Brown should go down fighting

Rather than suffer political death by a thousand cuts - or resignations - has the time come for Gordon Brown to employ the ultimate sanction against the Blairite rebels? Here's today's column.

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A few weeks ago, in the wake of the 'smeargate' scandal, I predicted that a bad result for Labour in the European and local elections on 4 June would cause all hell to break loose in the party over the ensuing 48 hours.

Well, it seems I was wrong on the last point. In the end, the party didn't even wait until the elections were over before plunging Gordon Brown's premiership into its worst crisis yet.

Labour was already facing a hiding on Thursday before the twin resignations of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears sent the government into near-meltdown.

And since one of the unalterable maxims of politics is that divided parties invariably get a hammering in elections, it is no great surprise that the results already look like being the party's worst ever.

The full picture won't be known until the Euro-election results are published tomorrow, with the very real possibility that UKIP and the Lib Dems may have pushed Labour into fourth place.

But with the Tories taking control of once-safe Labour councils such as Lancashhire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire, the scale of the carnage is already becoming pretty clear.

Once again, the old campaigner is refusing to give in without a fight, reshuffling his Cabinet yesterday with just about enough ‘big beasts’ still onside to fill the vacant jobs.

But with Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell joining those who are no longer prepared to work for the Prime Minister, the odds on him surviving even the next week have lengthened considerably.

It is a mark of Mr Brown's extreme weakness that the resignation of a political pygmy like Ms Blears should have provoked the near-collapse of his administration on Wednesday.

Let's not forget that this is a woman who in recent weeks has been forced to pay £13,000 of previously unpaid capital gains tax on the sale of a second home refurbished at taxpayers' expense.

If she didn’t deserve to be sacked on the spot for that, she certainly should have been for the blatant disloyalty and opportunism of her “You Tube if you want to” attack on Mr Brown last month.

Perhaps foolishly, the Prime Minister decided to leave her in place until the reshuffle, giving her the opportunity to further display her lack of loyalty by stabbing him in the front 24 hours before a vital election.

Ms Blears' dramatic exit, though, pales into insignificance besides that of arch-Blairite Mr Purnell. Not only was he not going to be sacked, he was actually going to be promoted.

So far, the rest of the Cabinet has refused to follow his lead, with Defence Secretary and Barrow MP John Hutton making clear that his own decision to stand down yesterday was for family reasons rather than as part of a Blairite revolt.

Mr Brown’s survival now depends on how many backbenchers rally behind the standard of rebellion that Mr Purnell has raised, with an email demanding that Mr Brown step down circulating among MPs

Since Mr Purnell does not himself intend to stand for the leadership, the rebels are still in search of a candidate capable of gaining the 70 MPs’ signatures necessary to provoke a challenge.

The initial impact of the resignations has been to dramatically limit the scope of what Mr Brown was able to achieve with yesterday's chances.

It is pretty clear he wanted to replace Alistair Darling with Ed Balls as Chancellor, but such is Mr Balls' unpopularity among Labour MPs that in the end, Mr Brown had no option but to abandon the idea.

Also staying put is South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband, despite reports that Mr Brown wanted to give his job for former Hartlepool MP Lord Mandelson.

Besides Messrs Darling and Miliband, the big winner is leadership heir-apparent Alan Johnson, promoted to Ms Smith’s old job at the Home Office, after her predecessor John Reid apparently ruled out a return to the role.

In some respects, it is possible to argue that the government has been strengthened as a result of this week’s events, with highly capable ministers such as John Denham, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper all earning promotions.

And both Messrs Balls and Mandelson get beefed-up departments, sharing between them the spoils of the short-lived and now-defunct Department for Universities, Innovation and Skills.

But while the reshuffle may have taken some of the sting out of the rebellion, it is unlikely to be the end of the story - especially if tomorrow's results turn out as badly as expected.

The rebel email is still doing the rounds. Labour's supporters in the national press are deserting the Prime Minister. And Ms Smith, Ms Blears and Mr Purnell still have the chance to make Geoffrey Howe-style personal statements to the House.

But the Prime Minister does have one weapon left in his armoury to use against the rebels - ironically the very course of action Tory leader David Cameron has been urging on him for months.

It is quite simply to call a general election. The party would then have no option but to call off all the plotting and rally round its leader.

Of course, Mr Brown would lose, but he would at least go down fighting at the hands of the electorate rather than at the hands of the Blairites, and he would at least earn the public's gratitude for the manner of his departure.

The logic is clear. If Mr Brown wants to be sure of leading the Labour Party into the next election, he should call it now.

Reshuffle baloney

A collective madness appears to be descending on the Labour Party as it faces the prospect of humiliation in Thursday's local and European elections. Up here in Derbyshire, the talk is that Labour will lose control of the county council for the first time in the 27 years since David Bookbinder stormed into power at Matlock at the expense of a bunch of corrupt old Tory freemasons in 1981, but of course this is just one small aspect of what is expected to be a much wider deluge.

Against that backdrop, the idea that Gordon Brown can somehow try to turn round this situation by carrying out a reshuffle seems preposterous enough. The idea that he can turn it around by dint of replacing Alistair Darling as Chancellor with, of all people, Ed Balls, seems to me to be taking fantasy politics to fresh heights of absurdity.

I can't say I'm hugely surprised that Jacqui Smith has decided to disrupt all Gordon's careful plotting by staging a pre-emptive resignation. I predicted a couple of months back that she would fall on her sword and so she has, perhaps mindful of the much bigger battle she has on her hands in Redditch.

What I find more interesting is that as eminent an observer as Michael White does not believe there is an obvious successor to Ms Smith in sight. What, I ask you, about John Denham and Hilary Benn, both of whom have served as ministers of state at the Home Office as well as in other Cabinet roles?

Well, having posed the question, I'll do my best to answer it. Neither Denham nor Benn has much of a power base in the party. Neither are identified as "Brownites" or "Blairites." Neither has a clutch of influential lobby correspondents continuously writing up their chances of preferment as, for instance, Alan Milburn still has, four years after he last quit the Cabinet.

There is, therefore, neither tactical advantage nor short-term headlines to be gained in promoting either of them to the Home Office, as there would be for instance if he brought back Milburn, or David Blunkett, or still worse, used the department as a dumping ground for another senior minister (Darling, D Miliband) displaced from elsewhere. And of course, tactical advantage and short-term headlines are what the Brown government is now all about.

Jacqui Smith's original (over)promotion to the Home Office in 2007, ahead of a number of more experienced and able ministers, is itself a case in point. It was not done on merit, but as part of carefully-worked "deal" between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair to give Brown a clear run at the leadership in return for big promotions for Blair's favourites, David Miliband being another beneficiary.

The Guardian surerly had it right in its editorial yesterday. "Whatever Cabinet reshuffles are for, good governance has little to do with it."

The big, unanswered questions

Who will be the next Speaker? Will there be an October election? And will we get proportional representation? Just some of the many unanswered questions that have arisen from the MPs expenses scandal. Here's today's Journal column.

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For most of the past two years, the biggest unanswered question in politics has been whether Gordon Brown will survive to lead Labour into the next election, and it is a question that is still awaiting an answer.

But seldom can any week in politics have thrown up as many unanswered questions as the last one, a week which has seen the first defenestration of a House of Commons Speaker for 300 years and talk of a “quiet revolution” in our political system.

Several careers besides those of Michael Martin have already ended. Several more are hanging by a thread. And the pressure for a wholesale electoral clear-out of the "Duck Island Parliament" is growing.

We now know the true, appalling extent of the scandal over MPs' expenses. What we can still only guess at at this stage is its longer-term impact.

First, there are the small-to-middling questions, mainly concerning individuals. How many more MPs will be forced to stand down at the next election? Who will lose their jobs in the next reshuffle? Who will be the next Speaker?

Then there are the slightly broader questions. How will the public’s anger at the behaviour of the political classes feed through into voting habits? Will the “incumbency factor” that has always favoured sitting MP go into reverse? And will the next election herald a new wave of independents?

Then of course there is the question of when that election will finally be held, and whether Mr Brown will pay the political price for failing to reform the system until it was too late.

Finally, perhaps the most far-reaching question of all. Will the expenses scandal ultimately result in an historic reshaping of our parliamentary democracy, or alternatively bring about its final demise?

In terms of the questions around the futures of individual MPs, the North-East is as good a place as any to start.

Will Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland, controversially reselected in preference to neighbouring MP Sharon Hodgson, now fund himself deselected after claiming for the cost of buying out his partner’s £45,000 stake in his London flat, despite his very full and frank explanations of the reasons behind the move?

Will Durham North’s Kevan Jones and other “squeaky clean” MPs who voluntarily laid bare their expense claims be rewarded for their candour, or will they find themselves tar-brushed along with their sleazier counterparts?

And will Sir Alan Beith crown a notable career of public service by achieving his ambition of the Speakership - or will the fact that both he and his wife, Baroness Maddock, claimed second home allowances on the same property ultimately count against him?

On that last point, I have to say it would give me great pleasure to see the long-serving Berwick MP in the Speaker’s chair, although if he were not standing down from Parliament, Sunderland South’s Chris Mullin would be an equally admirable choice.

If the truth be told, the North-East should have had the Speakership last time round. The region had three candidates in Mr Beith, David Clark, and John McWilliam, all of whom would have done a better job than Michael Martin – though some would argue that is not saying much.

Ultimately Mr Martin fell not because of shaky grasp of Commons procedure or even last week's ill-judged attacks on backbench MPs, but because his continual attempts to block the freedom of information request over MPs expenses caused this whole debacle.

Just imagine for a moment that Dr Clark had got the job. Would he have fought the provisions of the freedom of information legislation that he himself pioneered? Of course not, and our Parliament would now be much the better for it.

But enough of the ancient history. What on earth will happen to the House of Commons now?

One oft-heard prediction this week is that we will end up with a chamber full of Esther Rantzens, Martin Bells and toast of the Gurkhas Joanna Lumley, and it's certainly one possibility.

We are living through such an extraordinary period of “anti-politics” that there could even be a return to the situation that existed before the rise of the party system in the 19th century – the “golden age of the independent House of Commons man” as one historian called it.

But while celebrity politicians may well play a part, I think the next election is just as likely to throw up more “local heroes” like Dr Richard Taylor, who defeated an unpopular Labour MP over hospital closures and is now himself even being mentioned as a possible Speaker.

Should that election now take place sooner than spring 2010? Well, there has to be a very strong argument for saying that, just as the Speaker who resisted reform for so long has had to go, so too should the Prime Minister who failed to grasp the nettle.

When a Parliament has lost moral authority to the extent that this one has, a clear-out becomes almost a democratic necessity, and Cromwell’s words to the Rump Parliament – “In the name of God, go!” - once more have a certain resonance.

Against that, there is a case for allowing passions to cool. In the words of one commentator: "If an election were called next week, Britain might well end up with a Parliament for the next five years that is defined entirely by its views on claiming for bath plugs, rather than on how to get the country out of the worst recession in 70 years."

Mr Brown will no doubt still try to hang on until next May, but in my view an autumn 2009 election has become significantly more likely in recent days.

As far as the longer-term implications of the scandal are concerned, there is already talk of radical constitutional reforms including an elected second chamber, fixed-term Parliaments, more powerful select committees, and even proportional representation.

I'll believe it when I see it....but if a consensus does emerge that radical parliamentary reform is the way out of this mess, it stands to reason that the party that will most benefit will be the one that has consistently advocated such reform for the past 40 years.

The Liberal Democrats have long been the recipients of the "anti-politics" vote, and on this issue as well as that of the Gurkhas, their leader Nick Clegg has looked over the past fortnight like a man whose time has come.

Sir Alan Beith is not the only Lib Dem for whom this crisis may prove an historic opportunity.