It seems increasingly likely that Gordon Brown will have to be deposed by Labour in the coming weeks/months, to have any chance in the next election.  David Miliband, Harriet Harman, James Purnell and Alan Johnson are the names floating round as the most obvious successors.  But who would Conservatives most fear?  And why should we target that potential leader to dim their brand.

Let’s look at each potential leader.  First to be discounted is Harriet Harman.  Labour, in even their wildest moments would not elect such an erratic performer as Harriet.  Becoming increasingly derided over her poor performance and her bizarre interpretations of equality, Harman is more akin to a national laughing stock and would be made mincemeat at the hustings.  Even in recent stories where she promotes equality and female shortlists, then is seeking to prioritise her husband Jack as a candidate, just show her hypocritical nature.  Hence, even if Labour made her Leader, we have nothing to fear from Harman. 

David Miliband, once with his own powerbase, now is seen as a politician who lacked that final killer instinct to be a leader.  Well known in the press for organising a leadership challenge to Brown last year, Miliband has sniped behind the scenes but never had the courage to show his true courage.  Even when his best friend James Purnell had the courage to resign, when Miliband had his best chance, he bottled it, and this is not forgotten amongst labour supporters.  His time came and past.  He is no political heavyweight and even holding a major Office of State, has made little impact.  Where is he on the news discussing Afghanistan?  Brown would even prefer the hapless Bob Ainsworth represent the Government…that says a lot for Miliband’s position.  It is also well known that Hilary Clinton thinks he is a little boy in a man’s job.

For James Purnell, a formidable potential leader, it is too early for him to strike.  He needs to build credibility and at the moment, amongst Labour supporters there is a whiff of traitor about him.  This whiff will go, after a Labour election defeat and he can then play the ‘I told you card’ and again build his brand.  He is the best Labour leader by a mile…but it is too early for him now.  Hence must be discounted as a threat pre the election.

So opinion polls show it.  Labour Unions Confirm it.  Private Conservative Opinion polls detail it.  Alan Johnson is the most likely next Leader, if Gordon goes pre the election.  Alan comes across superbly well in the media.  ‘That nice bloke next door’, ‘Mr trustworthy’, that ‘happy chappie’, Alan has a lot going for him.  His smile and natural demeanour would go a long way for Labour….and hence is a genuine opponent to be feared. 

Hence this begs a question.  Why have Conservatives not sought to give Alan Johnson special attention now?  Diminish his brand.  Dent his nice guy image.  The more groundwork we do on Johnson now, the better when it comes to any leadership battle.  If we leave it too late to highlight Johnson’s weaknesses and show him for what he is worth, we Conservatives will be seen as the ‘nasty party’ attacking him only when he stands for Leadership.  ‘Oh that poor Mr Johnson being attacked by the Tories…poor Alan’!!!!  Johnson is a potential sharp thorn in our electoral hopes, should Brown go.  Why not blunt his effect in advance?  We don’t need to do that for any other leader.  Johnson….yes….he is the most popular Labour figure.

What frustrates is that Johnson is a ‘Teflon’ Politician.  Very few things stick to him.  But there is much in his past we can target and stick to him.  He has held the following Offices of State for Labour….Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, Secretary of State for Education & Skills, Secretary of State for Health, right up to today as Home Secretary.  We have plenty of ammunition to stick at him.

So Chris Grayling, you have a vital job to perform as shadow to the Home Secretary…..To put the pressure on Johnson.  Help lose his ‘teflon’ image.  Make him seem completely incompetent in his role as Home Secretary.  The Home Office is the political graveyard of many careers.  There are many issues to get Johnson hooked up into.  Knife crime, rising violent crime figures, overcrowding in prisons, rising immigration figures, ID Card Scheme, terrorists getting access to the UK via Student Visas, the intrusion of the Government into our everyday lives & the ‘Big Brother’ state.  Let’s keep him on the back foot put him under the spotlight.  His opinion poll rating will soon decline.

Over to you Chris….help the Party and diminish the potential effect of a Johnson on our electoral hopes.  With Johnson damaged, the more likely Labour will stick with Brown…and that would be a dream scenario for us……

It is no secret that every Conservative loves Gordon Brown.  We all want him to lead the Labour Party into the next election.  He is the Conservatives biggest electoral asset.   Hence, our nightmare scenario would be for Brown to be removed…either voluntarily or deposed!  Are we seeing the start of our worst nightmare?

Why a nightmare?  Well, any new Labour Leader will enjoy a honeymoon period.  That time when the media will focus on their every move.  They will ‘whore’ media attention.  Enjoy copious media coverage when they can distance themselves from the past and paint a vision of the future.  That time…when they can start to make an inroad into the Conservatives poll leads.  Honeymoon periods are as natural as when night follows day…what is unpredictable is their scale.  Whether Labour’s new leader is Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman, David Miliband or James Purnell, matters not….anybody but Gordon will lead to Labour gains in the polls…for a short time.  Enough for an election win?…unlikely, enough for a Hung Parliament?…maybe….limiting damage & preventing Labour meltdown?…most definitely.  Hence, why Conservatives hope their Nightmare on Downing Street never happens.

If Labour enjoy a honeymoon period when their poll ratings turn, this will put the spotlight firmly on the Tories.  This spotlight will be an intolerable strain and will lead some Tories to crack.  Dissenting voices will be heard.  Cries of…the Tories should have revealed more policies…been more aggressive….been tougher on Europe, Immigration, Law & Order, public spending…will start to be heard.  Labour will exploit these cracks for all they are worth.

Yes, we are in the silly season, when the media print and make up stories.  BUT The Mail on Sunday is running a fascinating story today that states that Alastair Darling is getting mightily pissed off with Gordon Brown’s inability to make ground on the Conservatives over the public spending.  Take a read here.  http://tiny.cc/ZMGp8  Following Brown’s botched attempt to sack Darling in the last reshuffle, it appears that Darling has grown some balls…and not Ed Balls! 

The Mail reports that according to sources present, the Chancellor has stated: ‘I am trying to talk sense into that man. He just doesn’t get it –going on about “Tory cuts” is not going to make an impact on the electorate.  ‘We have to frame the debate in terms of our cuts being better than their cuts. The voters aren’t stupid – they know how bad the economic situation is.’  The scathing comments were made in a private conversation with a veteran Labour MP and critic of Mr Brown just before the Commons rose for the summer recess.

The Mail also states that there were claims that backers of Home Secretary Alan Johnson were secretly canvassing ‘non-aligned’ Labour MPs not closely linked to any potential successor.   Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, who ran Mr Johnson’s unsuccessful Labour deputy leadership bid in 2007, was accused of quietly taking names.” 

Whether true or part of silly season…matters not.  It is a well known truth that Labour MP’s are again openly discussing whether Gordon should lead the Party.  Labour MP’s look at their Majorities and work out if they are safe.  They are listening to their constituents as they spend time meeting the people over this long recess.  Their chances for turning their Party’s fortunes are slimming.

Let’s add our own analysis to this.  The big question is how can Gordon Brown and the Labour Party turn round the current colossal opinion poll gap?  What can be done?  Well, the war in Afghanistan will continue to see losses of soldiers and will rise in unpopularity as the year moves on.  Unemployment and the economy is not out of the woods by a long way.  While some commentators say we are through the worst of the recession, what is also true is unemployment will continue to rise and the UK has a cancerous, spiralling burden of debt, which will require either huge tax rises on middle England and / or swathing cuts in public spending.  Both tough messages to sell.  Swine flu looks like coming back with a vengeance over the winter period, so any election strategist will tell you that Labour need a miracle to come their way.  So Brown has absolutely NO TRUMP cards to pay….none at all.

Labour’s biggest chance lies without Brown at the helm.

So let’s look at the coming months.  If TBB was Lord Mandolsen…the Kingmaker…, we would not want to leave the election until the last possible moment in June next year.  I would also advise against April & May next year.  In April next year, payslips being opened will see workers getting furious about their lower take home pay due to tax rises.  Hence, not the best time to hold an election campaign.   Let’s look at this year.  Bad news stories will continue to build over the coming months.  The Labour Party Conference will not be a happy affair.  It will be rife with leadership plots and bitterness at the prospect of a hammering at the next election.  After that we have the Pre-Budget Report which will no doubt reduce into stories about the tension between Numbers 10 and 11. 

So from a timetable point of view, the Labour Leadership election will need 2 months to run.  Then the new leader will need 3 months approx to enjoy the Honeymoon period.

So, if I was Peter Mandolsen I would recognise that I would want an election in March next year.  The economy should have more positive news stories in place by then.  (don’t forget we have to avoid April & May, due to the new taxes hitting payslips).  So, I would want a new Leader in place to enjoy January, February and March. 

I would want the Leadership process done by Christmas.  So I could wheel out the new Prime Minister over all the happy Xmas telly.  The new Leader can appear ‘nice and jolly’ on Xmas GMTV, Noel’s Christmas Presents, Christmas Top of the Pops, X Factor final etc.  So if we say the leadership election needs 2 months, it really has to start in October……hence expect the chattering to increase. 

Gordon will know this…..his Party know this……anyone attending this years Labour Conference…you will be witnessing Gordon Brown’s farewell Conference Speech…enjoy it…..but will it be the speech where he announces he is resigning, hence triggering a Leadership race.  If he were loyal to the Labour Party, he would do this…but we all know that Gordon has only 1 loyalty and that is to himself.  Or will he hold on and be advised in October that he has to go?  Let’s watch with interest but hope that Gordon can survive… for the sake of the Conservative Party!

Reading today’s interview with Alastair Darling in the Daily Telegraph, (http://tiny.cc/7CBpf), things become even clearer about recent events and it is now clear that Purnell, unintentionally saved the careers of Alastair Darling, David Miliband and ……. even helped Gordon Brown survive and continue as PM!

As we know Brown offered Darling the role of Foreign Secretary or Home Secretary the week before the reshuffle.  He was desperate for Ed Balls to be his Chancellor in the final hours in the bunker pre his expulsion at the next election.  Brown had been touting via the no.10 spin machine that this was going to be a radical reshuffle, a fresh start.  But all best plans…..go to waste!  Brown was at the mercy of events out of his control…..first off, Brown was hammered in the local and European elections, then pummelled to the ground by a series of Ministerial resignations, including that of James Purnell, just as polls had closed, (the day before the reshuffle).  Purnell’s was devastating but as events proved….his timing was off!  Brown was now on the back foot…all talk of a radical reshuffle was off the agenda…this was preservation and damage limitation time for Brown.  Hence the tepid and timid reshuffle….none of us are under any illusion that Brown wanted shot of darling and was prepared to see Miliband moved from the Foreign Office as we learn today.

What the shame of this whole episode is we will never know what Brown would have done in his recent reshuffle had James Purnell not resigned pre the reshuffle.  Purnell saved the jobs of both Darling and Miliband.  Purnell made it impossible to move any heavyweights as had Brown faced any more Cabinet resignations he was a goner!.  Miliband & Darling owe Purnell a lot.  I am sure that privately Purnell regrets his resignation timing.  If he had waited just a day or two, Brown would have displaced Darling and / or Miliband and they would have been prime for resignation.  Then Purnell could have acted to devastating effect and brought Darling and / or Miliband with him, to which Brown would never have survived.  That is clear.

So ultimately Purnell can even be credited for saving the Premiership of Gordon Brown!  How bizarre is that? 

No wonder Gordon Brown is laughing……..

….a plate of jelly wobbles less!

David on the brink of resigning?  Playing on his conscience that he did not jump with his best friend James Purnell?  Still bottling it and wobbling?

Come on david…let’s see if you are made of steel or jelly.

Do even his colleagues and former colleagues trust him?

Wow, what is going on with Peter Mandelson?  Power really is going to his head.  He is making some amazing proclamations.  Delusions of grandeur?  How is he helping the Prime Minister this weekend by raising leadership issues and promising the UK wants a single currency?  With friends like these…..who needs Mandelson!

Our First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and Lord President of the Council has had a busy 48 Hours.  Mandy was in Berlin proclaiming how the Euro had brought stability to the EU & British people should back it.  He was asked if Britain should scrap the pound and his reply is very revealing:  it was : ‘an important objective for Britain to be in the same currency as the single market that it trades with’.  He rambled on: ‘It is perfectly clear that the Euro has been a great success in anchoring its Eurozone members during this financial crisis.’ (Love to know how Britain would have benefited if we were locked into a Single Currency…. in the good ‘boom’ times our interest rates would have been lower, hence encouraging more credit & debt and in this recession interest rates would be higher than what they currently are…hence worsening the length & depth of this recession).  He concludes:  ‘I hope people will recognize that this represents a major vindication for the single currency’.  Clearly Mandy was enjoying a great German Stein of Beer before and whilst making these remarks.

Mandy knows that this could not be achieved in the short term, not least because the British people dont want it, hence why Gordon, ‘Mr Democratic renewal’, wont have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty because the British people prefer self government and our own currency. 

As this was clearly a testing the water remark and making friends in Europe comment, the Downing street spin machine quickly rubbished it….but with any story, the important thing is to drip feed into the British people’s psyche that we should be in a single currency, hence why Mandy does this.  This will seriously piss off more Eurosceptic members of the Cabinet like Ed Balls and Alastair ‘I am not wanted in this job’ Darling.  Ed Balls might start to get a little fidgety soon.  He was the PM’s bed fellow then Peter has come along, kicked Ed from the bed and locked the bedroom door.  If Gordon Brown starts making positive noise about the Euro in the coming weeks we will have final conclusive proof that Peter is pulling ‘thunderbird Brown’ puppet strings! 

Next up Mr Mandelsen returns to the UK and has a private and confidential audience with the Queen.  What was said?  We wont know!  But I would love to know…who sat on the throne? 

Then today, Mandelsen gives a revealing interview with the Daily Telegraph.  Not the most helpful interview as it again fanned the flames surrounding questions over Gordon Browns leadership.  The Daily Telegraph headline screams, ‘Mandelson: Brown will face another challenge’.  The prediction is that this will take place in the Autumn at the annual Labour Party Conference in Brighton by a group of Labour MP’s who will never be reconciled to Gordon’s Leadership.  It was hilarious seeing Harriet Harman wheeled out onto Sky News today stating that, ‘Well Peter knows…these are difficult times, we are dealing with the recession….blah blah you know the script!  Harriet enjoyed digging at her new boss, you could tell

Any strong PR person would say that once an issue is resting then let it lie.  Peter raising the issue again, just as things were quiet, raises several questions.  Is the issue fully at rest at the moment?  Is more resignations coming?  Interestingly David Miliband stated yesterday that he considered quitting the Government after his close friend James Purnell resigned.  Why would he consider resigning?  He knows in his heart that ‘Bully Brown’ is a liability…but he cant just bring himself to have the courage to resign.  Purnell had that strength.  Miliband doesn’t.  It seems that Milibland he is still wrestling with his conscience and who knows, he may jump.  That would set the cat among the pigeons.  But don’t expect JelliBland Miliband to have the lions heart and courage anytime soon.

Mandelson was the key man who saved Gordon’s bacon.  Hence the reward to Deputy PM by all but name.  (Harriet Harman also lacked the spine to resign when so badly sidelined with Mandy’s new role).  But Mandelson realises that he has only papered over the cracks.  Hence we see today Charles Clarke again pressuring the PM saying that he will come under threat later in the year unless opinion poll ratings improve and Labour does well in by-election results.  The Campaign group of Left-Wing Labour MP’s is considering standing under it’s own manifesto at the next election, which would have a seismic damaging effect on the Party.

Peter knows the Party is split.  It is flawed.  There is little, even this most skillful of politicians can do to influence this.  Hence he is manoeuvring, improving his standing.  Can he seriously harbour realistic ambitions to be the Prime Minister….from the Lords?  What deals has Mandelson made with Brown behind the scenes when he agreed to save him.  Will Gordon stand aside for Peter?  Too many questions.  Too much suscipion.  Too many shady experiences in Mandelson’s past.  What is certain is that Peter would never be elected to power because of his views and character.  Enjoy your time Peter in the spotlight….it wont last much longer….just please end these god like proclamations in the press’.

William Hague of Mandy: ‘The most powerful unelected deputy since Henry VIII appointed Cardinal Wolsey, except Cardinal Wolsey was more sensitive in handling his colleagues’!  This is William Hague at his best…a great orator with a superb sense of humour!

Rumours and No.10 ‘test the public reaction spin’, point to Peter Mandelson as being lined up as the next British Foreign Secretary, (with David Miliband being demoted to the backwaters in the no hope role of Home Secretary), as Jacqui Smith is relinquished of a Cabinet role and is handed more time to spend at home with her family and hence she can join her husband at home to enjoy some home entertainment videos.

Of course David Miliband will be gutted to lose the role of Foreign Secretary.  However, in all honesty, he feel like a ‘little boy lost’ in the role and certainly lacks gravitas.  David, unfortunately for him looks like a little schoolboy and when I see him standing next to someone like a Hilary Clinton, he reminds me of ‘Just William’, and as they walk off following a press conference, I imagine that David is saying to Hilary, ‘Please Miss, can I have a toilet break now, I need to pee pee?’.  Whenever I have seen Hilary & David in a joint press conference has the demeaning look of…is this the best person you Brits have for this role?

David does of course have ambitions for the leadership and has been keeping his head down low…..but certainly Tories would never fear him if he got the cherished prize.  Will certainly be fun watching David struggling with the Home Office mandarins and the inevitable graveyard of the Home Office throws up a series of uncontrollable events in policing and prisons that even the best never survive.

Back to Mandy.  Firstly, let me say on the record that Mandy is a consummate media operator.  He is a real pro.  And is one of the best…in the world….at knowing how to manipulate the media.  He has a shady past, as his previous indiscretions have shown us….a man, that many would question his integrity.  However, that is not the purpose of this blog today…and I am sure some will comment in the blog threads about Mandy’s rep.

My comment is that the touting of an unelected Peer to the role of Foreign Secretary, one of the top 3 offices of state, shows how much contempt Gordon Brown has for Parliament.  The British Foreign Secretary, especially in turbulent times around the world, should….no must….be accountable to the House of Commons.  MP’s must be able to hold the Foreign Secretary to account, not the unelected House of Lords.

So, no disrespect to Mandelson here, but it would be a very sad day for democracy if Brown decides to make you the British Foreign Secretary.  However, it would confirm the contempt that Brown holds for elections and making Politicians accountable.  Gordon…remember elections?  You never faced one for the Leadership of the Labour Party, (and hence PM), and you are running scared of calling one today.