Gordon’s Masterstroke : It Might Just Work

It’s been a turbulent week for the Labour Government. Rumours of an internal plot to elbow Gordon Brown out, a fall in popularity over the worsening economic situation and very public blame being laid at Brown’s doorstep by David Cameron at the Conservative Conference have made the future of Brown’s government look decidedly dicey.

The smart-suited slick young foreign minister David Miliband looked likely to slide into Brown’s job should the rumoured putsch go ahead. He appeared confident at the Labour Conference last week and said that he supported Brown to the end. Yet interestingly when he talked about policies that had gone bad he was defending what ‘they did’ but when he talked about the future of the New Labour government it was what ‘we’ would do to fix it. I have to say, I felt sorry for Brown as Miliband’s smarmy words woved an even more complex web of doubt around him. When he stood up to speak about the troubled leader, Miliband defended Brown based on his work in the area of foreign relations (surpise surprise) and not on any of the things Brown had set out to do.

Then came the lack of confidence of his party. Ruth Kelly announced she was stepping down as Transport Secretary for ‘family reasons.’ John Cruddas turned down Brown’s offer of a government job. Things were not looking good for the PM.

Then Brown pulled, what I think was, a masterstroke. He hopped in his time machine and went back thirteen years to before Peter Mandelson ditched him for that dashing young firecracker, Tony Blair, and asked Pete to help him mend his sinking ship. Yes indeed, the thirteen year feud is over and Mandelson has thrown the cat well and truly amongst the pidgeons. Yes, while the new kids were pulling strings all around Brown in an effort to make everything unravel around him, the old man showed the whippersnappers how it’s really done by bringing in the Mandelson. No one seems to have any idea what to do about this or how to react. Miliband has been put back in his box. And Cameron is where he belongs – in cartoons in the back of the Observer.

What does this mean for Brown and the future of the cabinet? Well, I won’t deny that it’s clutching at straws. But in the game of political clutching at straws, this really is how it’s done. Find the most unlikely, obscure, headline making straw that is so obviously a big old crutch of a straw that everyone is too impressed by your gall to be sceptical. The media is having a field day and is too excited by the reigniting of the torch of the government of 1998 to get on Gordon’s back about this. Realistically, this is a change, but not enough of a change to alter the fate of the party. Unlike the scenario in the US, the party that has been in government too long really seems to be trying hard to show they should stay there by making themselves different (well, different form the last 5 years anyway.) It’s a more stylish straw clutching. It might save Brown’s ship from sinking in a humiliating fashion in the middle of an economic tempest, and keep it on course long enough to see it safely into the dock. But make no mistake, the doc is where it’s heading. Or at least it should be. It’s been 11 years of the Labour government, and Brown didn’t come in to trumpets blaring. It’s time to call time on the government, but not with some attempt to jump on the back of Brown while he flounders.

Bring on the next election, and let Brown bow out gracefully as he leads his party with pride. I hope he’ll be handing the keys to the Lib Dems, an inherently sensible party, but I live in the real world most of the time, so it’ll probably be the Tories. But I think a few years is just what New Labour needs to get focused on what makes Labour a worthwhile party in the first place, and to really sort things out within the ranks and become a party with a vision, a hunger and the ability to shape the furture of Britain.