Are the Blairites trying to lose?

  “Out of the night that covers me; Black as the Pit from pole to pole; I thank whatever gods may be; For my unconquereble soul”.  Those who’ve been speculating about the Prime Minister’s state of mind had further material yesterday in those lines from “Invictus” by the High Victorian poet William E Henley, which Gordon Brown says consoled him during his recent trials.  The poem also gave moral sustainance to Nelson Mandela when he was incarcertated in Robben Island. 

  Make of that what you will.  Certainly, there is a darkness surrounding Gordon Brown’s personality.  But there is also defiance, dogged determination.  He is, in lines from the same poem, “bloody, but unbowed”,  a fighter not a quitter. Which makes it all the more bizarre that the leaders of the Midwinter Mutiny last week bothered with their comic-opera coup.   Over the weekend, commentators struggled to explain why two senior Labour politicians, Geof Hoon and Patricia Hewitt - not noted for their rebelliousness in the past -  should  have launched their  revolt when they hadn’t even secured the backing of any cabinet ministers, let alone significant back bench support.  Surely they realised that this prime minister would need a whole army of grey suits to prise his bitten finger nails from the door of Number Ten. 

   It didn’t make sense, and it still doesn’t.  Why did Hoowitt choose to strike in the very week when Labour appeared to be recovering in the opinion polls and Gordon Brown had his best outing at Prime Minister’s Question Time in months?  Why, indeed, launch an attack on the Labour leadership at the very moment when the Tory leader, David Cameron, had stumbled into his worst policy error since he became leader over tax reliefs for married couples? Do they want Labour to lose the election?  A BBC/Daily Politics poll on Thursday showed that 60% now believe Labour is the most divided party -  and as we know a house divided is a house defeated. 

   Well maybe they do want Labour to lose.  It may seem unbelievable that Labour politicians who have devoted their lives to the Labour Party would actually want  to lose the general election.  We haven’t had that kind of active disloyalty since the days of the far Left Militant Tendency that tried to wreck the Labour government of  Jim Callaghan in the 1970s.  But I’m having great difficulty coming up with any other explanation.  It’s not the first time either.  Think back to the ‘Night of the Stilletos’ in June when three women cabinet ministers resigned along with the work and pensions secretary, James Purnell. That was on the eve of the European elections, which Labour went on to lose so badly that it came third behind UKIP.   Even then Brown stayed put.

  Could it be that Blairite diehards are now afraid Brown might remain in charge even after a general election defeat?  Are they now trying to ensure that Labour goes down so badly that there is no question of Brown remaining as leader?  I’m beginning to think that this is the only plausible explanation.  Certainly, the destabilisation campaign is continuing.  Yesterday, Geof Hoon released highly damaging correspondence to the Sunday Times suggesting that the Prime Minister vetoed the purchase of vital military helicopters for British troops fighting in Afghanistan. This is tantamount to saying that Gordon Brown endangered the lives of British soldiers.  Serious stuff - especially since Hoon, the former defence secreatary, is due to appear before the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War.  Moreover, the current defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth a close friend of Hoon, is thought to be on the point of resignation over the situation in Afghanistan. 

  In another move clearly designed to destabilise the Prime Minister, the former general secretary of the Labour Party, Peter Watt, has said that Gordon Brown is not fit to be in Number Ten.   In a book serialised in the Mail on Sunday he gives further evidence of the PM’s unpopularity in his own government. He quotes one of Brown’s longest and closest political allies, the development secretary, Douglas Alexander, as saying:  “We’ve spent 10 years working with Gordon and we don;t like him.  The more the public get to know him he less they will like him too.” Watt also reveals bungling and treachery over the abortive 2007 election-that-never-was and over the “donorgate” affair when businessman David Abrahams was allowed to disguise his cash payments to Labour by registering them under false names. The former general secretary claims he was lied to and set up by Brown. 

   The Watt revelations are clearly motivated by personal grievance , and some of the charges - such as that Gordon Brown sulked at a dinner party with US politicians - are faintly ridiculous.  Nevertheless, scheduling this embarrassing account of domestic life in the Brown cabinet on the eve of a crucial general election campaign remains highly damaging, and calculating.  Watt’s actions should surely be condemned by every member of the Labour Party.  Indeed, you wonder how the party can expect its footsoldiers to start canvassing the icy doorsteps this winter when the leadership seems to have acquired a death wish. But once again, this could be exactly what the Blairites want:  to so weaken Labour morale as to guarantee a Tory landslide.   

    If this is indeed all part of a ‘scorched earth’ campaign by the New Labour old guard - and I’m not the only person who’s thinking this - then the sections of the party that are not determined to lose the election need to consider how they respond. It’s one thing to believe privately that Brown isn’t up to it; quite another to side with the Tories.  Retaliation is necessary,  but it is hard to fight back without making he party look even more divided.   

    Brown’s last line of defence is the Scottish MPs who have in the past acted as defenders of Labour’s core values and as his Praetorian Guard.   Perhaps they need to make a move now to isolate the Right and ensure that Labour, under Brown, fights a principled campaign based on social democratic policies.  Following the financial crisis, and given the behaviour of the banks, this should be Labour’s moment.  The public are waiting for a lead against the plutocrats and banksters. It isn’t too late. Time for all good men, and women, to come to the aid of the Labour Party.

Midwinter mutiny leaves Brown dead in water, Miliband overboard.

  The best thing to be said about the latest tragicomic episode in the decline and fall of New Labour, was that the latest coup attempt was at least quickly over.  In fact, it was over almost before it began,  on Wednesday lunchtime when the Labour former cabinet ministers, Patricia Hewitt and Geof Hoon launched their kamikaze raid on the Prime Minister’s bunker.  The move was so preposterously mistimed - in the middle of the deepest freeze in thirty years and with an election campaign only weeks away - that no one in their right minds could take it seriously.  Eighteen months ago, perhaps.  Last summer, maybe.  But on the eve of an election?  Barking. Not so much the men in grey suits as the men in white coats. 

 The PM is someimrd compared with Joseph Stalin in his rigid approach to party loyalty, but Stalin never had to face anything so inept.  It’s as if the plotters had all liquidated themselves instead of targeting their leader.  No need for show trials with enemies like these.  One MP said that Charles Clarke, the arch Blairite former health secretary who has was one of the ringleaders, was like “a suicide bomber who only kills his own friends and family”. 

  

  The midwinter mutineers had clearly hoped finally to winkle out Gordon Brown’s cabinet critics, bouncing them into the open, but even this was botched. They briefed journalists to the effect that the Scottish Secretary, Jim Murphy, was one of those willing to wield the knife. Anyone who knows the ultra-loyalist Murphy would realise that this was ridiculous, as Murphy made clear on his own website.  New media is adding an interesting new dimension to political coverage.  Unattributable briefings can be almost instantly denied now by politicians writing in their own blogs, making it much more difficult for malicious rumours to spread,

  Indeed, you might call this an analogue coup in a digital age.  Things move too fast now, with twenty four hour news and the internet, for backstage plots to work.  The cabinet ‘rebels’ couldn't afford to wait around to see if there was much support for the plot on the backbenches  before deciding which way to jump.  It was back Brown or sack him within hours -  delaying for six hours made David Miliband look like a dangerous rebel.  

   The prime minister is damaged, of course, by this latest challenge to his leadership, however farcical.  It confirms the continuing dissent in the party and the government over his leadership, while also making the Labour party look a laughing stock.  Piss ups and breweries come inevitably to mind.  If they can’t organise a coup properly, how can they be expected to run the country?  If David Miliband is the best they have got, then God help all of us if he ever becomes prime minister. 

   The boy wonder may charm women of a certain age, like Hillary Clinton, but he is manifestly unsuited to the role of leadership. Three abortive coups have been mounted in his interest, leaving a trail of ministerial casualties in their wake.  The first was sparked by Miliband himself when he set out his stall in a Guardian article before the 2008 Labour conference, announcing that the party needed a new direction.  That ended famously with Miliband wagging a banana disconsolately at the cameras after he disowned the rebellion he had inspired.  But among those who lost their careers as a result was junior minister, Siobhan McDonagh and the former Scottish secretary, David Cairns.  Then in June 2009, the high-flighing cabinet minister, James Purnell, committed political suicide by leading a ministerial walkout following Labour’s disastrous showing in the European elections, when they came third after UKIP.  Miliband sat on his hands and then backed Brown - just as he did this week.  His belated endorsement on Wednesday sounding about as enthusiastic as a sun cream salesman in mid winter.  Hewitt, Hoon and Clarke now have to answer to their constituency associations for their incomprehensible act of pre-election treachery and will justifiably find their true place in the rogues gallery of Labour hate figures.

   But there was more.  The cabinet ministers who denied joining the plot then briefed journalists to the effect that they had all wrung concessions from Gordon Brown on the back of it. Alistair Darling got assurances on the government being more honest about spending cuts, Harriet Harman on being less nasty and blokeish, and Jack Straw, that Brown would abandon the class war against Tory toffs.  This made matters even worse, confirming the depths of cabinet discontent with Brown and making it look as if the PM was being held hostage by his own cabinet. 

   Needless to say, the Tories are laughing like a drain. After all, it was the week when David Cameron admitted he had “messed up” his own manifesto pledge on tax relief to married couples.  It doesn’t get much worse than that, and yet it was Labour that crashed and burned.   This inept and divided government will surely now drift aimlessly to defeat in May when Gordon Brown finally meets his date with the voters.  Though no doubt he will be looking for any pretext for delay, arguing that the risk of an asteroid hitting the earth means an election would not be in the national interest.

   For what it’s worth, Alan Johnson, the affable home secretary is the probably winner in the leadership stakes.  His humility and loyalty will have elevated him in the eyes of the party, since he was the only member of the cabinet who wasn’t looking out for number one last week.   A shoo-in when Brown goes.   Lord Mandelson of Foy consolidates his place as Her Majesty’s Fixer-in-Waiting. Mandy was once again the centre of attention as he offered just enough support to Brown to make it look as if he were indispensable to the government while carefully distancing himself from his boss. 

   And for Labour? Well, the immediate future looks bleak. The party will be racked with recrimination and remorse after defeat at the election.  Brown is hoping to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, but Nick Clegg is making clear they don’t want a deal with him. This Labour government, and Brown personally, will be in the dock of history for the most irresponsible credit boom since the South Sea Bubble.  But at least in opposition Labour will be able to rediscover its soul.  That’s if it still has one.