OK, now I’ve read all the papers and – well, it looks to me that Labour did a pretty good job last week of ensuring that it loses the next election.
No one comes out of this smelling of roses. Blair has been forced to admit he is a dead man walking and has lost it with his party. Brown will forever be suspected of attempting a coup, particularly after the revelation that Tom Watson, the instigator of the letter demanding Blair’s prompt resignation, visited Brown at home the day before the letter was leaked. And Charles Clarke was “stupid, stupid, stupid” to have attacked Brown as he did, even if he was spot-on about what is wrong with the Chancellor.
Looking on the bright side, Clarke's intervention might just be seen in retrospect a year hence as the wake-up call Labour needed to stop it electing Brown as leader. But the chances of that are remote, because it’s still very difficult to imagine anyone mounting a credible challenge to Brown, for all his dunderhead incompetence (at best) this week.
John McDonnell won’t get the nominations required to run (and anyway he is not credible, for the rather obvious reason that he is a Trot headbanger). Clarke himself would get my vote, but I’d be amazed if he crossed the nominations threshold either. Either John Reid or Alan Johnson might do better, but neither has significant support either in the trade unions or among Labour’s individual members – for many of whom Reid is a hate figure. David Miliband is too young and inexperienced and has no political machine behind him of any description. The momentum is still all with Gordon, and that in itself means anyone with an eye on a future career will probably keep his or her powder dry.
So my money – for now – is on an uncontested leadership election, Brown becoming PM, continuing bickering from his many party critics as he fails miserably to claw back the Tories’ opinion poll lead, a Tory victory in 2009 or 2010, then 15 or more wilderness years for Labour as this week's protagonists try to take their revenge on one another.
Welcome to the progressive century, comrades!
12 comments:
John McDonnell won’t get the nominations required to run
Counting the SCD and it's fellow travellers in the PLP, he's already got sixty-odd and only needs 44. So, unless another left-wing candidate emerges and they cancel each other at the nominations stage, he's going to be a candidate. Assuming the only other putative candidates are other Cabinet Ministers and fallen Blairites like Clarke, Milburn and Byers, who won't get enough noms to challenge Brown, it's going to be a re-run of 1992, wth McDonnell playing Gould to Brown's Smith.
SCG, of course.
Full disclosue: I'll be voting for McDonnell, and would have voted for Gould if I'd been old enough at the time.
Hang on. Precisely how many members does the Campaign Group now have? And is every one of them really signed up to the McDonnell hara-kiri manoeuvre? I am old enough to remember the 1992 leadership election, which was a complete farce from the start and destroyed Gould's political career.
The SCG currently has around 25-30 declared members, but there are at least as many outside the SCG who'll at support a left-wing challenger (ex-frontbenchers like Dobson, Strang, etc.; sympathetic newer MPs who haven't joined because they want frontbench posts one day). As I said, if another left-wing candidate does emerge (Michael Meacher, say), those numbers will be split and I imagine neither will get nominated.
Don't see how it's hara-kiri - McDonnell has nothing to lose, and whilst victory is almost certainly impossible (unless, say, he is the only challenger and the Blairites swing behind him in the hopes Labour will lose the next election and they can crown Miliband in Opposition) a strong showing could force policy concessions out of Brown (and a Cabinet position, perhaps).
When we're gloomy we're very, very gloomy aren't we!
Blairites swinging behind McDonnell; I thought we kept on being told that the whole "nu-labour" thing is a coup and there aren't any Blairites beyond a few carerists (who must now be wondering about their prospects).
I suspect those of us who are moderates in the party are split between hoping Gordon's reputation is exagerated and that someone/anyone closer to the centre of the political spectrum than McDonnell stands.
Happy days.
I hate to quote Joe Stalin, but his comment from June 1941 comes to mind...
"Lenin left us this and we fucked it up"
I do think it is important that we state the truth about McDonnell's "bid".
It's not about even getting on the ballot paper - it's about settling scores.
He wants to be able to denounce those on the left who refuse to back him as traitors and this is his vehicle for doing it.
I admit, I am not hard leftist. But I know that many of them are better people than the sort who would back McDonnell, who's preious statements on the IRA and whose attitudes towards Gerry Healy et al mark him as beneath contempt.
If it is a Brown v McDonnell contest, expect to see Ken Livingstone open every rally for Gordon.
Please God, though, we'll have a better choice than either.
If it is a Brown v McDonnell contest, expect to see Ken Livingstone open every rally for Gordon.
Of course - no way Ken could stomach the political company of someone who was soft on the Provos, let alone Gerry Healy. Stands to reason.
And Paul, you're not fooling anyone with this "old enough to remember 1992" line. Admit it, you're old enough to remember the 1976 leadership election... (As indeed am I - although all I remember of it is my father telling me that it would probably go to Jenkins although it ought to be Crosland, or possibly vice versa.)
Phil - I do indeed remember the 1976 leadership election. My grandfather said that it ought to be Foot and was very fed up when it wasn't.
I think Anonymous's point, incidentally, is that although Livingstone and McDonnell were great political allies in the days of Labour Herald - which was printed by the Workers' Revolutionary Party (prop: G Healy) - they then fell out and no longer have great regard for one another. But Anonymous will have to elucidate on this, because I have no knowledge of the state of relations between these two titans of the British left.
Funnily enough, I am not invited into Ken's political strategy meetings either. I am pleased to say, though, that he hates me personally for the (political) damage I've done him in the past.
But my point was this - back at the GLC Ken and John had a massive falling out over rate capping. Ken, who was then in one of his I'm-a-social-democrat-really phases, thought McDonnell was setting him up in classic ultra-left/transitional demand style, particularly as the result of McDonnell's posturing was that the Tory budget got passed.
As I understand it they have not exchanged a civil word since.
I suppose neither has changed. One remains the ultimate opportunist, the other is dedicated to the true task of the left - naming the traitors who've sold us out.
By the way, I am also old enough to remember the 1976 election. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if the PLP had elected Jenkins and not Callaghan. Certianly we would have been spared the obscenity of David Owen.
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