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The Government is dying by the day. Political decline is a cruel and messy spectacle and Gordon Brown has not even been allowed the dignity of a desperate reshuffle.
Jacqui Smith pre-empted him with her Tosca moment yesterday, standing down before she was stood down.
However this is dressed up, it flouts Mr Brown's last vestige of authority. Ms Smith first said she wanted to go at Easter. She has endured weeks of vilification and mockery meted out to the more outrageous expense claimants, for absent mindedly claiming her husband's porn video consumption.
Had preserving the leader's authority been a consideration, she could have waited two more days for the axe to fall. But she did not because, outside a narrow band of loyalists, decreasingly few ministers remotely care what happens to Gordon Brown.
A mood of grudging tolerance has turned into anger and despair. I am told that the mood at the meeting of the Parliamentary Party on Monday night was “as bad as it was at the height of the Iraq crisis”. In Cabinet, Ministers “make clear” they would like to stay in their jobs, adding further pressure to Mr Brown's recovery strategy with their presumption.
Backbenchers either writhe in expenses torment — or contemplate their majorities and think about alternative careers.
Stolid figures of the parish, such as Beverley Hughes and Patricia Hewitt, depart — Mr Brown just has this way of driving out the women. There's even an unofficial dinner circle of disaffected female ministers and ex-ones called “Wags” — Women Against Gordon.
“It couldn't be any worse,” is the line that is becoming most frequently heard among those who previously warned that dropping the pilot would certainly do just that. A well-argued Guardian editorial today calling for Mr Brown's resignation reflects a growing body of opinion across the party and its natural supporters.
No one doubts that Mr Brown could fight on. His characteristics are robustness, prodigious hard work and a conviction that he is right on the big questions of the day. He has not, however, offered a convincing argument on why remaining is the best option for his party.
“Plunging us into the chaos of a contest” was Lord Hattersley's contra-argument on Newsnight. As opposed to the serene mood of smooth government we have at the moment?
“Practical mechanical things” like a summer recess will save him, inveighed Peter Kilfoyle, another remnant. You can see why Old Labour died, can't you? These are arguments for torpor, not runes for recovery.
Thus Mr Brown's survival is now so tentative that every event or revelation becomes a potential body blow. Unless he can dream up a reshuffle which reshapes his strategy and appeal, his days are numbered. First it must look punitive over expenses excess — so that does for Alistair Darling, Geoff Hoon and (very probably) Hazel Blears, in addition to Ms Smith, on the grounds that their activities attracted most outrage — and retributive justice must be doled out.
It must also show that Mr Brown has an idea of how to regain the field of play. Hence his interest in moving the bullish Education Secretary, Ed Balls to the Chancellorship. To the revelation that the PM “wants Balls as Chancellor”, long-standing observers of the psycho-dramas of Brown Towers can only chorus: “What's new?” He has always wanted his protégé as his right-hand man. Mr Balls, remember, was with his boss on the night of the Granita summit that shaped the Blair-Brown settlement over the leadership in 1994. It goes that deep.
Now is his last fling: there is no more point in waiting and seeing. He needs a Chancellor who can combat the rising authority of George Osborne — and Mr Balls is an economically literate streetfighter, replacing Mr Darling, who bore the strain with dignity and good humour but was an essentially defensive player.
Mr Balls, alas, harvests a special kind of resentment, accumulated over years at the right hand of his master. His preferment, if it does come this week, will be seen as a consolidation of the old religion and underline the schisms in New Labour.
So to add to the small problem of survival and direction, Mr Brown also has a balancing act to perform on Friday. That speaks for a further elevation of Peter Mandelson to Foreign Secretary: Mr Mandelson would love to be the counterweight to Mr Balls, as long as he's in the final triumvirate.
Recall, however, David Miliband's recent interview with this paper. He is circumspect on plans to contest the leadership, respectful of Gordon, and yet the one matter on which he is utterly clear is that he wants to remain in his job. A point he reiterated yesterday.
True, that nice Tony Blair demoted his long-standing ally and erstwhile campaign manager Jack Straw from the same post when he needed to free up Cabinet space. But if too heavily demoted, Mr Miliband would represent a disaffected body of mid-generation politicians with a Blairite background and an axe to grind.
There is still some underused potential lying around: Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne, who combines brain power with resilience, should emerge from his back-room job, though I gather he now spends as much time wiping Gordon's brow in No 10 as he does in his own office.
John Hutton is uselessly becalmed as Defence Secretary, but should be given Education, which sorely needs an enthusiastic champion against an energetic Tory opponent. Some robust soul who likes a high-profile, thankless job needs to take on a demoralised Home Office fed up with Ms Smith's pratfalls and populist hardliners.
But when the shuffle is done, the question remains the same. Can you really imagine Gordon Brown as Prime Minister beyond the next election? From his own ranks, I hear only silence. Gordon is now a ghost of a leader.
Reader views (6)
It's obvious, really. They couldn't care less they're all going to lose their seats at the next election -
they're laughing their heads off at the prospect - and
that was the point of the whole New Labour project, from the start - to destroy the Labour Party. That's the
"job" Brown says he wants to get on with. Who have Blair and Brown been working for since John Smith was got out the way ? Who would want the Labour Party permanently
trashed ? Whoever they are, they're well on the way to
achieving it.
- Les Raphael, Kilmaurs, Scotland, 11/06/2009 14:32
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Brown was always Kato to Blair's Clouseau. The problem is that Kato/Brown's financial clowning means we are living a delayed "Die Hard" scenario instead of "The Pink Panther".
- Jamal Akhbar, Edinburgh, 03/06/2009 15:26
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Ah, if you all could just concentrate our thoughts for a moment and simply WISH them away... Wouldn't that be sweet?
- Max, London, 03/06/2009 14:59
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The rising authority of George Osborne?.The same George Osborne that has been shoved to the background after his shipboard activities and failure to come up with any plan to combat recession.
- Colin, barking essex, 03/06/2009 14:40
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Poor Brown seems to be the yang to Blair's ying,. Blair could do no wrong even when he illegally invaded a nation and Brown can do not right.
I believe his error was in the people he choice around him, he thought he could remove all threats by removing the talent and in the end we find the lunatics were running the asylum! Smith was the Atom bomb which caused the shock waves and looks like the explosion which has killed Brown
- Gary, brentwood 1, 03/06/2009 12:09
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It's just like watching the final minutes of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We all know what's going to happen, only Gormless Gordon is in complete denial "The people want me to get on with the job". No they don't Gormless, they want you out NOW
- Trevn, Abu Dhabi, 03/06/2009 10:59
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