Britannia Radio

From The Times

May 30, 2009

Let's go. We can't. We're waiting for Gordo

Like actors petrified on a stage, Labour seems unable to rid itself of Gordon Brown. But its very survival is at stake

Matthew Parris

Seldom could an outing to see a West End play change history, but I can say with confidence that if this weekend the members of the present Cabinet minus their Prime Minister were to arrange a VIP block-booking at the Haymarket Theatre, hire a minibus, and attend an evening performance of Waiting for Godot with Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, they would see more than a brilliant production of that preposterous play. They would also, on reboarding their minibus, instruct the driver to take them straight to 10 Downing Street. There they would, en bloc, submit their resignations.

I've just seen Waiting for Godot. Like the last few months of British politics it is a story of which it's hard to offer a coherent resumé. The action - if it can be called action - consists in the rendezvous of two old tramps in an indeterminate place at an indeterminate time, to await, for indeterminate reasons (and fitfully contemplating suicide) the arrival of an indeterminate figure whom we never see, who may not exist, and whose visit is continually postponed. To the extent that the audience reaches any conclusion it is that there's absolutely no point hanging around. The whole play is an elaborate and gruesome joke.

Equally gruesome, the situation into which the present Cabinet has got itself is no joke. There are (it has been said) circumstances in which apparently sane people will choose death rather than jump a queue, and I suspect that not a few of Gordon Brown's senior colleagues would recognise that wretched thought today. Their leader is the beginning, if not the end, of the problem. He must go. Something, they know, has got to be done. In some strange and inexplicable way they are waiting for it. Some of them wish they'd done it before. Some think they may do it later. Some think that someone else should do it now. But at the awful intersection of the words Me and Now, courage fails.

And so the opportunities have slipped by, each missed chance yielding to the next. Each possible Godot has turned out to be not Godot after all. Right at the start, perhaps, before Mr Brown was anointed and while he might still have been challenged for the leadership? It didn't happen. After his disastrous flip-flop in that funked non-election? The moment passed. After whichever by-election catastrophe was coming up next? Somehow each has proved the catastrophe predicted, yet none proved the trigger. After whatever local election debacle? The last one came - and, yes, it was a debacle - and went: for, no, the time was not ripe. The time when Gordon Brown must be challenged has always been yesterday or tomorrow.

And there's one line in the play that would prompt a grim chuckle from every member of our Cabinet: “What's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the Nineties.” Labour looks incredulously at its failing leader and regrets that it didn't lose heart earlier.

So relentless and dispiriting has been the Parliamentary Labour Party's failure to find the nerve or the candidate to trigger regicide that it's tempting for the rest of us to conclude that if they were ever going to do it they'd have done it by now; and now they never will. We're not that far, after all, from a general election. Perhaps, then, that election is to be their Godot? Why not let the British electorate do what Mr Brown's own party have baulked at doing, and consign him to history?

But at this point I break with the logic, and with the narrative of Godot. There does exist one more fence, one more chance, one more point of no return; and it occurs next Thursday. Otherwise there's nothing for it but to plough on to defeat, with Mr Brown.

Why not plough on? you ask. Nobody seriously thinks Labour can win the next election, so why wriggle? Here's why. After the party loses all its remaining county councils this Thursday, and is knocked back again in the European elections, and then suffers another wipe-out when the by-election for Michael Martin's Glasgow seat is held, there's a growing danger that our governing party will cease to be the second party, let alone the first, in England, Scotland or Wales. And then the see-saw tips, for at this point “don't waste your vote on a third party” stops working for Labour and starts working against them.

After that would come the question of what the modern Labour Party as a third party would be for. Well, what? The link with organised labour is no longer a selling-point. There's no distinctive modern reason for Labour to exist, except as the most electable centre-left alternative to a Tory government. Cease to be that, and they may cease to be anything, and sink very fast indeed.

What, then, if not victory, can be hoped for? What might a new, interim leader achieve? Just a steadying of the ship, a neutralising of hostility, a gentle return of morale within the national party, a decent fight at the next election, and 30 per cent or so in the final poll: ahead of the Lib Dems.

Alan Johnson could achieve all that. I refuse to believe that this shrewd and likeable English working-class moderate would attract the same national animosity as Mr Brown. There is a mood to get Brown. Who can picture a “get Johnson” mood?

I'm not sure Mr Johnson is up to being Prime Minister for long, and I'm not sure he believes so himself. But he's up to navigating the months left before the general election, calming the mood, healing internal wounds, and delivering the party in one piece, and at peace, the other side of that poll. If that sounds less than a gloriously ringing prospect, consider the alternative.

I suspect Gordon Brown is considering his alternatives as we speak. “Busy, your Prime Minister!” a surprised American said to a friend recently - noting that Mr Brown has just written learned economic articles for both The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Let's pray that this is a stratagem, and not just displacement activity. And let us speak kindly of his qualifications for a job in an international trade or banking bureaucracy. It could be Labour's only hope.

• HAVE YOUR SAY

Brown will not go, and no-one will oust him. There are no men or women with the courage to do so in the Labour Party. 
They are waiting to fight over the spoils after the next general election, and by doing so the Labour MPs will ensure there are no spoils left to fight for.

Brian, Oxford, England

All incompetent Leaders surround themselves with nonentities and/or unattractive figures. The intent is to make themselves difficult to replace, and the tragic thing is - it usually works for a long time, only to be followed by a nasty, messy implosion of the entire regime.

jon livesey, Sunnyvale, CA/US

Hard to feel sorry for Brown or the Labour party. Its the country that's past its tipping point, and while we are waiting the destruction continues.

Mike, Sydney,