Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Milburn makes his move

You can tell something's amiss in the byzantine world of New Labour politics when arch-Blairites Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn launch what is obviously a co-ordinated attack on Chancellor Gordon Brown.

You would also have to be very naive not to believe it was in any way linked to the Prime Minister's comments at the weekend about maybe having made a mistake in pre-announcing his resignation.

I think it is steadily becoming clearer that the Blairites are holding Brown responsible for the Jack Dromey ambush in the loans-for-peerages row and are, at the very least, firing a warning shot across his bows that they are prepared to challenge him for the leadership.

I have posted a comment on Nick Robinson's blog which goes into this a bit further and I will be interested to see if Nick himself returns to the issue.

Meanwhile loyalist North-East MP Ashok Kumar has become the latest Labour politician to call on Mr Blair to stand down this year.

I think this is a particularly noteworthy contribution to the debate as Kumar has shown absolutely no Brownite sympathies until now.

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