Will the tensions at No.10 leave the door open for Miliband?

Ann S

Despite everything, I still think Brown will stay. He has the nuclear option. If 10 cabinet ministers threaten to resign, he can threaten to go to the palace and request that the Queen dissolve parliament.
Constitutionally that is the Prime Minister's decision alone.
I wonder if the 10 would then resign, knowing it would mean that they and over half of the rest of the Parliamentary Labour Party would end up on the dole where they belong.
Brown is just about deranged enough to do it.

wxalexander

I hear Brown stapled his hand this week

David Short

"Will the tensions at No.10 leave the door open for Miliband?"

No.

David C

The problem for Brown is that he has made so many mistakes and alienated so many people. There is nobody he can rely on.
His cabinet are political ‘pygmies’ (Brown himself has ensured this) who cannot provide shelter for Brown to hide behind, or do any ‘heavy lifting’.
If these dwarves are now plotting or positioning to oust Brown then his authority must be haemorrhaging at a frightening rate.
Can he re-establish his authority via his reputation for economic competence?
Doubtful. His reputation is in tatters. The ‘10p Tax’ fiasco killed it.
What he does have is intimidation and a skill (almost an instinct) for political manoeuvring.
He has to reassert his leadership with these tools.
That means he has to use fear. He has to make examples. When Geraldine Smith and Bob Marshall-Andrews launched their attack on Miliband, Brown should have taken the brakes off and let opposition to the Blairites and Neo-Blairites, gel.
Far from following Carter’s advice, Brown should have let Austin and McBride continue. They knew their political master’s strengths better. They made the correct choice.

Mark R

What's really infuriating about this for me is that you follow the story in the mainstream media and then it suddenly disappears without explanation, so you don't know what's happened. At least you are kind enough this time to give us ordinary punters an explanation for why its disappeared!

Similarly whatever happened to all those police investigations into Labour party fundraising? Is there a blog which gives us the latest episode on this one?

By the way if you want to know the latest games the EU enforcers are playing on Lisbon then I've discovered you can get updates on the Irish blogs even although the British blogs, let alone the mainstream media, seem to have lost interest for the moment.

At least with sport when the media cover a story (e.g. a football game or golf tournament) they don't drop it half way through the match!

Seems to me the politics stories are too much driven by the briefers. Why is this do you think?

k

I like Brown

Fergus Pickering

You like Brown what?

mike

The back door, the same one used by Michael Portillo and Michael Heseltine.

Frank Pulley

Read Uncle Rich Littlejohn in the DM today; as usual he boils it down to basics and puts this little parvenue's antics into perspective. Extract:

>"If any political party had actually stood for election promising to slash refuse collections, while at the same time doubling council tax and turning decent, law-abiding householders into criminals, it would have lost its deposit in every constituency in Britain.

But once his feet were under the table at Environment, this hated initiative became Miliband's flagship programme.

Indeed, it is just about the only significant contribution of his brief ministerial career.

At one stage, so taken was he with his own genius, that he even suggested we all buy a slop bucket for our leftovers. I can remember asking at the time: why stop there?

Why not force every home to keep a pot-bellied pig in the kitchen? Pigs will eat anything and thus, if all our household waste was fed to them, we could abolish refuse collections altogether and the polar bears would live happily ever after.

In all the coverage of Miliband's brazen attempt to become our next Prime Minister, I have read no mention of any of this insanity. Having introduced this ludicrous policy, he simply walked away from the carnage into the Foreign Office, leaving the rest of us - literally - to sweep up behind him. Fortunately, this column has a slightly longer memory."<

Read it all. It will make your day; unless you want him to be Prime Minister, in which case you deserve to be tormented by Littlejohn's lacerating wit:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1040306/The-Slop-Bucket-Kid-PM-The-boys-fool.html

Jeremy

Reassuring to see from the food column in tonight's ES magazine that Her Britannic Majesty's S of S for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is so soundly briefed on the people who work for him that he describes the British Government's representative in India as the "British Ambassador". But then again, it's only in the food column, the difference between Commonwealth and other representation is a piece of dated pompousity, and where's India anyway?

Oscar India

I think this goes to the heart of the issue around Gordon's immediate future. It's not Kremlin-gazing. I've added my two penn'th on my blog, here http://progressblues.blogspot.com/