MAIL COMMENT: Labour's poisonous rebels without a clue as Brown unease continues

Ex-ministers have spent the past three days queuing up for the cameras to demand a leadership contest.

And, while poisonous and disgruntled Blairites are clearly the leaders of this orchestrated charge, MPs are now coming forward from a number of wings of an increasingly fractured Labour party.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown position as Prime Minister has come under threat by members of his own party

Meanwhile, the Cabinet heavyweights sent out to counter the message that Mr Brown's days are numbered are, to put it mildly, unimpressive.

John Hutton refuses to condemn the rebels, while chief whip Geoff Hoon says only that a contest is not appropriate 'at this stage'.

But, while this febrile atmosphere builds, the plotters appear clueless as to what happens next. Characterised by a failure to go beyond junior ministerial posts, they are political pygmies.

And how this shows in their inability to find the discipline to coalesce around any single candidate to replace Mr Brown, should one exist.

Perhaps they are hoping that, by forcing a leadership contest, someone will emerge to lead Labour away from electoral annihilation. How naive.

Mr Brown insists he is the right man to guide his party and the country through troubled times and there is not even a hint to suggest that he would readily walk away from a job he coveted for so long.

Most likely, he would fight, and no significant rival would stand against him.

David Miliband is recovering from his aborted summer coup, while Alan Johnson looks disinterested.

Jack Straw  -  though certainly not without further ambition  -  won't want blood upon his steady hands.

Similarly, it looks unlikely the rebels will persuade a Cabinet delegation to ask Mr Brown to go.

Thus, the plotters' efforts would most likely engineer only a distracting contest between Mr Brown and a token left-wing candidate (or, worse, an arch-Blairite Charles Clarke figure) which would not do Labour or the country a jot of good.

Meanwhile, the Tories continue to enjoy the luxury of avoiding proper scrutiny.

Last week, a clutch of prospective MPs posed for a cringe-making photograph in a society magazine.

On Sunday, it emerged David Cameron was paid for helping with his own saccharine biography, penned by the editor of a trendy 'style bible'.

Did Labour exploit these crass stunts? No.

It was too busy blasting itself in the foot. It is time for the selfish in-fighting to stop and for Britain's interests to come first.

Omagh needs justice

The failure to secure justice for the 31 victims of the Omagh bomb is a deep scar on the history of Northern Ireland.

Police have spent £16m pursuing the Real IRA killers.

Yet not one murder conviction has been secured; only one such case has even reached the courts... and that collapsed.

Conspiracy theorists have long held that police were denied all the evidence  -  that it was not politically expedient to solve the crime while a fragile peace process was unfolding.

Now those flames are fanned by claims the UK's electronic intelligence agency, GCHQ, recorded mobile phone exchanges between the bombers on the day of the attack.

Whether GCHQ was listening to these coded conversations 'live', and could therefore have helped foil the plot, demands urgent investigation.

Equally, were police given the full details of these conversations by GCHQ straight after the attack, when the opportunity to gather evidence was greatest?

Without answers to these questions, the conspiracy theories will grow. After ten painful years, the Omagh families, so generously supported by Mail readers, surely have a right to know the truth.