Saturday, June 06, 2009

Last Days in the Bunker?

The events of the last few days, for any supporters of the Labour Party, have been horrible. The election results, we knew, were going to be dire but to read of Gordon Brown attempting to reshuffle his cabinet, trying to preserve an air that he had some degree of choice, was more than painful. At the same time, Ministers have been resigning all over the place - Purnell bluntly, Hutton guardedly and Flint bitchily.



Brown has a cabinet in place and, I suppose in practice, can continue to govern but he looks more and more like a dead man walking. Clearly his hands were tied by events and people have stayed in jobs simply because he does not have the clout to move them.

He appeared on television and recited his usual mantra about being the man for the job, pushing Britain out of recession etc etc and there have been calls now to unite around the new government - naturally.

But how long can this frail knocked-together group last. Brown looks like a man with a bunker mentality - going on and on pretending he is leading the nation when everyone else sees him as a lame duck. I'm sure he means what he says. He believes in his destiny. He always has. But can he not see that the ranks of those who agree with him have withered away so fast that he is almost talking to himself.

It is clear he wanted this job so badly that he is going to hang on to it unless shifted by a force of Labour opposition within the parliamentary party. If Gordon Brown really loves the Labour Party, he should bite the biggest bullet of his life - and hand its Premiership to someone else. With Brown at the helm the party is headed for one of its biggest electoral defeats of all time.

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