‘We don’t want an election in 2009, we want one in 2010, and if we change leader we have to have one at once’
Come on, you’ve got to do better than this. Imagine you act now. The process to elect (look it up) a new leader takes you through to the end of July.
In the first line of his first speech the new Prime Minister announces that the date of the general election will be February 10, 2010. He says that he needs the intervening period to fix the expenses disaster and because a serious general election requires an informed public. He has to set out the Labour prospectus for that election.
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Whenever David Cameron demands a general election the new leader says: “You know when it is.” February 2010 is only three months before the election has to happen anyway.
And besides, there is one knockdown flaw with this argument — you go into that election with Gordon Brown as your leader and you have no chance of winning. You have to remember that bit.
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‘The process of unseating the Prime Minister will incite a civil war and the outcome will be worse’
A civil war requires two sides. It requires a split on a matter of importance with enough people on either side to make for a decent fight.
And we are told time and again by Cabinet ministers that there is no ideological split in the Labour Party. So where would this fabled war spring from? A change is more likely to avert a civil war than start one.
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The new leader, let’s call him Alan, would be able to ensure a soft landing in defeat. He might do better than that. A uniform swing that gave the Tories 39 per cent at the general election, with Labour on 29 per cent and the Liberals on 20 per cent would produce a hung Parliament.
That leads the clever-rubbish merchants to say that it is better to hang on because the political reward for economic recovery will surely come. Even if that dividend arrives, it will come under a new leader too. And besides, there is one knockdown flaw with your argument — it means that you have Gordon Brown as your leader.
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‘We have not yet arrived at the right moment — we need to wait for a critical mass to form’
This is a shroud for white fear. This argument concedes that something has to be done. But it is like trying to imagine a race in which everyone is trying desperately to come fourth. The assassin never wears the crown, they say. So better not be second in line; let someone else do the deed and then inherit the benefit. Better to stay loyal: that can be my campaign shtick.
This is all very well if you think that, in due course, there will be a second in line, and a third and a fourth. But if you are calculating, working it out, being not-clever- enough-by half, you are pretending to yourself alone — because nobody, but nobody, is fooled any more that you are not frightened. The critical mass is never going to form by magic.
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If it does not happen there is then one knockdown flaw with this argument — it leads to Gordon Brown remaining as leader and, I had better say it again, he has no chance of winning.
BUT... it’s not too late to stand up and say something real
It’s time to stop all this clever rubbish, these rhetorical curlicues, these ornate arguments that, like some Nobelwinning extension of game theory, reason nine steps ahead.
On and on they go, from studio to studio, endlessly, pointlessly, devoid of logic, empty of spine, drearily intoning words they don’t believe and statements they protest in private are preposterous, on and on they go, demanding we take them seriously and achieving only joke status. For God’s sake, stop making such idiots of yourselves.
It’s not yet too late. Nothing said today will matter tomorrow. Stand up to be counted and, this time, don’t let the counting stop at one. Ask that neglected group of political commentators, the electorate. Oh, you just did. What did they say? Really? Oh dear.
Don’t tell them in return that there is nobody better to take us through the recession. Don’t tell the electorate that they don’t get it. Don’t tell the electorate that they talk rubbish — and not even clever rubbish. Stand up to him. All your previous absurdity will melt into the air.
But no, on and on they go. The best man for the downturn, they say — well, that’s certainly true. Meanwhile, the electorate, time and time and time again, say: “We do not like this man. We do not like him. We do not like him.”
Is anybody there? Is anybody home? Is this deafness or is it contempt? Locked together in plausible inaction, the weak, the brutal, the time-servers, the job-clingers and the should-know-betters walk in unison off a cliff, singing in ludicrous harmony that it’s a global crisis, don’t you know? It started in America but it ends in the abyss.
Oblivion beckons and, my word, how they are asking for it. Is this the way that your world ends? Not with a bang but with a wimp? Is this the way your world ends?