September 8, 2006
IN YOUR GUTS...:
Brown's turn to feel the heat (Nick Assinder, 9/08/06, BBC News)
Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke has lobbed a hand grenade into the fragile peace with a brutal, personal attack on Chancellor Gordon Brown.He echoed the views of many of the prime minister's allies when he suggested Mr Brown is currently not fit to be prime minister and that "Ultra" Blairite Alan Milburn has the right stuff to replace Mr Blair.
Indeed, his references to Mr Brown's "stupid" behaviour, nervousness and lack of confidence recall the infamous claim some years ago, and said to have come straight from Downing Street, that the chancellor suffered from "psychological flaws".
His intervention seems designed to ensure that there is a senior, cabinet level, Blairite challenge to Mr Brown whenever the leadership election comes.
If there really are Blairites, as there proved not to be any New Democrats, how do they stay in a Labour Party that returns to its pre-Thatcher roots? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2006 8:14 AM
Don't know if you can right now, but you could take the party back a few years down the line, if the anti-Blair forces govern the country into the ground and themselves back into minority party status with their favored policies (though it took the Democrats here 12 years post-Jimmy Carter to allow Bill Clinton and his coalition to get a shot at the presidential nomination).
Posted by: John at September 8, 2006 1:51 PM