leader and start again with a clean sheet.

If they start axing leaders Labour's internal Brown/Blair cliques - already deadly - will really go for it and the party will destroy itself.

RW

A certain Fraser Nelson did a Speccy profile of Milburn in May 2007 and elicited the useful quote: 'If you're going for prime minister, you have to want the job, ' he says. 'And I don't. I never have'.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_20070519/ai_n19163069

The article is amusingly entitled "Milburn: How I Can Help Gordon Brown". A year is an eternity in politics, is it not?

Mike

Labour is caught between a rock and a hard place.

The rock is Brown who has ceaselessly campaigned to be PM virtually all his life. He's not going anywhere and certainly not for some ex-Blairite.

Another rock is that (my understanding is) 71 MPs are required to challenge Mr Brown. A leadership contest can go ahead only if it is endorsed by the party conference in September, which it would be if 71 MPs backed it. However time is against them. Say hustings during September / October for a late October early November election leaving the winner just 2009 and three or so months of 2010 to prove themselves. Not nearly enough time. Milburn would clearly hope that the artillery fire would force Brown to go for the good of the party but as I say above he's not going anywhere.

The hard place is that it is totally inconceivable that Labour could put up another PM in the space of little more than a year. Browns illegitimacy is an issue having never faced an election. His replacements illegitimacy would be a crisis. Labour would have to call an immediate election to defuse this. There would be no post-Brown honeymoon, they would lose the election very badly.
The question is : Is this better than hanging on with Brown. If I was a Labour MP with little or no job prospects outside parliament and sat on a small majority would I want to go short and force Brown out or go long and hope for the best?

Ian C

This would be consistent with the theory that someone has to cause his departure in order to limitthe fall out. It means calling an election in the aftermath, but Milburn (better choice than Straw) standing now would bring on the sort of changes soonest that the Tories shied away from by not chalenging Major. Had he been removed in 95 Portillo would have taken over, been defeated in 97 but been strong enough to mount a sooner comeback. This is presumably the sort of lesson that some in Labour ranks are saying they should learn from. And they're right - from where they sit.

Tiberius

I think Labour are too far gone down the road to hell for Milburn to save them. If he had succeeded Blair, things would have been very different, but I don't see him choosing to be Labour's William Hague.

DavidC

I think that, while there may not be a post-Brown 'honeymoon', the public might take some time working out how much they dislike the new boss.
If Brown's replacement goes for a quick election, this would throw the spotlight much more on Cameron.
The next GE is lost for the Labour Party, but they might escape with a thrashing rather than a massacre.

The Laughing Cavalier

Haze of Dope Milburn for Prime Minister? Shurely shome mishteak.

Water

Milburn may try but I don't see him getting past Browns bulwarks.

Ian C

Tiberius, I can. He has already put family before ambition and he might just be the man to take the heat in the short term to save his party (eventhough he is not a ntural [old] Labour party member).

Faceless Bureaucrat

Ian C [12.57]

"He has already put family before ambition..." Don't bet on it! - Brown has all the ammunition he needs to sink Milburn and in Damian McBride, the very man to pull the trigger.

Hugo

Frank Field didn't seem to think recently that Gordon would be leading the Labour party into the next election.
I suspect there are plans well underway to oust him, and the date in the diary is this week end (after C & N). After all, they know they are going to lose the GE with GB, they might as well take a chance without him.

DW

Millburn would be performing a public service.

Max Kaye

Alan who?

Freedom of Information

Time to reach to the back of the cupboard for that old large cardboard box marked "Milburn Dirt File"....

Water

Freedom of Information the way things are going we won't even need that.