Gordon Brown Enters the Valley of Death

Mary Riddell, Daily Telegraph June 5, 2009

Battered but unbroken, Gordon Brown fights on. If one more senior member of his Government had publicly turned against him, he might have been tipped into the abyss before his reshuffle began. On his day of extremis, commentators likened Mr Brown to Lear; a tragic king brought low by his own weakness.

In terms of grim outcomes, the PM is more like Wile E Coyote, the cartoon character caught up in a desperate race in which he ends up burnt to a crisp, squashed flat or marooned at the bottom of a canyon. Just as the coyote always survived to chase after Road Runner, Mr Brown lives on to pursue his elusive target.

What exactly is his goal, as his party implodes around him? According to his critics, he is driven by unslaked ambition and will never willingly relinquish a prize for which he fought so long and hard. That is to misunderstand the man – who is both the most and the least insecure of national leaders.

As he told me long ago, in a message that he has repeated many times, he will never willingly go until he considers the job is done. What drives him is the unshakeable belief that he is the right man to lead his party, and the country, through the political and economic collapse that one minister calls "the valley of death". What a shame, the same minister adds, that there are "no sunlit uplands on the other side".

Still, Mr Brown must be thinking that things could be worse. Horrified aides, who watched James Purnell's resignation flash up on television almost before his brief resignation phone call to Mr Brown was over, were gathered together and told tersely by the PM: "Go and find out what's happening."

As Mr Brown got up yesterday, long before his family was awake, he knew that he had survived, if narrowly. "I've really agonised over what to do," says one senior figure whose resignation might have ordained Mr Brown's demise. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is also said by friends to have brooded over his decision before announcing that the future was Brown.

While the resignations have provoked hysteria, the miracle is that so many ministers have, thus far at least, stood by Mr Brown. Though Mr Purnell's departure produced no copycat effect, it evoked disquiet. Some of those who have stayed loyal to the PM are none the less enraged by what they see as attempts to smear Hazel Blears after her departure. "If they start on James, I'll kill them," says a senior minister who claims, along with many colleagues, that Number 10 still harbours "an evil culture" of character assassination.

Even some arch-Brownites are getting more morose. "I think he'll be PM until next May, but no one might be listening," says one. "The authority is going." So why not ditch him, his enemies would say? Ministers give three reasons.

First, no one on the doorstep is clamouring for a change of leader. Second, the idea that Alan Johnson would be a dream PM beloved by the media is "absurd". And third, more oddly, there is a mood of sympathy and admiration for Mr Brown's ability to ride out the bitterest of storms. "You should never under-estimate the loneliness of the job," says one minister. "Gordon is in a hideous position, and he will take it all so personally."

Yesterday, Mr Brown did the best he could with his mostly lacklustre reshuffle. Promoting the skilful John Denham was a popular move, as was moving Alan Johnson, his potential nemesis, to the Home Office; an appointment likely to be warmly welcomed by Justice Secretary Jack Straw, whose relationship with Jacqui Smith evolved from paternalistic to glacial.

The one great favour Mr Purnell and other rebels may have inadvertently done Mr Brown was to halt the plan to move Ed Balls for the Treasury. To replace Alistair Darling, who has won colleagues' admiration, with the smart but abrasive Mr Balls could have proved the trigger for mutiny and meltdown.

Mr Balls, who has twice almost got to the Treasury front door before being jilted, must settle for his mentor's high esteem. As one of Mr Brown's closest confidantes told me yesterday: "Ed's got a long and great political future. Of course he wants to be Chancellor. But the time is not now."

When, malcontents are wondering, will Mr Brown's time be up? With damaging election results imminent, and a backbench revolt still simmering, the Wile E Coyote of politics can expect to be pulverised again. The danger is not over, but the bigger question is how much more of a mauling Labour can take without being torn apart.

Its senior ranks, at least, have decided that it has no better leader. Mr Brown now has the Herculean task of halting the destruction of a party in which his friends are almost as demoralised as his foes. They do not want to hear any more that Gordon is the best man for the job. With heavy hearts, they agree.

He is, as one erstwhile loyalist puts it, "the least bad option". Now Mr Brown must do what many consider impossible and offer the inspiration that is the oxygen of politics. Labour, exhausted by its blood feud, may finally be losing the will to kill its leader. The danger is that it will also lose its will to live.

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Gordon Brown Enters the Valley of Death

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