If the rebels prevail, Brown could be ousted in days

[Morris Onions]

Labour MPs have a real and interesting opportunity. Let us be quite clear. If the rebellion over the 10p tax rate abolition continues to gather pace and the rebels hold their nerve, they can get rid of Gordon Brown as early as next week. The Tories, it seems, will line up with an amendment from Labour's Frank Field to insist on a compensation package for those who will be worse off under the new tax rates. If Labour lost that vote, it would be all up for the prime minister.

It would be curtains because of the issue itself. Brown's selling point as a politician has always been his concern for the poor. To fight and lose a key vote about taking hundreds of pounds of extra cash from more than 5 million of the poorest voters would be too big a humiliation to survive. Ahead of every knife-edge vote, government whips go around implying to possible rebels that the prime minister could resign. It happened with Blair and the Iraq war, as well as on foundation schools, and it happened time and again in the John Major years. This time, with Brown, it cannot be a bluff. He has stamped his authority on this so clearly that to lose would finish him.

Labour is doing so badly in the polls that quite a lot of backbenchers, and even ministers, are saying behind their hands: "Good thing too, let's call that bluff and have a change of leader while we can." Some are dropping their hands and saying it openly.

Last week I did a television interview with John McDonnell, the leftwing MP who tried to challenge Brown first time round. He told me that "We are very close to the edge", and added: "I would like a leadership election now ... We should have the leadership election we never had. Let's ask Gordon Brown, what do you really stand for? Let the Blairites put up their candidate ... Let's have a contest now and clear the air." When I asked him whether he would stand, he unhesitatingly said yes.

This is real. For Labour to have scheduled the vote on the 10p tax rate days ahead of the local elections, and with London on a knife edge, seems an act of incompetence so breathtaking that I'm left wondering whether it's a Baldrick-like cunning plan. Maybe the idea is to spook Labour MPs so badly they pull back and kill the Field amendment. If so, it has an air of desperation that reminds me of Major's decision to stand down as party leader and flush out John Redwood to fight him. And I seem to remember that Baldrick's wheezes tended to end, well, not very happily.

....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/21/gordonbrown.economy

[LeftishBrit]

1. For a serious leadership challenge...

the party would (a) need to decide and unite around a single person, who (b) they would see as more likely than Brown to win the next election. Neither (a) nor (b) seems to be likely: there's no single obvious personm whom they'd support, and at present keeping Brown would probably be less electorally dangerous than a bloody within-party fight (this might change if the recession got MUCH worse). In fact, if Brown was run over by the proverbial bus tomorrow, the Labour Party would probably instantly form a circular firing squad.

[non sociopath skin]

2. This seems to be the continuation of an in-house barney between Guardian Op-Ed commentators ...

... which has gone on for some time now.

I'm afraid I'd need a little more evidence than that that the knives were out.

The Skin