Should Labour get the defeat out of the way as quickly as possible?

cityboozer

Interesting, but they are all too vain for this. Only Harman or Beckett could "come to the aid of the party" as Michael Howard did for the Tories.

Straw is finished domestically but would love an international job. If Labour hangs on until May 2010 they get to nominate an EU commissioner, which could be almost as effective a spanner in the Cameron works as leaving them holding the economic baby now.

The Chocolate Orange Inspector

Straw was born to be a commissioner. He had it stamped on his forehead at birth: "commissioner material".

Dick the Prick

Yup - if they love their party they should. If, as cityboozer intimates they're on a gravy train then it's another 1979 and we shall not see their kind again.

Ellen

Well, for one, they're broke and two, as Freddie Forsyth said last week, it would take Semtex to get Brown out of Downing Street. You think someone spends all that time for a job only to walk away?

Labour Member

No. If you are prepared to defenestrate Gordon then install a leader with a chance of winning and call an election within six months. Cameron has a glass jaw (eg his attempt to blame the poor for their poverty this week) and Miliband would be in with a fighting chance of shattering it in a six month air war.

DM

Oh yeah - what they fail to take into consideration is how few of them actually will retain their seats in this snap election in order to be able to form a new Opposition with some new dynamic leader.

TrevorH

Assuming a labour loss - would this new leader stay on?

John de Finchley

The risk with this for the Tories in 1992 was that the electorate would have assumed Black Wednesday would have happened anyway and blamed the Tories, while crediting Labour with the resultant recovery.

I reckon much the same would happen today.

Edwin Lee

How would Straw justify this in public? The media would question him to death on why he had taken over the reins. Why now? What do you have that Brown doesn't? How many terms will you serve?

Labour would be crucified at the polls. Conservatives could say - why now, why not last year? What are you scared of, can't handle the economy or something?

Mike, Brighton

Ludicrous.A few problems with that thesis:
1) It assumes Cameron and the Tories would get the blame for the recession after being elected. They wouldn't, Cameron is slick enough to ensure Labour's economic incompetence gets blamed. Again Labour assumes the electorate to be stupid. We can all see that the downturn is based on Labour's credit binge, high taxation, energy prices and reckless spending. Labour would be out of power for a generation
2) Thatcher got elected in 1979 in the face of a recession. How many years were the Tories in power blaming Labours incompetence for economic ills?
3) Labour has no money for a snap election and would have to rely on the unions who will have their electorally toxic quid pro quo
4) Who says the results of a panic snap election held well before the parliamentary term is up, with yet another unelected leader (make up your mind guys!), an election specifically held to minimise Labour electoral losses; would be any less catastrophic for Labour than an election in 2010? It could even be worse
4) Labour is quite likely to elect John Cruddas as new leader post-election who whilst one of the few Labour MPs to retain their integrity is a genuine lefty who will have his policies eviscerated by the Tories
5) Will Straw commit suicide for the sake of a couple of months as caretaker in office and a disastrous electoral defeat? To go down as the Labour Leader who led the party to a generation in opposition is not a great legacy
6) This assumes Brown will resign after the deputation of Straw n' Hoon. Labour's rules make his position virtually invulnerable. He has waited all his life for this position and is not likely to walk away after barely 12 months.
7) This assumes Brown cabinet apparatchiks such as Balls, Cooper, Darling, Ed Milliband, Browne, Alexander and Murphy all stand idly by and see their master deposed. They are silent now but will react if their political inheritance is threatened.
8) Most labour MPs don't support this (at the moment). They are following the Micawber strategy and hoping something turns up or are resigned to defeat

So apart from all that it's a great idea!

J H Holloway

Sounds like 'blood-on-his-hands' Campbell is back, giving advice

This is just the sort of prime NuLab stunt that Brown has tried, in vain, to copy.

Stu

Sort of interesting, but completely stupid idea.

Why should Jack Straw become the country’s shortest serving PM when there’s already a PM around who could call an election and lose?

Julie, Hull

Oh God I hope not, this would be a disaster for the Tories as they're not ready yet. The economic crisis is what will finish Labour and Brown and we are only at the beginning of it.

Alex

What if Labour won?

Tel

All talk and no action.

Roger Thornhill

It is an interesting one and a scenario I have wondered about too. The healthy constituencies are probably wondering if even they may be at risk in 2 years, so now might be a good time to renew their mandate.

The marginals are raddished anyway, so their horizon is just how many more months on the gravy train will they get. I suspect the hard core will regard them as cannon fodder and with contempt (they deserve).

Cameron would be wrong-footed. Davis would be wrong footed! I think DD will try for a putsch if Gordon goes - last chance for next 12+ years to grab the leadership as 2 yrs + 2 terms before he could = too old.

If DD chances his arm, then I would suspect that is the moment that Labour might call an election, but then again they tried that before and the Tories united.

WIlfred

Labour Member:

Why didn't you say "eg his attempt to blame the excessively fat for their excess fat"?

A mind-set like yours illustrates just how far removed from reality Labourites are, and is why Labour will lose every election until it finally turns it back on this poor substitute for thinking.

If you don't yet know that poverty is only avoided if individuals take up the opportunities offered to them, then you richly deserve all the decades in the political wilderness that lie ahead of you.

oldtimer

I am still of the view that Labour MP turkeys will not vote for Christmas. Nor will G Brown, who spent years climbing the greasy pole of Labour politics, let go easily - a challenge to dislodge him would make Gladiators look like the childsplay it is (from what little I have seen of it).

Silent Hunter

Labour Member:

Funny how David Cameron's speech has had a real resonance with the electorate then.

The majority of people in this country are hard working, pay their fair amount of tax and just want to be left alone by Government to get on with their own lives.

They resent the easy ride given to the very wealthy and more to the point they absolutely resent the feckless underclass who are content to live in a squalor of their own making whilst the majority pick up the tab for them.

As Labour know - keep them in fags, booze, porn, Macdonalds, Burger King etc and they will be your political fodder for life.

That's the tryst that Labour have with the Untermenschen.

But, I sense that middle Britain has had enough of these freeloaders - there is a sea change coming and the feckless won't know what's hit them as their free ride coasts to a halt.

John

"What if Labour won?"

LOL. Thanks for that laugh on a rainy day.

Err, Julie: the Tories are quite ready.

Mike: very good! I'll try to think of a few more ...

John

"Cameron would be wrong-footed"

And you think Cameron has no idea such a thing might happen and has not prepared for it at all? LOL.

Trumpeter Lanfried

What's a SPAD? Signal passed at danger?

Tina

Just been watching tonight's channel 4 news and I must say Labour would be advised to follow what Carr has reported. Two economists said house prices will fall between 30-40% over the next two years and we WILL go into recession. All three of the economist panel said they are now going to go with their worst case scenario in terms of the economy. If this does happen all hell is going to break loose and it will be grim for whatever government is in.

Tankus

No

2 more years at the trough on maxed out expenses is close to half a mill...

Its a mass cull at the next elections ( and not just marginals) and they know it.
Get it while its hot !

Plus two more years to fix their options outside the trough.

The party has no finances even to call a quick one anyways , Brown will have to pimp the party more often ,like tonight, to build a fund, giving a token of resistance to the Tories , otherwise the party will cease to have any meaning anymore... !

Labour Member

That's the tryst that Labour have with the Untermenschen

Your language gives you away. This is why the Tories have to be fought now and for ever. You lot aren't just the stupid party or even the nasty party. You are the vile party.

As to why I didn't mention the bit about fat, because that at least is arguable. But Tories saying the poor are to blame for poverty is political gold dust for the Labour Party and the sort of one-off comment that wins elections.

Unfortunately so long as Labour is led by Gordon Brown we'll never get to use against you lot.

nicodemus31

John: While I admire your optimism regarding a certain Tory victory in such cirumstances I would sound a note of caution.

It is a perverse fact of politics that a sizeable chunk of the electorate, while rightly laying the blame for the slump firmly at New Labour's door, may well feel it is only right & proper that New Labour are returned to power to fix it.

I seem to recall this being one of the "excuses" for John Major's victory in 1992... I hope I am wrong.

Tina

nicodemus31, Major's victory was down to one man- KINNOCK!

Athesius the Facilitator

Straw is Wormtongue the Kings advisor in Lord of the Rings

Ordinary Voter

Labour member: if you want vile, take a long hard look in the mirror. That is why Labour will have to be fought until it is utterly destroyed. And in a pincer movement between the Tories and the SNP, that is starting to look distinctly possible. You create wanton misery for others but proclaim your own virtue: how utterly appalling you are - truly, the modern day Pharisees.

Hysteria

labour member -

don't you see that the socialist ideas that have been tried in the UK and other countries simply do not work?

I am not suggesting a completely free capitalist system - there is a role for the State in some areas - but purely when looking at outcomes, the present arrangements simply do not produce the results.

Wilfred

Labour Member:

What a hysterical and simplistic reaction to a bit of pithy German!

I suppose that, in your asinine world view, the word 'untermenschen' immediately brands the user and the rest of us 'Tories' as Nazis? ..... Are you still at school?

As for 'political gold dust', that would only be the case if there was a sufficiently large number of 'poor' people who were sufficiently p....d off to affect the outcome of a GE.

Are you telling us that, after eleven years of New Labour social engineering and rampant wealth-redistribution, there are still legions of the 'poor' out there?

Or are you simply confirming our worst fears about the deliberate creation of a VAST and useless client state?

A grotesque failure, or an authoritarian monster? Which is it?

Stu

Wilfred, to be fair Untermenschen would directly translate into 'lower people'. Not a very nice term, it must be said.

As for the argument about where the 'vileness' lies, I'm afraid the road to government is littered with vileness on all sides. No party has a monopoly, or even a dominance, on that particular afliction. Like football, though, the perpetrators are the supporters, not the politicians themselves.

Mike, Brighton

Labour Member:

Don't you realise how much the Labour Party is hated across the country now. 11 years of maladministration has increased poverty, increased income inequality, re-created the class system, destroyed our education system, taken the UK into a disastrous, sold our sovereignty to to your EU masters and led to massive social breakdown. You only have to look at Glasgow East to see the end-result of Labour's failed socialism a captive client group of welfare recipients living in moral and social squalor.
You must be ashamed.

Marian C

Labour Member;

Get over yourself, how old are you you? you sound like some silly little prat spouting on about things you know absolutely nothing about.

This is why the country is in such a mess; its because of jerks like you and the rest of your inept Labour party / members.

Take a look around you, can you not see what is going wrong in this country? Can you not see that the country is being brought down to its knees and is on its way to being bankrupt and all because of your Loony Leader Brown or should I say Heathcliff! and the rest of his grossly overpaid trough dwellers on his team.

Can you not also see, that the majority of the country are giving the like of you, and the rst of you within the Zanu Labour party the two fingers (so to speak).

The likes of you make me sick, go and get a pair of glasses, you obviously cannot see further than your nose, or is that a beginning of a snout!!!

Tina

Marion C here, here!