Iain Martin has a quite brilliant line in his column today on Charles Clarke and his plotting :
“If this is an attempted coup, it is shaping up to be the most badly organised since Simon Mann looked at Equatorial Guinea on a map of Africa and thought: that looks worth a shot.”
My sense is that Charles Clarke has, oddly, done Gordon Brown a favour. It is now so predictable when he criticises Brown that it infuriates Labourites rather than goading them into action. As Iain argues, Labour’s dithering—one respect in which it does follow its leader—is destroying its chances. The party needs to either get rid of Brown or get behind him for one last push. But sending out the message that they know he’s useless but it is just too hard to get rid of him and anyway there’s no obvious alternative really is the worst of both worlds.
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