DEFEATED IN Scotland and Wales, at a mere eight per cent of the vote in south-east England, with its lowest national vote since 1918 and with less than 20 per cent of that vote for the first time since 1910, the British Labour Party has decided not to abandon its leader Gordon Brown.
These disastrous results in the European and local elections notwithstanding, its parliamentary party was convinced that with no credible alternative leader or programme on offer, and with the certain prospect of an even more calamitous autumn general election if they replaced Mr Brown, it was better to stick with him. In organising his survival he displayed all the backroom political arts that got him the job in 2007 and held out a slim prospect of recovery ahead of next year’s election.
Confirmation that the recent moves to oust the prime minister are at an end came from foreign secretary David Miliband yesterday morning in a revealing comment. One of the principal figures touted as a replacement for Mr Brown, he said: “The Labour Party does not want a new leader, there is no vacancy, there is no challenger. The leading contender, Alan Johnson, is backing the prime minister to the hilt. So that is that.” Mr Brown’s success in convincing his party he should stay even in the midst of this perfect storm owes much to his mastery of machine politics. By first recruiting and then promoting Peter Mandelson in last Friday’s reshuffle he neutralised Blairite opposition to him and gained a crucial advocate in his argument that the party must buy time for an autumn recovery.
Mr Brown frankly admitted at the parliamentary meeting that “like everyone else, I have my strengths and weaknesses. I am going to play to my strengths and address my weaknesses . . . I have to learn how to be a full-time prime minister and a full-time leader of the Labour Party”. He hopes a programme for democratic renewal to be announced next week can retrieve some lost ground, as will a later reform package containing legislative plans for the last term of this parliament. By the autumn green economic shoots may be more in evidence and the recent expenses debacle may have receded. It remains to be seen whether he is capable of changing his political style within Labour or in communicating his government’s priorities and achievements to such a sceptical electorate. If some or all of this fails by October or November, the political impetus which drove this rebellion could easily be rekindled when Labour MPs face as bleakly as now into next year’s election under Mr Brown’s leadership.
Aside from some uncanny similarities between the current misfortunes of the British Labour Party and Fianna Fáil, the timing of the next UK election has major implications for Ireland. Conservative leader David Cameron has proposed a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on the same day as Ireland’s revote on the treaty as part of his campaign against deeper European integration. Had Mr Brown not survived, this would have pitched both states into an overlapping campaign. Even without a British election its emboldened Euroscepticism is set to influence Ireland’s renewed debate on Lisbon.