So is Brown going to get through and keep his job?
Can the old survivor do it again?
Well the day has gone on and Number 10’s spin machine has been desperately trying to spin that the Hazel Blear resignation wasn’t timed to cause maximum embarrassment to Mr. Brown. Yet as was pointed out at PMQs – she’s the local government minister and there are local elections tomorrow.
“It was just that she was fed up of being hounded by the media” – they say of her motives. “No – this wasn’t a plot. “ “You media people spend too much time with your conspiracy theories.” These are the lines from Peter Mandelson who has been going from studio to studio this lunchtime.
Yet the latest news from the Commons is that there’s a “Gordon must go” letter doing the rounds amongst Labour back-benchers.
This is all very difficult to read but you don’t get much feeling of a lot of warmth from within the Labour party to the man they made leader without having the bother of a contest electioned two years ago.
I said so repeatedly at the time. This was storing up trouble. It looked undemocratic and meant that Brown’s position owed more to party power politics than to any form of mandate.