(The "Gordon Brown is Toast" graphic is by Ollie Cromwell at the Red Rag Online)Gordon Brown is to step down later this year, and his successor should be in place by the time of the Labour Party Conference in September.
He remains Prime Minister for now, under the same constitutional 'loophole' as for the past several days.
This will obviously make it easier for Labour to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, should such an offer be forthcoming; and it is interesting to view this development in the context of the reported telephone and face-to-face encounters between those two parties' leaders during this past weekend. Indeed,
Brown has strongly hinted at this in his statement, which you can watch in full here. My first thought was, though: was he pushed? We all know that he would not have been willing to go of his own volition, so there's almost certainly something (and someone) behind this move.
On the face of it, the country will mostly be pleased to see the back of Brown; but if the consequence were to be a Lab/Lib/SNP/Plaid/etc. mega-coalition government of (more or less) all the election losers, that wouldn't go down very well! Worst of all, it would actually exclude the only almost-winner of the election. Fortunately, it looks as if the Lib-Con talks have been generally successful, and a deal might well be agreed within hours or a day or so.
The other issue to arise from the resignation news is, of course, who will take over as Labour party leader? The players should become evident during the next few days, but I doubt there'll be any surprises: Harman, the two Milibands, Balls, possibly Johnson and/or Cruddas.
An anti-Tory rainbow pact probably wouldn't hold together more than a month or two at best. Cobbling them all together would be a bit like herding cats and I very much doubt the electorate would forgive or forget at the next general election (probably November)
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem might be a gerrymandered voting pr scam that is deliberately designed to keep the Tories out of power forever and a day.
Bet Cameron wishes he'd been a bit nicer to UKIP now instead of chasing after the pink and environmental vote.
The stopping in its tracks of this disgusting and cynical disregard of the broad wish of the voters may fall to those Labour and Libdem MPs who are so appalled by the schemes of their leaders that they might choose to resign their respective whips rather than have their seats counted in the losers’ coalition.
ReplyDeleteI do not suggest that any should defect to the Conservatives, but in this one instance it might not be seen as a dishonourable thing.
Thanks for both the above comments, folks.
ReplyDeleteI think you are both generally correct, and the PR (AV) offer by Gordon Brown to the Lib Dems is something that he cannot deliver.
A lot of Labour MPs (especially in Scotland) will vote against it, especially as it is being proposed without a referendum first.
I don't think they'd have to change party allegiance, and it would be fatal for the Whip to be withdrawn from so many MPs at once so almost certainly wouldn't be done. However, the rebels' ministerial prospects would be permanently impaired...
As for the UKIP question: that I do believe is a red herring. Far more votes have been gained since the 2005 election by pursuing a 21st century "compassionate Conservatism" agenda than lost.
The lack of an overall majority is almost certainly down to a combination of gerrymandered boundaries, the "bought votes" of Labour's client state, large-scale postal vote fraud (some of the allegations of which is currently being investigated) and media (especially BBC) biased reporting.
Those of us who have been campaigning on the ground are well aware of the public mood, and in particular how it has changed so markedly since the last time we did the same thing before a General Election.