There is no point ditching Gordon Brown. Polly Toynbee is so often right, but today's heartfelt call to sack the prime minister would only make things much, much worse.
One of the rules of any competitive endeavour is never to contemplate defeat. But very occasionally it seems so obtuse to pretend that victory is possible that refusing to acknowledge it is to sacrifice all credibility. Whenever it comes, Labour is going to lose the election.
Not that the Conservatives will win it. There is no great enthusiasm, according to the poll evidence, for the Cameron project either within or outside the Tory party. Its current 13-point lead is based on a surge in Lib Dem support which comes at both the main parties' expense. Labour is handing it to them.
That means the real issue is how to get Labour through to the other side of the election in the best possible state to regroup, to hold the new government to account effectively, and be ready to return to power at the earliest possible moment.
So why isn't dumping Brown the best way to do that? First because it would probably mean another coronation. Brown's lack of democratic legitimacy has contributed significantly to the bucket of ordure in which he finds himself.
Of course there were many precedents for a change of party leader in the course of a parliament. But it left voters, already disenchanted, feeling further ignored by a political class that was increasingly detached from them, and party supporters feeling impotent. If there is one lesson from Brown's accession it is that never again should a leader be ushered into power without a vote.
Right now, though, an internal vote would look absurd. No serious government faced with global crisis can afford a period of navel gazing. It would anyway be a muffled, unsatisfactory affair, the participants torn between loyalty in the face of an imminent election and rage at the record of a government whose failures currently seem so much larger than its successes.
Nor would having an internal party contest on the current rules satisfy the national mood for a calling to account. It might even, as Martin Kettle argued on Friday, produce the unhelpful outcome of a party leader and prime minister who had no majority among their party in Westminster.
And if the Toynbee advice was taken up, and "“ say "“ Alan Johnson was passed the poisoned chalice, it is hard to imagine how he could impress the voters with a sense of change. After all, he has been in government for a long time, with "“ as many comments on the Toynbee column attest "“ a record of studious loyalty.
Above all, whoever is in No 10, the overwhelming problems of economic crisis, soaring unemployment and a falling housing market will remain. The only difference is that we would have someone less familiar with the world's bankers at the top.
Sacking the prime minister with no sensible way of replacing him, changing nothing in the real world, would not rescue the party or the government. But it could precipitate terminal crisis. What this government needs to do is go home and prepare for opposition. It is time to make a reality of the masochism strategy. Only this time it should not be a matter of positioning, it should be genuine repentance.
Jackie Ashley suggested as much yesterday, and then added that it couldn't happen. It has to: it is the one honourable course, the most convincing mass apology the government and the whole House of Commons could offer. The only delay should be to allow the MPs whose behaviour has been most egregiously awful to face deselection.
This is the one route that would allow Labour to begin to rebuild itself. The party has always been burdened with a unique selling point: it was the ethical party. It has been a terrible incubus, a guarantee of disappointment. Yet it remains at the core of the party's identity. However grubby the business of power, there are millions who want to believe again that there is a party for whom politics is a moral crusade.
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