Can Someone Finish Off Gordon Brown?

Benedict Brogan, Daily Telegraph June 4, 2009

Honestly, my granny could run a better coup than this lot. How hard can it be? What does it take to get rid of Gordon Brown? You'd think a well-judged shove would do it. Or a lone tank outside the radio station. Or a ranging shot from the destroyer offshore. Or just one gentle puff from someone close – and he's gone.

Yet after another day of political comedy, the Prime Minister is still locked away in Downing Street, refusing to budge. Westminster thinks he's finished, but he's still there, like a gangster shouting: "Come and get me, coppers!" He has no intention of making things easy by walking away.

No, the only way out is the one Labour can't bear: assassination. Political coups are a serious business. They require will, and deadly execution. Someone has to kick in the door of Number 10, track the man down, and emerge with a smoking pistol to announce it's all over. But who?

From the conversations I've had in the past 72 hours, I have no doubt that someone can be found to do the deed. Even now, I am told, there are at least three senior figures in the Labour Party who are contemplating whether to step forward and say what no one in Cabinet has yet found the courage to declare out loud: that it is all over for Mr Brown.

Despite a points win at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, the Brown edifice is crumbling. It is difficult to find anyone in government who believes the recent tempo of disaster upon disaster can be survived. True, some in Downing Street saw yesterday's exchange as a Westland moment, with David Cameron as Neil Kinnock missing the open net against Margaret Thatcher. But that should be only a fleeting comfort. Mr Cameron's aim is usually reliable, even if he is finding it difficult to emerge a winner from the expenses crisis.

With Mr Brown's authority evaporating, and ministers deciding the shape of the reshuffle for him, all it could take is a few words read out on a doorstep, or in the Commons chamber. You could imagine a statement reading something like this: "It is with a heavy heart that I have resigned from the Cabinet. But I can no longer stay silent. It is painfully clear to me that the Prime Minister no longer commands the confidence of either the party or the country. Yet Labour remains a fighting force with a compelling case to argue. I urge colleagues who feel as I do to consider their position and take the steps necessary to renew our leadership."

Until that hero steps forward, however, we have to watch the progress of various conspiracies running in parallel. There was the plot involving the "sisterhood" – or at least that was the accusation after folk spotted Hazel Blears, Beverley Hughes and Caroline Flint having an animated conversation with Jacqui Smith on Monday night. If there was a plan, though, it has already collapsed. Miss Blears is now the target of breathtaking rage across her party for the way she resigned on the eve of local elections. Mr Brown's offer of an eventual return must have been a joke: she is finished.

Elsewhere, Charles Clarke and others are understood to be gathering signatures for a letter from backbenchers, demanding that the Prime Minister be removed and a timetable set out for his replacement in time for the summer holidays. The total so far is claimed to be north of the 70-odd needed under Labour rules, and Mr Brown was last night said to be ringing backbenchers to plead for support.

Until this week, the majority of the Cabinet were resigned to Mr Brown's leadership, and their fate. "We knew what he was like, but we made our bed and we must lie in it," they insisted, before reluctantly agreeing that he would survive. But that ground is shifting fast: now, all seems possible. Ministers were especially shocked by yesterday's damning editorial in The Guardian, which called for Labour to "cut him loose", and the front-page headline in the Daily Mirror: "MELTBROWN".

The majority of his colleagues accept that Mr Brown must go. "Gordon is hanging by a thread. Who has got the courage to cut it?" was one of the many analogies put to me yesterday. Others ranged from asking who would be the one to call out that the emperor had no clothes, to poor-taste jokes about the Berlin bunker, circa April 1945.

If events allow him a respite next week, his friends say that Mr Brown will try to focus on reconstruction. He will promote his attempts to rebuild politics by reforming the Commons, to restore the economy to health and to recast public services to make them work better and cost less. And he will reconstruct his Government. The view from inside Downing Street remains one of eerie calm, and satisfaction that Mr Brown appeared magnanimous against the pettiness of Miss Blears, who could not bring herself to say anything polite in her letter of resignation.

Aides and officials point to the rise in the Purchasing Managers' Index – a sign that companies are buying once more – as another hint of an autumn recovery. All madness to those watching the freak show at Westminster, but don't underestimate how it helps stiffen Mr Brown's resolve.

The reshuffle is pencilled in for Monday, although things are moving too fast for anything to be certain. Mr Brown is struggling to find volunteers. David Miliband has made it clear he does not want to move from the Foreign Office, and there is no suggestion he will be asked to. Ed Balls has permitted a ruthless campaign to promote him as Alistair Darling's replacement, complete with a promise of a Treasury purge that has done him and the Government no favours. Shaun Woodward is being promoted as a possible Home Secretary, and could be seen at Mr Brown's side yesterday whispering in his ear. The Tory defector is certainly valued in No 10, both as a communicator who can "speak human" on the Today programme, and as a useful source of insight into the Conservatives.

However, friends say that James Purnell, who has not spoken to Mr Brown in months, has ruled himself out of the leadership and is "dangerously close" to speaking out. And then there is Alistair Darling. When Margaret Thatcher went, it was because some were willing to say to her face that the game was up: Ken Clarke in her study, or Geoffrey Howe from the backbenches. Come to think of it, who does Howe remind you of? Loyal? Grey? The Chancellor who did the economic dirty work, and who was thanked by being kicked around and then humiliated?

Yesterday, Mr Brown twice refused an invitation from Mr Cameron to confirm that the Chancellor he praised for doing "a good job" would keep it. In fact, I am told he has already asked Mr Darling to move to the Home Office. The Treasury refuses to be drawn, save to say pointedly that the Chancellor has every expectation of carrying on. So it looks like a weekend showdown between the Prime Minister and his neighbour. Might Mr Darling be the one to knock on the door of No 10 and tell his friend the plain truths that many wish had been said long ago? He has the power. Will he use it?

Comments: 6

Has Britain got talent? I`m afraid the crosses have all lit up. The judges have now leant back in their chairs and lost interest. The votes have been cast and yet the performer doesn`t see it and carries on, despite the boos.....

I have been a single parent for most of my years with two great kids alway stuggled but have always worked so have my children we have not claimed from the state, now my son is fighting in Afganistan for WHAT i am dissapointed with the government in this country. Bring my son home and all the other sons and daughters what do we get, anyone want to give us a large sum of money to fix and buy furnature for our homes and pay my mortgate that i can not afford and had to have a 12% paycut I think not why would we vote for any of you we will just keep working worrying and struggling like lots of good people in this contry

I will a hundred times and pay my own fare.

For the first time, I agree with the French; Vive la Revolution, Vive la Guillotine. I now understand a lot about Fench culture. Perhaps they are not our neighbours but our older brothers.

Ben, I can think of two other methods. 1. A number of people wearing white coats, and carrying a canvas jacket with no sleeve cuffs. 2. A rather large IED, this solution could be rather expensive.

Not only should Brown go, so must all the MPs who say they will not stand at next election. All the miscreants who have been fiddling expenses should be sacked NOW, not given another year's salary, no golden handshake and no pension until they are 65.

Can Someone Finish Off Gordon Brown?

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