Tonight:
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The mystery of Labour is not that so many people are trying to lead it but that so few of those tipped as contenders are at all keen on the prospect. This version of Britain's Got Talent is made up of a cast who might theoretically like to win but don't want to be seen trying.
Harriet Harman at least offers clarity by ruling herself out of a pre-election leadership contest. On a close reading, however, it is not quite clear that her "I do not want to be leader" would still apply if Gordon Brown had already stood down in the wake of a defeat, in which case her recourse to remaining "Gordon's loyal deputy" would no longer be binding.
Rather like reading the small print of insurance contracts, it's in the footnotes, not in the bold print, that the truth can lurk.
The present rictus is a bout of shuffling and positioning for a contest which could come to pass if Mr Brown's June rout in the local and European elections tips the balance and he is hounded out.
It is more likely to drip on until the general election and the real fight. The PM was crowned leader without a contest: it is asking a lot in a democracy to impose another Prime Minister without the courtesy of consulting the Demos.
In these circumstances, some candidates are best served by loyalty, others need to stick their necks out. Ms Harman and Ed Balls are two possibles close to Mr Brown and his political thinking.
As such, they would be badly advised to agitate now when their man is in trouble: loyalty at such times is their calling card. Also, one of them may very well secure his backing - and while that does not look like much of a gift now, it will certainly be a factor in swaying a confused and demoralised party seeking to avoid a major schism after a Tory victory.
With no one soaraway candidate in mind it seems safer to stick with the devil they know. That is precisely what Brownites are counselling.
"Just show me one of this lot who has half the grip on the economic crisis Gordon has or the contacts to deal with it,"sighs one ally. "There's no major disagreement about Gordon's solution to the economic crisis: what would we be having a contest about?"
Nonetheless, the manoeuvrings of these days indicate that the battle lines are being set and will only harden. Downing Street is thick with rumours of a punitive reshuffle.
Alongside the accident-prone Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears is also rumoured to be facing the chop for pointing out what everyone else knows: that the Government's is not communicating effectively. In my view, Ms Smith has it coming: Ms Blears emphatically does not.
Let's not forget that, on his own team's calculations, this was supposed to be an "up" period for Gordon, after his first bad slump in the wake of the botched election decision.
So much so that his lieutenants discussed a few months ago the option of a June election, on the grounds that he would be undergoing such a happy bounce after the G20 summit and with the voters duly recognisant of his stewardship in the economic turmoil.
Yes, well. Mr Brown looks irascible and exhausted, his parliamentary management has frayed to absurdity. He gets credit in some elevated quarters for coming up with a stimulus package and bank-saving interventions but not much in terms of public recognition.
The YouTube mockery bit so deep because it made him a laughing stock. Leaders would rather be disliked than derided and Mr Brown is a proud, sore man right now.
John Prescott's gurning imitation of "the worst smile in the world" was not knockabout - Mr Prescott thumps where it hurts, in this case, at the PM's weakness as the Government's front man.
But where is the alternative? Far from killing each other to get the job, this lot keep swerving to avoid it. Alan Johnson emerges as the soaraway preference, despite having announced that he did not think he was Prime Minister material.
Humorous and personally engaging, no one really knows where he stands on any matter where there is a clear choice for Labour to make. To his credit, he is the first to admit to moments of flummoxed confusion. I once asked him if he were a meritocrat or an egalitarian, only for him to reply, "An egalitarian." (short pause) "That's the wrong answer these days isn't it?"
A vote for him would be seen as transitional - ditto Jack Straw. Age alone would make it unlikely that they would be counted on to steal back the crown from David Cameron.
So a more overt challenge is likely to come from someone who believes that the party needs to regain the centre ground and does not see the present trials of capitalism as an excuse to relapse into a Leftish collectivism.
The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, needs to relaunch himself as a man with a mind of his own, and put behind him a bruising encounter with the limelight around the time of Labour's last party conference, when he showed himself unprepared for the role of Crown Prince.
One thing worth remembering about Mr Miliband is that he has long been primed for a run at the top job (not least by his old boss Tony Blair). It would be surprising if he simply retreated to allow someone else an easy passage to the top. He will, however, have to signal his own desire to lead the party before he can expect it to want him.
Even he is deemed insufficiently robust by those who believe that the Tories could turn out to be more successful than Labour has assumed. James Purnell is one of the few thinking Labour figures who does understand that possibility and its consequences for the centre-Left.
Alas, carrying the cross of welfare reform in a recession is hardly a job from which a vast fan base can be created. Also, he does not feel settled, at a time when top politicians are expected to embody values of stability as well as preach them. "What he really needs," says one supporter, "is a wife and kids." See what you can do there, James.
Two very different women are set to play a key part in the next chapter of Labour's long talent contest.
Ms Harman, if she really does stay out of the fray, will bequeath a lot of support to another candidate and once again survive a key transition.
At the other end of the spectrum, Ms Blears has established herself as a character with a mind (and mouth) of her own who is not going to be so easily shut up when the real scrap kicks off.
There is always a place for irreverence in politics. Mr Cameron understood that when he set out to make the Tories feel less stuffy and dared to joke about the party's gin-and-golf image.
Alas, spontaneity is one of the assets which has dwindled away in Government to the point where we know when a minister pops up on TV exactly what he or she will say.
Whoever finds the nerve, strength and sheer bloody-mindedness to try to lead Labour needs to remedy that before we all find the off-switch.
Reader views (10)
Gordon Brown is like the Fence Post Tortoise on top of the post. Its not his natural situation. He didn't get where he is by himself. He cannot do anything because he doesn't know what to do. He cannot turn anywhere, and he cannot get down by himself.
Maybe soon somebody is going to give him a mighty push, and he will be gone.
- Uncle Vanya, East Anglia Area UK
"Anyway if Labour was that bad why did they manage to win 3 election"!!
They managed to win three elections because unfortunately the majority of the electorate were hoodwinked and fed false promises. Get these bungling, corrupt incompetents out now!
- G S Randall, hatfield, herts
Rob, London - We still have an NHS free at the point of use.
Pensioners have a winter fuel allowance to help make up for the cut in the earning link introduced by the tories.
Anyway if Labour was that bad why did they manage to win 3 election!!
Finally list 10 Cameron policies that are not linked to making the top 3% even wealthier?
old DC cant even think of questions to ask so how can he supply answers?
- Melvyn Windebank, Canvey Island, Essex
Lead the Labour party ? Like orienteering with the wrong map !
- Wills, Soton
"If there is a single Labour supporter left in London would they please list 10 major achievements of the NuLab era? I can't think of one, not a single solitary one"
Look, I'm a very angry member (just) of the Labour Party, and there are an awful lot of bad policies but some of the achievements which remind my of why i'm Labour are waiting times for operations halved, free local bus travel for over-60s, free entry to museums and gallaries, getting rid of hereditary peers (next prpoerly democratise the House of Lords), the national minimum wage, devolution for Scotland and Wales, restoring local government to London, the Northern Ireland peace process, free TV licences for over-75s, the right to paid holidays (we had no legal right before), paternity leave for new fathers, increasing aid to the developing world.
So yes, we now all know that Tory policies - like dereugulation and privatisation - don't work, and that worshiping finance rather than industry has been a tragic error, but there are still some things I am proud of and that have benefitted Londoners.
- Rob, London, UK
That crafty man Blair handed over the leadership on the edge of a precipice, it was never going to be an easy ride for Brown, the so called good days were at an end. Unfortunately Brown in keeping with many truely intelligent men, does not have the charisma to carry it off in bad times. It is not like me to feel slightly sorry for a Socialist, but he has not had the rub of the green, he must take some of the blame for past years.
Cameron on the other hand is a completely unknown quantity. God help Britannia and all who sail in her.
- Peter, Reading
If there is a single Labour supporter left in London would they please list 10 major achievements of the NuLab era? I can't think of one, not a single solitary one unless you count:
open borders madness, Iraq war, boom & bust, Northern Rock, Baroness Uddin/snouts, Jacqui Smith porn films, McBride poison emails, Harman's white man-hating law, etc etc.
So who gonna call to say yourselves The Iron Chipmunk, Blears? Yeah, right.
- Undercover Elephant, London
gGary, don't be too sure that Labour won't win an election. There may be more than enough voters in Labour's State dependent Client base who would be totally lost without Big Brother "looking after" them.
The fact that their grandchildren, or even their children will have to live in a yet to be defined and very frightening "fourth world" would not bother them one bit, as long as they can still snarf at the public teat.
- Steve, London, UK
Spot on Anne.
But when the Party calls ... all McLabours' great and 'good' are stirred to 'action'; and even their comfy, crumpled, trundling 'armchair', that useless, union renegade Johnson, feels moved to greater things.
The oddest incident this week, though, surely must have been the, strangely unreported, No10 episode of Mandelson grooming the now manic Brown, during a series of TV interviews in an effort to 'calm him down' after his explosive ranting at a mixed group of media reporters.
Coming on the back of 'flying Nokias' and a wildly vandalised printer, will crazy carpet chewing be the next alarming symptom of tyranical madness?.
Methinks that the vindictive and duplicitous Mandelson, who last week told of his own poltical career being wrecked by Brown 'in a three way marriage with Blair', and who only days before that publicly complained [to a broadsheet] that Brown had also cruelly 'deceived' him, is now, in a perverse pretence of loyalty, sadistically slowly starting to cruelly torture Brown.
Certain for some time that the game's up, Mandy's impaling of Brown on the altar of New Labour will ensure his 'delightfully' agonising demise, and thus destroy Old Labour.
The always mistrusting and now desperate Brown must wonder who he can 'genuinely' turn to for help.
The wonderfully macabre thing about his self created darkly disingenuous Downing Street is, he can't!
In the final act of this tragedy ... enter ...
The Dark Lord Mandelson, aka Dr Death.
- Dave, Cumbria
Gordon browns legacy will ensure Labour is unelectable for at least the next 30 years, who wants to lead that?
- Gary, London UK
