Leopards and spots
Having been abroad last week, it is somehow a bit different looking again at the British political scene. I suspect that Labour MPs in their constituencies last week will have had a bellyful of complaints about the Prime Minister.
There were three articles last week which underline his dilemma. Andrew Rawsley invites him to be bold and be true to himself. I suspect that the Prime Minister will ultimately spend a lot of time dithering about how to be bold, and then give up. Alan Milburn writes out a programme for reviving and revitalising the Labour agenda. However Gordon Brown spent much time preventing any of the reforms advocated, and will hardly change his mind now. Ben Wegg-Prosser accepts that the huge state apparatus which Gordon Brown helped to create is now being rejected by the overtaxed and over governed electorate. However no control freak would countenance the withdrawal of the state in the way suggested. Leopards do not change spots, at least not in their sixth decade.
If regicide is practised, would the Labour Party go for the steadiness of Jack Straw who has actually been so centrally part of the very policies which people are rejecting? Or go for a younger politician who would have to consider whether they would wish to be the captain of a ship heading for the rocks. In any event none of the likely younger candidates match up remotely to David Cameron.
So I shall watch the drama being played from the ringside seat of the Commons.
What is for sure is that Gordon Brown’s personal chemistry is dreadful. But the notion that changing the leader will resolve Labour’s crisis is misplaced.
The Party is intellectually and politically bankrupt, and Labour MPs as much as the electorate, know it. And by the way, whether that bankruptcy is expressed in a Scottish voice or not is really totally irrelevant.