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Brown coup melts away as ministers sit on hands

The Mole: Plotters claimed to be giving Cabinet the chance to push PM out - but they didn't take it

LAST UPDATED 8:43 AM, JANUARY 7, 2009

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The Mole is the pseudonym for a London-based political consultant who writes for The First Post.

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yesterday's attempted coup to topple Gordon Brown as Labour leader on the eve of the upcoming general election, organised by former Cabinet ministers Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, has melted away faster than a snowman in the sun. As the Mole predicted yesterday, there was a good chance that Labour MPs would simply tell the plotters to go to hell, and that is pretty much what happened.

Most significantly, no member of the Cabinet was prepared to stand up and side with Hewitt and Hoon in their call for a secret ballot of all Labour MPs. However, the fact that endorsements had to be dragged out of men like David Miliband and Jack Straw, and took hours to come, has left Labour looking decidedly vulnerable to Tory charges of government confusion if not chaos.

Miliband, who with his brother Ed remains one of the favourite 'new generation' candidates to take over from Brown, took six hours to issue a statement, and could only come up with this: "I am working closely with the Prime Minister on foreign policy issues and support the re-election campaign for a Labour Government that he is leading."

Chancellor Alistair Darling took four hours to say: "We should be concentrating on the business of Government and getting through the recession."

Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, did his best to keep the story alive last night when he reported on BBC1's News at Ten that he had been given a list of six names of Cabinet ministers "who might in the right circumstances" back the plotters.

He then proceeded to read them out - Harriet Harman, David Miliband, Bob Ainsworth, Jack Straw, Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander - but had to make it clear that not one of them was actually backing a coup. For some reason, the circumstances were not "right".

Sources close to the plotters say the Cabinet ministers let the plotters down. Robinson reported that one of those behind the Hewitt-Hoon move had told him: "We wanted to create a storm. Our purpose was to create the space for the Cabinet to act. They bottled it."

The man left to tidy up the mess was Lord Mandelson. Speaking onNewsnight, Mandy claimed that Labour had reached a "settled view" that Brown should lead the party into the election. Nobody quite believes him. 

Filed under: The Mole, Gordon Brown, Patricia Hewitt, Geoff Hoon

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