The timing of various ministerial departures has given the impression of a government in meltdown, writes Frank Millar in London
GORDON BROWN is now facing a fight for survival. MPs and ministers have yet to discover the extent of today’s vote in the European and English county council elections which are being predicted will be the “worst ever” for Labour.
There is no evidence of a co-ordinated cabinet conspiracy to unseat the prime minister, nor of a backbench revolt suggesting that Labour is ready to follow the Guardian’s exhortation to “cut him loose”.
Yet the challenge to Brown’s leadership is already out there, the starting gun fired yesterday by departing communities secretary Hazel Blears (pictured below) who – as the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson observed – acted with clear intent. In a resignation statement omitting any tribute to the prime minister’s leadership or policies, and pledging her own intent to help Labour “reconnect” with the British public, Blears was putting her colleagues on notice that they have a critical week or so in which to decide whether they could possibly fare worse under an alternative leader. In normal times the departure of Blears should have been considered helpful to the prime minister. He, likewise, should not have been considered damaged by Jacqui Smith’s premature announcement that she will vacate the home office in the reshuffle which Brown hopes will successfully relaunch his government in the aftermath of today’s expected electoral disaster.
Blears was disloyal and had attacked her leader (in coded form, of course) shortly before her embarrassment over her expenses and apparent avoidance of capital gains tax on the sale of a second home in London.
Apart altogether from the mocking disbelief that greeted the earlier (pre-Telegraph) revelation that she had maximised the spending of her allowance on her family home by declaring a room in her sister’s house to be her main residence, Smith has been a singularly undistinguished home secretary.
Brown, then, might actually have been assisted in his task of renewal by these departures. But it is was the timing of them, and a flurry of similar declarations from junior ministers, that gave the impression of a cabinet reshuffling itself and a government “in meltdown”.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman brushed off David Cameron’s suggestion that Brown’s ability to command his cabinet had simply disappeared.
Lord Mandelson, likewise, put up a spirited defence for the cameras, insisting that “the caravan will move on” with the reshuffle. One can imagine that would be the view, too, of people like Shaun Woodward and Ed Balls, who might expect to be among the big winners.
The danger – and Woodward in particular would be shrewd and experienced enough to grasp this – is that personal triumphs in the cabinet stakes over the next few days could prove highly illusory if the Labour Party has lost belief in itself and its ability to recover.
The Conservative leader might be engaged in obvious point- scoring, mocking Brown for having said he had the right team to govern Britain only to find the team seemingly abandoning him. But did Blears, Smith, or any of the others so determined to pre-empt the prime minister, stop for one minute to consider the impact of their statements on Labour’s own “poor bloody infantry” out there on the doorsteps, facing an angry public in a desperate and thankless pitch for votes in today’s contests?
Beyond that, in their haste, did they at all consider the message thus imparted to the great British public? Cameron was handed an obvious gift for prime minister’s questions yesterday, characterising the Blears resignation as a challenge to Brown’s authority. But that hardly invalidates his suggestion that the government appears to be “collapsing before our eyes”.
Labour MPs may have laughed at Nick Clegg’s claim that the real choice now for voters is between the Conservatives and his Liberal Democrats. But there was no mistaking the discomfort of many Labour MPs when Clegg suggested this government was “paralysed by indecision, crippled by infighting, exhausted after 12 long years” in power.
The challenge for those Labour MPs now is to act in a manner that spares the country another agonising 12 months of this.
As the Guardian put it, a decision to hold off from a challenge now must see Labour reconcile itself to stick with its leader to the bitter end.
If they do so decide, however, it will be in the knowledge that the end will be bitter indeed.