Brown Stays Put

Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon didn’t have the guts to knock Gordon Brown out of Downing Street, and he survives again to lead to New Labour to eventual election disaster in May. No surprises there. David Miliband fails to act, the party screams blue murder about fractiousness so close to a general election and everyone goes on as they were. But this didn’t come from nowhere – they all know Brown is going to destroy them, whatever else the spineless two may have said on camera last night. What they didn’t have, and what noone else in the party is offering (at this stage) is new thinking. Extreme neoliberalism is the order of the day, be it Peter Mandelson, Harriet Harman, Jack Straw, Ed Balls, Miliband (either of them I suspect) or any of the other non-entities who would have to carry the can for the next five months, and it is that which is poisoning politics more than anything else, regardless of the nominal advantage it’s giving governments around the world to do as they please most of the time.

No doubt we’ll see more of this as May approaches and the campaign continues to become more urgent. Brown could have been secure by winning on his terms in 2007, but as we know now he’s not a natural (or effective) leader and couldn’t even make that decision. We do deserve better, but while our electoral system remains first-past-the-post I don’t see that happening any time soon.