- Peter Mandelson briefing press against the PM.
- Idea of a Miliband leadership “bullshit”.
- Breakdown in Parliamentary discipline – Brown embarrassed by backbencher at private meeting over expenses claims.
- Alan Johnson “ready to fill a vancancy” – but adamant he won’t mount a challenge unless Brown steps aside.
- Brown’s aides admitting defeat.
Plot: Mandelson poised to force Gordon Brown to quit.
Lord Mandelson is privately briefing against the Prime Minister, according to a senior Labour MP. The MP, who I met at Parliament last night, said Alan Johnson stands ready to fill a vacancy if necessary, following a serious breakdown in discipline and morale in the Parliamentary Labour Party precipitated by Gordon Brown’s embarrassmant at a demand that he pay back over £12,000 in wrongly claimed expenses.
“Peter has always said that he’d support Gordon in public, which always struck me as a bit arch,” the high-profile MP told me. “Now he’s decided that the party’s only hope is the Milibands – which, frankly, is total bullshit.” The MP said he had spoken to journalists who confirmed that Mandelson had been briefing the press against the Prime Minister – leading to a stinging article in last week’s Times and threatening to undermine the Cabinet from within.
“If even he [Mandelson] is acting on his doubts, Gordon’s lot know he’s in serious trouble,” the MP added.
According to the MP, the recent chatter in the media about the Milibands’ chances – notably in The Times last week – is widely acknowledged within the government to have been down to behind-the-scenes briefings by Lord Mandelson, causing some Labour MPs to speculate that the Prime Minister could be forced to step aside by Christmas.
Alan Johnson: "Ready."
“There are still those of us in the ‘5th Column’ hoping for change,” he said, adding that Alan Johnson enjoyed wide support as Brown’s potential successor. “I’ve taken soundings from Alan,” the MP said. “He’s absolutely consistent about not challenging Gordon, but privately he acknowledges that if there’s a vacancy, he’ll go for it. David [Miliband], on the other hand, says one thing and does another; we were all sure he’d challenge Gordon after James [Purnell] quit, but he just didn’t have the balls for it.
“To be honest,” he added, “no-one thinks either of the Milibands could win us the election at this point, and they’d be stupid to risk it. If one of them gets in, you’ll have Cameron, Clegg and another anodyne nobody, with nothing to tell between them. With Alan, we really do think we could scrape through the election. He has a story and a life before politics, unlike the Milibands. Apart from all that, he’s just a lovely bloke, which certainly isn’t something you could say of David.”
According to the MP, even some of the Prime Minister’s keenest supporters seem to be resigned to his having to stand aside. “A few of us think there’s a good chance he’ll walk away, and now even some of his friends are nodding at the dissenters. It would break him, which would be a terrible shame – he feels that if he does walk away, his life to date will have been wasted. I’ve known Gordon for years, and I think it’s a shame it’s come to this – but the party has to get through.”
The MP said that government Whips were becoming increasingly concerned by a collapse in discipline. Monday 12 October saw a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the wake of the now-notorious ‘Legg letters’ demanding repayments from MPs for excessive expenses claims. The MP was able to confirm that it had been a dreadful affair for the Prime Minister.
Geraldine Smith: Embarrassed the PM at a private meeting of the PLP.
“People were talking over him and shouting him down,” the MP said. “That would never happen under Blair – the breakdown in discipline has been incredible.” At the meeting Brown came under fire for his own expenses claims, having been asked to repay over £12,000. “Geraldine Smith [the Morecambe MP] challenged Gordon on his Legg letter,” the MP said. “She asked Gordon why, if he hadn’t done anything wrong, he was having to pay back more money than most other MPs. He couldn’t respond – just spluttered. I don’t for one moment believe Gordon’s crooked, but he has a very thin skin and is taking this all very personally.
“The man’s an absolute gift to the other side. Tory MPs are shitting themselves about the idea that Gordon might not lead us into the election. Without him, Cameron knows we’re in with a fighting chance.”
Asked what had brought the PM to this point, the MP was adamant that the “beginning of the end” was Brown’s ill-received YouTube video on MPs’ expenses. “As soon as we saw that,” he said, “we knew Gordon was in trouble. What f**k-wit would look at that video and let it go online? Gordon is surrounded by sycophants who lack the guts to be honest to him when he needs it most.
“Whatever people think about Tony, he was always willing to listen to criticism. No one dares to speak out to Gordon. They’re all too bloody frightened to just say, ‘Gordon, this is shit. You look like a maniac.’”
Filed under: Blogging, Gordon Brown, Labour, Parliament, Politics | Tagged: Alan Johnson, David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Geraldine Smith, Gordon Brown, Labour, Peter Mandelson
Whatever hapens they will lose the GE, it’s just with Brown as the leader it will be a humiliating defeat, as opposed to a catastrophic defeat.
Brown must stay to ensure we can keep Labour out ot power for at least a generation
Perhaps the least credible ‘exclusive’ I’ve read all week. Still, it’s only Tuesday.
“Perhaps the least credible ‘exclusive’ I’ve read all week. Still, it’s only Tuesday.”
Least credible I’ve heard all year.
[...] Rascal has a very interesting post reporting on a conversation he had last night with a senior Labour [...]
[...] Labour MP to Tory Rascal Posted in [...]
[...] Mandelson is privately briefing against the Prime Minister, according to a senior Labour MP. The MP, who I met at Parliament last night, said Alan Johnson [...]
“The MP, who I met at Parliament last night, said Alan Johnson ….” Was that MP Alan Johnson by any chance?
In any case, with Johnson in hock to the unions and the country £1trillion in debt, the slighest glimmer of Johnson becoming leader would send natonal our credit ratings on a downards spiral, interest rates would go up ….. and we would back to the Healey scenario.
[...] Good old Tory Rascal was sniffing around Parliament last night and it appears one of the MPs he got talking to the Strangers bar let slip a little to much, revealing that support for Gordon Brown is ebbing away and that even Peter Mandelson has begun briefing against him. [...]
Hmmmm….There’s one problem with this story. If GB did move aside, there would have to be a general election!
Do they really think that if they get rid of Brown it will solve their problems – as for Johnson, don’t make me laugh, he hasn’t got it in him I’m afraid
Johnson, Brown, Milibland, whoever
Labour’s toast
It is all depressingly predictable. Mandelson’s appearance on a white steed was never for the benefit of Gordon Brown. He had to protect the PM in order to avoid a general election (a second unelected PM being politically unsustainable).
With the Irish referendum out the way and the Czech’s soon to cave in on Lisbon, Gordon Brown is no longer necessary. Mandelson will drop him like a stone as soon as that treaty is in place (which it very nearly is – hence the loosening of his grip in the past week).
For those who missed it first time round, link to ‘that video’.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3553301/smile-smile-smile.thtml
Let me look into my mystic ball – did you have that conversation with, say, Charles Clarke?
Yawn.
“Breakdown in Parliamentary discipline”
Should have happened years ago. The schoolboys and girls on both benches should never have deferred to the higher ranking ones as a matter of course – they were each put their by their constituents as much as they were by their parties.
The last decade or so has been utterly abnormal – masses of cheap lending, vast consumption of stuff, taxpayers being fleeced, Government wasting all that money and more, automaton MPs troughing at the direction of their leaders, MPs not doing their parliamentary duty in preference of rubber stamping quango and EU directives. They would like us to believe that is normal. It is not. On so many levels this cancer of mediocraty has undermined us.
This reminds me of the Bill Murray film “Groundhog Day” round and round it goes and where it will end everyone knows, Gordon will lead them into the next election.Not that it would make much difference who leads them or even who wins the next election,if Lisbon is ratified Britains stuffed.
There is this huge assumption in New Labour’s “Big Government” is that Government leaders are uber-humans, capable of doing things better than us giving them the right to invade any and every aspect of our lives. This is of couse the real “bullshit”. Spin has not been about being on message, it’s about creating this uber-race of leaders who we are supposed listen to unquestioningly and thank them for their deity.
Back to reality, we have Gordon the maniac, Blair the insecure salesman, Madelson the man who makes our skin collectively creep and Campbell who bullies the press. We are suppose to worship them like Gods who will improve and better our lives. The reality is that they are a handful of ego-manicas who will lie, bullshit and spin and that any Minister could be replaced by the average man in the street, who would do exactly the same job.
Big Government is bullshit and the idea that leaders are uber-humans is bullshit too. The New Labour Uber-human politicians concept is just about as right wing as you can get. I can think of other facist regimes where the people were seen as uber humans – but not one where the Ministers were.
Ironically it’s the Tories who admit the reality/weakness/strengths of individuals who accept that no leader is perfect, no system perfect, no policy perfect who understand that Big Government is imperfect too and we must be protected from those ego-maniacs who would take over a weakened party (i.e. Labour) and run the country in their own sick images.
Nicola Burdett, Brown’s “gaffe manager”/media spAd)” is doing such an excellent job for the Tories (see, for example, the infamous YouTube video) that they should start paying her!!! And it would save about 70 grand of taxpayers money……………………
[...] Exclusive – Labour MP: Mandelson is briefing against Gordon Brown Peter Mandelson briefing press against the PM. Idea of a Miliband leadership “bullshit”. Breakdown in [...] [...]