Is this the most likely “end-game” scenario?

Whenever the question of the manner of Gordon’s eventual departure is discussed three different possibilities are raised: that he’ll go after leading Labour to an inglorious defeat at the hands of David Cameron; that he’ll be ousted in a bloody coup; or that he will, like other Prime Ministers before him, stand down on health grounds.

Only a few have suggested that he might come to recognise that his leadership is undermining his party against the dreaded Tories and that he will just fall on his sword. The very idea of this is so alien to the images that Brown projects that the notion just gets swept aside.

I think that this might be wrong. For the one enduring quality about Gordon is that he is totally wedded to the Labour movement and he is fully versed in its history. He will be only too aware of the way that his short leadership might be portrayed. To make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the movement by voluntarily giving up the post he had strived for most of his adult life might appear better than hanging on until the end.

This is a massive pill to swallow and Gordon takes a long time making the big decisions. But if all the evidence is pointing one way he could, I believe, do it.

The Labour blogger, Paul Linford, in an excellent post at the weekend on what happens next wrote“..I think it entirely plausible that Mr Brown will fall on his own sword. The one thing he has always been is a party man”.

There are several betting markets – I’m in big on the line up of party leaders at the next election where I got an effective 5/1 on Cameron being the only one from last July who would still be there. It’s now tightened to 1.62/1.

Mike Smithson