Is HenryG right – this is the big news of the day?
Will the Labour movement rise up against their leader?
HenryG, a long-standing PB regular and contributor of guest slots about Labour’s internal workings, wrote on the previous thread that “…the big news today is the Polly Toynbee article on why Brown should go. Pretty devastating and gives clear instructions to the PLP.”
The continuing expenses story, now with the focus on the Tories, has somewhat distracted from Polly’s totally damning column about Gordon and her call for a replacement ASAP – possibly even before the June 4th elections.
This is a taste her attack: “…It’s all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month’s European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them? The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown’s responsibility for the bubble years. He personally is to blame for Labour’s failure to ensure that ordinary people on median incomes and poor people at the bottom received a bigger share in national growth: it turns out that they fell back and only the wealthy prospered. Labour made the rich richer and the poor poorer: growth for the few, not the many.
That is a failure so fundamental to Labour’s purpose that the party can’t go into the next election led by the man responsible. His other failings as leader pale beside this one monumental fact. While he is there, Labour cannot claim “fairness” or “social justice”, so what is left to say? What is Labour’s offer?”..
The article concludes: “The only question now is whether Labour ministers and MPs are so shell-shocked by the last year and so shamed by their expenses that they lack the will to live. Ordinary party members, you valiant few, get up and tell your MPs that Gordon Brown must go.”
Is this really going to happen. Can Gordon carry on?
He’s shown such great resilience so far that it’s hard to see him stepping aside – though if Polly’s call was heeded then that might have an impact.
Toynbee is an Alan Johnson backer and I believe that with him at the help the general election challenge for the Tories and David Cameron would be that much harder.