Labour Leadership Plot....Again

[Sheilbh]

Two former cabinet ministers today sent a letter to every Labour MP calling for a secret ballot on their leader, with the laughable claim that it could strengthen Gordon Brown - a 'back me or sack me' moment.

Unfortunately it was a disastrously bad plot.  They didn't have any cabinet resignations lined up.  It was in a good week for Labour (or, at least, a bad week for the Tories).  They couldn't even get support except from the usual suspects (Frank Field, God bless him). 

Here's Nick Robinson on it all:

Changing leader?

Nick Robinson | 13:37 UK time, Wednesday, 6 January 2010

Comments (333)

Extraordinary.

Weeks before the country gets to choose who should be its next prime minister Labour MPs are considering taking the decision for them. If they succeed a man or woman who has not been elected by the public would replace a man who has himself not been elected by the public.

This is without precedent - in this country at least.

Margaret Thatcher was toppled by her own MPs but that was two years before an election. Her successor John Major triggered a "back me or sack me" leadership ballot in 1995 - also two years before an election.

However, those who want to see Gordon Brown go might look to Australia where Bob Hawke was installed as leader of the Labor Party and faced an election 25 days later.

He won that election by a landslide, ending over seven years of conservative rule. Critically, however, that coup made Hawke leader of the opposition and not prime minister.

Now, of course, there may never be a secret ballot on the Labour leadership let alone a decision to remove Gordon Brown. After all, when James Purnell walked out of the cabinet calling for a change of leader his coup attempt failed within hours.

After that, backbench critics of Brown decided that they could not rely on the cabinet to act for them - either because they lacked the courage or because, for those like David Miliband and Alan Johnson, resignation would destroy their chance of leading.

The other main obstacle to a contest was the fear of many Labour MPs that the pain of public division might be worse than sticking with a leader who many are convinced is taking them to certain defeat.

This call for a secret ballot is designed to overcome those two obstacles - by giving the initiative to backbenchers not the cabinet and by bringing forward the pain of public division so that the fear of it is removed as a factor.

Don't believe Labour MPs and ministers who say they've not talked about changing leader. For months the talk's been of little else.

However, up until now it's looked like staying just that - talk. It may yet. This could all be over about as quickly as it began. Keep watching though because it could lead to a change of prime minister sooner than you think

PS Feel free to mock away at my on air dismissal of yesterday's rumours about a cabinet minister resigning to force Gordon Brown out. That'll teach me. No minister has resigned, of course - not yet anyway!

But what's remarkable is how tepid support for Brown was.  First of all look at this from David Miliband:

I am working closely with PM on foreign policy issues & support the re-election campaign for a Labour Govt that he is leading.

Peter Mandelson's played his role magnificently of course.  He's apparently hugely unhappy at the election strategy Labour are taking under Brown (class war + bullshit promises of 'continued investment), Mandy thinks the class stuff cedes the Tories aspirational voters and that people will see through any suggestion that the next government will be in a position to do anything but cut spending and raise taxes.  He's right.
His statement issued through a spokesman is possibly the most tepid endorsement of anyone:

No one should over-react to this initiative. It is not led by members of the government. No one has resigned from the government. The prime minister continues to have the support of his colleagues and we should carry on government business as usual.

But when all attention turned to him.  If he supported it it would succeed and only he could really declare it over (unless a senior minister resigns).  So Mandy allows speculation to build all through the day about his tepid statement before texting Nick Robinson (BBC chief political correspondent) to let him know that he does support the PM

This just shows that Labour are monumentally shit at regicide.  They need lessons from the Tories.  You get the sense that only Mandy could really pull it off and he gets far more influence from being the eminence grise of the government than he would tearing it down.

Still at least it's more interesting than the election campaign that started last week and will now last until May

[Sheilbh]

A good article on this:

Mandelson will save Brown until he can be properly sacrificed
Yesterday's coup plot was foiled to preserve New Labour, not the Prime Minister



By Benedict Brogan
Published: 7:33PM GMT 06 Jan 2010

Comments 22 | Comment on this article

The imperious thumb emerges slowly from behind the silk curtains of the gold-lined loggia, and wavers over the prone figure in the arena below. The gladiator places his sword on his victim's neck, eager to strike. The baying crowd catches its breath and awaits the verdict. And Lord Mandelson... lets him live. For the moment.

We had to wait for more than three hours before learning whether Labour's emperor would allow his old friend and enemy to fight on, or whether he would withhold his favour and give the plotters an advantage they could not gain for themselves. In the end, unsurprisingly, the thumb went up. Gordon Brown will lead Labour to the election.

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The news channels broadcast live all afternoon from a blizzard on College Green, reporting every twist in a story that has become a ritual: Labour figure says "Brown must go", a few reply "Yes, he should", more say "No, he shouldn't", and the majority stay quiet, which is taken as an endorsement of the status quo. By teatime, support for a secret ballot on Mr Brown's leadership, as suggested by Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, was sparse. No names of significance came forward to back the idea. Journalists were reduced to speculating about the momentary silence of Alistair Darling, Jack Straw and Lord Mandelson, and the possibility of that shock Cabinet resignation we keep being promised.

So even by the standards of this comedy premiership, yesterday's drama was a short one, barely managing one act. For, as with the previous attempts to muscle Mr Brown out of No 10, the plot came up against familiar obstacles of rules and personnel.

Procedurally, the only way to have a secret ballot is with a formal challenge to the leader, which requires the support of 70-odd named MPs. Whatever they say in private, the number willing to declare publicly remains far short of that, which made it easy for Tony Lloyd, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, to reject the suggestion out of hand. Those who wavered were told to stay in line by Brown's old crony Charlie Whelan and his colleagues at Unite, Labour's all-powerful trade union paymaster.

Then there is the continuing absence of a volunteer: note that neither Mr Hoon, nor Miss Hewitt – who is standing down as an MP anyway – have put themselves forward for the leadership. Nor have they suggested an alternative. Talk of a coronation is just that: there is no king-in-waiting who could be sure of majority support. The time is past for stop-gap candidates, which rules out Alan Johnson or Jack Straw. The next generation – Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, Milibands David and Ed – is saving itself for the contest after the election. As with previous coup attempts, the absence of an alternative protects Mr Brown.

Strategically, Mr Hoon and Miss Hewitt did themselves no favours by claiming that they had not spoken in advance to anyone in Cabinet. This may have been a tactical device, but it cost them momentum. Mr Brown can only be unseated from within the Cabinet, and specifically by some combination of Mr Darling, Mr Straw, Lord Mandelson, or Harriet Harman. All think he is a loser, yet all will stay loyal until the election.

Yesterday's plot also backfired through being launched at noon, just as Prime Minister's Questions kicked off. The calculation, presumably, was that Labour MPs streaming out of the chamber after another dire performance might be more easily persuaded to join in the fun. As it happened, Mr Brown broke the habit of a premiership by having a good day against David Cameron. The Tory leader, whose plan to hit the ground running in the New Year has stumbled, was matched gag for gag, failing to produce the killer blow that might have made a difference. The Prime Minister, who was on a bit of a Commons roll before Christmas, enhanced his pitch to his MPs that Labour are still in with a chance, making it easy to marshal the usual pledges of support.

Central to that process was Lord Mandelson. Recently, he has been in a sulk, angered by the missteps and errors of the friend he had hoped to turn into a winner. Some of this is pure pique: he remains infuriated at the shambles that allowed Baroness Ashton of Upholland to end up as the EU high representative for foreign affairs. He was so angry at the time that, for about six hours, he tried to get the job himself, only to be blocked by the Prime Minister, who saw that the appointment would pull the plug on his own career.

The Business Secretary also reacted badly to the pre-Budget report and the politics of class division that it championed. His elegantly phrased attack on the "politics of distribution" in an important speech yesterday (code for what he believes is the high-tax vindictiveness of Schools Secretary Ed Balls) was his riposte after a month's silence.

"Enterprise and effort should be rewarded," he argued, calling the former "the single most important engine of economic progress" and adding that "there is never a case for punitive taxation". No wonder he believes the election is lost. Unlike some who see the recent travails of the Conservatives as proof that Labour is still in with a chance, His Lordship shows signs in private conversation of being resigned to a large-scale defeat. Certainly, he dismisses the idea that Britain is on course for a hung parliament.

Yesterday's events should be considered not as a vote of confidence in Mr Brown by the Lord President and First Secretary of State, but precisely the opposite. They confirmed what remains unclear to many in Westminster, even now: that Labour is on course to lose the election, and that the real debate is about who follows Mr Brown as leader. And yes, Lord Mandelson is this Government's life support system, and he is pledged – as he made explicit in that remarkable panto performance of a speech at Labour's conference – to stand by Mr Brown to the very end. He remains fond of Christopher Logue's 1966 poem I Shall Vote Labour, especially the line "because if I do not vote Labour, my balls will drop off". The reason why is less obvious: he wants to make sure it is this Prime Minister, and not a substitute, who faces the electorate and submits to the judgment of the voters.

Lord Mandelson remains crucial to the fate of Labour – but his allegiance, as he argued yesterday, and has done for months, is to New Labour, not Old. Everything he does now is aimed at protecting the political project he nurtured into being. His sole aim is to ensure that New Labour is able to rebuild in opposition – and to do that means killing off Gordon Brown and those who support him.

This is the irony at the heart of yesterday's failed coup. Lord Mandelson is sparing Mr Brown now in order to be sure that, come election day, both he and those around him – specifically Mr Balls, his henchman and ideological mini-me – are destroyed. He believes the broad, aspirational, centrist coalition put together under Tony Blair is the only way Labour can hope to regain power. For New Labour to survive, he believes, the politics of Brownism must be rejected for good – and by the voters.

[Martim Silva]

How many times has Hoon tried a coup against a Leader? Five? Six?

What a douchebag.

And Hewitt got suckered in right with him. Her excuses were laughable.

To worsen things, this came out right after the Tories made a disaster of the presentation of their draft for the health program. It really seems like Hoon wanted to help Labour's rivals.

Brown is a born survivor. He does remind me of Jim Hacker (Sir Gus O'Donnell being his Humphrey), and I have no doubt he'll survive this (our local 'experts' think he's done for. Morons.)

Prediction: next election will give no majority to any party, but Brown - who cares nothing for ideology - will give in to almost anything the Liberal Democrats want (except his premiership) to form a most unnatural coalition, basically making them the de facto rulers of Britain.

Then the UK will go on a rather bumpy journey with a bizarre goverment.

[Viking]

Yes, we all remember how well "put up or shut up" worked for John Major.

[Martinus]

Interesting thread, Sheilbh. I especially like the second article. I love British politics for its sheer sense of theatrics.

[MadImmortalMan]

Lord Mandelson is sparing Mr Brown now in order to be sure that, come election day, both he and those around him – specifically Mr Balls, his henchman and ideological mini-me – are destroyed. He believes the broad, aspirational, centrist coalition put together under Tony Blair is the only way Labour can hope to regain power. For New Labour to survive, he believes, the politics of Brownism must be rejected for good – and by the voters.

You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.