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Politics

Fraser Nelson

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

When Number 10 said that Gordon Brown’s leadership had not been discussed in the Cabinet on Tuesday morning, it sounded a bit odd. After all, every other gathering of Labour MPs in the land has been talking of little else: how much more humiliation lies ahead, and when the end might come. So it came as no surprise to learn that the spin doctors’ claim was untrue. In fact, the issue did come up in Cabinet, raised by none other than the Prime Minister himself — and in the most extraordinary terms.

After Mr Brown had gone through the motions of discussing government business (not something anyone is much focused on these days), the PM declared that people should indeed have their say on his leadership. But they should wait until the economic crisis was over: now, he said, is the ‘wrong time’. Cabinet colleagues who want him replaced were stunned: this was precisely the formula disillusioned ministers like Douglas Alexander and John Hutton have been using — taken as code to mean that Gordon should indeed go, but not yet.

So Labour is this weekend heading for a party conference at which apparently no one in the party, from the Prime Minister down, will argue with any passion that he is the right man for the job. Were this the Conservative party we would be bracing ourselves for a week of high drama. Yet while the Tories have come to regard their conferences as a form of blood sport, and the platform a gladiatorial arena, there will be nothing much decided in Manchester next week. Mr Brown has diverted all his energies into ensuring it will be a unity rally, however unpersuasive it may be.

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Mike, Brighton (in India)

September 18th, 2008 9:57am

Ok the "Not Yet" strategy may be working but consult your crystal ball for a vision of the future....
It's May 2010 and the election campaign is in full swing. Imagine for one minute the Labour election campaign led by Brown in the middle of a deep recession. Brown is on TV day after day spouting tractor factory statistics and lies whilst the country is burning and he is being shredded day after day by a slick and energetic Tory campaign.
Labour cabinet ministers are obvious by their invisibility...Brown is being left to carry the can, alone, with all the campaigning skills of a corpse.
The media is full of is speculation about the size of the Tory majority, which cabinet ministers will lose their seats, what the priorities for Cameron will be when PM and who will be the next leader of the Labour party and opposition.
Milliband, Straw, Hutton, Cruddas and McDonnell more-or-less openly position for the forthcoming leadership battle.

Surely the Labour party cannot want this?
Much as I will enjoy watching them lose, this will be excruciating.

JohnAnt

September 20th, 2008 12:34am

I think this is exactly what they do want, Mike. They are not interested in the future of the Labour Party. They know they'll be wiped out, and don't want to anticipate that moment by one single day. They are only interested in keeping in office as long as possible, to keep the freebies coming and give them a chance to find another job.

mitch

September 21st, 2008 6:03pm

Its pitiful really that he has to beg underlings not to cause trouble while a problem partly of his own making unfolds.They could have stamped on this house price bubble years ago and prevented the worst excesses but they didn't and they will pay the price.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.