Labour leadership: no change, no chance
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Associate Editor
David Stevenson May 08, 2009
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"Labour – the party no one wants to lead," says Anne McElvoy in the Evening Standard. "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."
Despite the rumblings, there's no official challenger to the current incumbent of Number 10, although "if there is a plot, Gordon Brown has certainly lost it", says Michael Brown in The Independent. However, "talk of a cabinet putsch is probably wide of the mark. The likelihood of huddles of Labour backbench MPs successfully wielding the knife against the prime minister also seems remote."
One formerly fancied runner, Harriet Harman, told the BBC this week, "I do not want to be prime minister, I do not want to be leader of the party. I want Gordon Brown to remain PM after the next election as well as before the election." Meanwhile, Hazel Blears, whose criticism last weekend of Mr Brown's YouTube video as a "lamentable failure" in communication, "has insisted that she backs the prime minister 100%", says the BBC's Ross Hawkins. In any case, "after being soundly beaten in the race to be the party's deputy leader", Blears "is not a frontrunner".
Meanwhile, the schools minister, Ed Balls, is under a cloud due to his association with smear-scandal architect Damian McBride. The former home secretary, Charles Clarke, described the email scandal as "dark arts" practiced by "a poisonous team" of "noxious apparatchiks". His conclusion was that "those ministers who worked very closely with them" need to be "removed from their positions".
That leaves the health secretary, Alan Johnson. Currently grappling with swine flu, Johnson has refused to rule himself out of any future leadership contest. But The Daily Telegraph's Andrew Porter quoted "one minister" as questioning whether Johnson was up to the job: "Alan is likeable enough but people just don't think he has what it takes as a leader. Others, such as Jack (Straw), are not liked a great deal by many MPs and it means that the leadership candidate is difficult to find."
Any 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", says McElvoy, mentioning David Miliband and James Purnell. But "whoever finds the nerve, strength and sheer bloody-mindedness to try to lead Labour" ultimately, "the big question at the next election, likely to take place a year tomorrow, is whether Labour will lose to the Tories or whether Gordon Brown will lose to David Cameron", says Michael Brown. As things stand it looks as though Brown will lose to the Tories because "the voters loathe Brown more than his party – but he'll drag it down with him".
If there was a threat of a coup, I suspect David Cameron and all his Tories will be massed outside Downing Street with the oxygen mask and the resuscitation unit. "Mr Brown's continuing presence as PM is absolutely central to a huge Tory win." As John Redwood said when challenging John Major's leadership, "No change, no chance."
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