The fall out from the election debacle continues this morning. The ‘young Turks’ surrounding Gordon Brown—principally, Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls and ED Miliband—are receiving much of the blame. One junior minister tells Rachel Sylvester,
None of the young Turks want to end up carrying the can for this mistake. Hence, all the newspaper reports about who was much less gung ho than we’d realised and urging caution on the PM. A senior MP reports to Sylvester that the three of them are “fighting like ferrets in a sack” to avoid being pinned with the blame for this.“I’m in despair about the cack-handedness of these arrogant little sods…These people don’t understand politics, they speak at think-tank seminars, not public meetings.”
For what it’s worth, none of them make it into the front rank of the betting to succeed Gordon Brown. David Miliband is favourite at evens followed by Hillary Benn and Alan Johnson, who admitted on Desert Islands Discs to not being up to being PM, both at 8/1. Ed Miliband is at 10/1, Ed Balls 12/1 and Douglas Alexander in a group at 14-1 including Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper and Alistair Darling.
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