Depending on who you believe, either Charles Clarke is trying to get Jon Cruddas to challenge Gordon Brown for Labour’s leadership (Independent), or half the Cabinet have decided that Brown must go and David Miliband is plotting to run for leader (Sunday Times), or Brown is being put under pressure to appoint a Deputy Prime Minister, so that an obvious successor would be in place to take over from him (The Observer), or possibly all three are the case.
But perhaps the starkest sign of Labour’s problems is the paucity of appearances [UPDATE: until this morning’s round of breakfast shows] from senior Labour members willing to speak up in defence of Gordon Brown. Whatever your views of John Prescott as Deputy Prime Minister, he did repeatedly show full loyalty to Labour in public and is continuing to do so – but he does look a rather lonely figure now speaking up in defence of Gordon Brown.
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8 Comments
Putting up people to defend Gordon is saying that Gordon is going down. Genuine defenders of Brownism would not do so and would be advised from the centre not to do so. Brownians or Brownies would do well to forget the intra-mural intrigue and get on with their jobs of doing their best for the great British public in their roles.
I think Liberal Democrats have largely given up posting on here, Chris. Mohsin Beg is obviously trying to communicate with you Tories and Laboristas.
What about the Lib Dem leadership problems?
What about the vacuum of leadership within the liberal democrats?
I don’t know why everyone has been talking about these supposed differences between Blair and Brown. They might well hate each other, and have totally different personalities and styles, but politically they’re the same. A bit like Major and Thatcher, Wilson and Callaghan, and what have you.
The roots of this malaise go back to the dishonesty of Labour in the 1990s, when they wore a liberal mask, only to revert to a bizarre mixture of their worst instincts and Mail-style authoritarianism.
Blair did everything from assaulting the poor to joining in America’s wars of aggression to unthinking, punitive, failed criminal “justice” policies to massive extensions of state power over the individual. So I don’t see why those who voted for him in 1997, 2001 and 2005 can turn around and burn Brown now.
To say that it’s all Brown’s fault is the mark of someone who is blind to these facts.
I might add that was also hailed by warmonger Iain Duncan Smith, ID cards supporter Michael Howard, neoconservative Michael Gove and invertebrate David Camoron.
Whispers/ Blair and Brown are NEO-LIBERALS
Define neoliberal!
Oranjepan, neo-liberals believe in shrinking the state and reducing the overall taxation take. The neo-liberal school of economics based their thinking on good solid liberal analysis such as is found in Mill.
Seen much state shrinking and tax reduction last ten years? No?
Thought not. Blair and Brown are not neo-liberals, they’re not any kind of liberal, they’re corporatists, which is the exact opposite.