How Labour might get from Gordon to Alan
Polly Toynbee's suggestion that Gordon Brown should quit now and make way Alan Johnson is one that finds increasing favour among Labour MPs and other party figures.
But few believe it will ever happen, simply because they can't see HOW it might come about - how one could get from G to A, as it were.
Let me throw in a couple of theories.
The first was suggested by someone close to David Miliband. This is that at some point Gordon Brown may simply decide to jack it in, knowing that he is taking his party to disastrous defeat.
Unlikely, you may say. But what about Gordon Brown's McAvity quality, whereby in his days as chancellor he used to disappear whenever there was trouble.
A second idea which has been raised is the suggestion that if Brown does go, it should not be this summer or autumn, but at the last possible moment.
That might be AFTER an election is called.
As John Rentoul reminded people a couple of weeks ago, that's exactly what the Australian Labour Party did in the mid 1980s when they replaced Bill Hayden after the election was called, replaced him with the more attractive Bob Hawke, and Hawke duly won the election.
The advantage of replacing Brown late is that it would mean a replacement (such as Johnson) could only be appointed, not elected. And it would enable Labour MPs to hold on to their seats as long as possible.
I'm Michael Crick, and I'm Newsnight's political editor. My guiding rule is that in any story there's usually something the politicians would prefer the world not to know. My job is to find that out. Follow me on
Comment number 1.
At 12th May 2009, leftieoddbod wrote:Labour don't do ditch the loser, they prefer to go down like Captain Smith on the Titanic rather than the unseemly scramble for the lifeboats and try Alan Johnston. Brown has never been elected and yet we are supposed to observe some sort of ritual where we don't the leader. Whose leader? He wasn't mine, he signed all the cheques for the illegal war in Iraq, stood by and let bankers get away with murder, reduced our country to the most indebted nation since debt was invented and stands there each Wednesday at the dispatch box as though it all happened on someone else's watch. He may retire along with his front bench to a cushy retirement but the rest of us will face a nightmare of cuts under the next government so why not make a fight of it...we have nothing to lose but our majorities....
Complain about this comment (Comment number 1)
Comment number 2.
At 12th May 2009, PeterGKenyon wrote:Dear Michael
Or Save the Labour Party could resurrect its campaign to get nomination papers circulated pre-Conference 2009 as some of us still think is required annually under Rule 4.B 2.B.ii.
This is in the interests of party democracy of course and not any particular candidate.
Peter Kenyon
Complain about this comment (Comment number 2)
Comment number 3.
At 13th May 2009, barriesingleton wrote:AH! THE OLD 'INDEPENDENT ENQUIRY' PLOY KATO!
So - the Parliament that (by majority vote) endorsed Tony's need to be at Dubya's Right Hand of Folly, having been exposed in all its juvenile, sticky-fingered squalour, has set up an 'independent' enquiry under an man called KELLY. Why not Hutton? Truly, we are mocked.
Complain about this comment (Comment number 3)