Gordon Brown has survived the first 30 hours after Crewe and Nantwich. In public, the cabinet has remained supportive and even among backbenchers those prepared to openly call for leadership contest are few and far between. Behind the scenes, though, things are different—just look at the string of anonymous quotes in today’s papers. But no one is yet prepared to be, in Martin Kettle’s phrase, ‘Labour’s Geoffrey Howe.’
One man to watch in all this is Stephen Carter, the man that Brown hired to create and market ‘new Gordon.’ If Carter were to walk it would be taken as proof that Brown is incapable of change and that Labour has no chance of winning the next election. As one friend of Coffee House, a particularly astute Tory, pointed out to me yesterday, Carter going would—in terms of impact—be equivalent to a cabinet minister resigning.
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