I’ve never, ever understood why people bother to report what this inept and discredited ultra-blairite says any more. ok it’s easy column inches but ‘Clarke criticises Gordon Brown’ is the equivalent of ‘man gets out of bed’ in the news stakes.

If any of these people were genuine about the state of left-wing British politics they’d stop announcing so many new websites and invitatives and actually provide some substance to what they’d like to do. The problem is that Clarke, Blears and Purnell don’t actually disagree with anything Brown has done, they just dislike him as a person.

and what does this new website contain? well, nothing. it looks like it was designed on Word, and pretty much every essay is tedious, repetitive tory-bashing, just look at the Denis MacShane travesty for an example.

Who exactly is any of this meant to win over?

I’m not sure that the political opponents to Brown are getting smaller in number – I suspect that they are growing in terms of discontent and pessimism – but they are certainly becoming less vocal now that the likes of Alan Johnson and David Miliband have made it clear that they’re not making a stand.

I think this is quite an historic moment really. If the SNP do well (and obviously that’s a humungous IF) then we could be watching the end of Labour as we know it. If Cleggy comes out against Afghanistan – well, that would get a load of votes and the Jocks get their referendum with assurances of EU proportionality – well, that’s the game ended for Labour for ever. Like the Liberals back in the 20′s – finished. There are bigger strategic interests for Labour than Brown or their own careers – this could be their last fight and they’re not doing a damn thing to prevent it.

Clarke’s probably still hacked off by the smackdown he got from Kevin Maguire on Newsnight a few week’s back, which Hopi Sen’s analysis – “They are disunited on policy, lack a clear alternative, have little support in the wider movement and see the support they do have getting smaller and less vocal” – neatly reiterates.

PS: Tory Grammar pedants are probably hoping that ‘Labour’s Future Group’ consists of just the MPs listed on the front page.

Wow, this seems even more half-arsed than his 20:20 website.

yes – the ‘little wider support’ thing might be the most important here. I mean we’re supposed to believe that Hazel Blears, Purnell and Clarke are more popular among both grassroots Labour supporters and the general public than Gordon Brown.

that’s just not true – and even if it was pre-blears walkout, it certainly isn’t afterwards. That cheap publicity stunt, ‘rocking the boat’ badge and all was meant to look brave but it just made her look like an ignorant, self-serving idiot who values her own potential ministerial career higher than anything else, not least the party. She is almost certainly going to lose her seat come the next election and that says it all about the popularity of the ‘anti-Brown’ movement both in the party and among the wider public

loads of journos (Martin Bright for one) have bought into the idea that this opposition is credible and I can’t quite work out why – other than the idea that the ‘disaffected’ Blairites who obviously only have the best interests of the party at heart are feeding journos with rumours and soundbites. The logic doesn’t even work – ‘Labour is likely to lose with Brown and it might lose a bit less with someone else in charge so BROWN MUST GO’. oh – ahem, i mean, we must focus on the future of the left etc etc

So, in short loads within the party dislike Brown, and he is seen as a liability by the electorate, but there’s nobody else, nobody with guts,credibilty,ability and who isn’t tainted by having been part of the sell-out spivvery of New labour. Would doomed be too strong a word?. I think Dick the Prick is close to the truth, and those of us of a Left or centre Left persuasion should abandon hopes that the Labour party with its death wish can ever again be a vehicle for Left or centre Left politics. Seems to me it’ll limp on, ever declining and still pursuing Blairite triangulation, still compromising principles to the point that they don’t exist, while those with any kind of a socail conscience look elsewhere.

organic cheeseboard – if ‘this opposition’ (i.e. the Blair groupies, rather than the Tories) was credible, Brown would be history by now. They had their chance at the Euro/local elections. They blew it. Unless they’ve got something useful to put into Labour’s next election manifesto, they might as well keep schtum.

I don’t even know if there was ever really anything to ‘blow’ per se. I don’t think Brown is particularly in touch with the public mood but he’s Blair-like in comparison with the blair groupies.

the thing is, i don’t think there’s anything useful they can put into the manifesto really. The website above is saying nothing new; every meaningless soundbite they give about reconnecting with the grass roots in undermined by their own ultra-Blairite disregard for left-wing values while in the job.

I could never understand why all their machinations, even at Euro-election time, were ever taken all that seriously by journos. a change in leader won’t help and would never have helped – the labour brand is fairly toxic to a lot of people and that’s the fault, primarily, of Blair and the Blairites.

Brown is the whipping boy for the failures of the New Labour project. Maybe he has agreed to this role (and will get some reward in the future), or maybe it is just an accident, but anyway he is getting all the blame for everything in the last 12 years. This allows people like Irwin Stelzer to write puff pieces for Blair in the Guardian, saying that he turned Labour around and implicitly suggesting that everything would be hunky-dory for Labour if Blair was still PM. This allows Blair to get on with his campaign to be President of Europe.

I don’t think that the general public buys this argument, and it is very odd to see Stelzer’s comment piece in the same Guardian that says Labour will be out of office for a generation. However Clarke’s initiative helps to build a narrative inside the New Labour cocoon that it would all have been OK if Blair had stayed on and reducest he contamination of Blair in his bid to be President of Europe.

Liberal Conspiracy » New website raises leadership challenge rumours: About the author: Chris is a regular cont.. http://bit.ly/4k7oho

Damn organic cheeseboard – you’ve said everything I was going to say.

Whole thing looks like a hilarious joke. No idea why ppl Dhanda are associating with Clarke though.

organic cheeseboard:

I could never understand why all their machinations, even at Euro-election time, were ever taken all that seriously by journos.

Maybe because the evidence – in the form of the election result – might have been the tipping point. On the other hand, it either saved the journos the bother of covering the polices of the government (let alone the opposition) and it did give Polly Toynbee a plenty of chances to repeatedly claim it was Labour’s ‘last chance’ to be ‘bold’, despite a mass of evidence to the contrary. Of course, once the ‘coup’ failed, the same people started saying ‘they’ll get him next time’, like a bunch of incompetent wannabe-supervillains (apart from Purnell, who now wants to claim he resigned so he could learn how to be a proper left-wing politician…yeah, right).

@ Sunny H, no. 11:

Damn organic cheeseboard – you’ve said everything I was going to say.

With the exception of this, I imagine:

a change in leader won’t help and would never have helped

RT @politicsofuk: New website raises leadership challenge rumours #ukpolitics http://bit.ly/BOhoU

With the exception of this, I imagine:

doh! yes, you’re right. Would have preferred Brown to go ages ago.