Like many others, the thought of John Reid becoming Prime Minister fills me with horror. I'm not a gambler myself but it does seem that the odds of it happening are pretty slim. Brown is odds on to become the next Labour leader and Reid is in a very distant second place.
As Mike Smithson notes, it is interesting that Reid's still second favourite at all given the way the tabloid press, and the Scum in particular, have decided to go after him. To my mind, that's a sign of just how impoverished the Labour Party has become under Blair. His insistence on a Presidential style government in which all the major decisions go through him - Brown's relative independence, secured in the infamous deal, aside - has damaged the ability other members of the party to develop as credible candidates to succeed him. The unintended consequence of Blair's centralist approach, it's legacy if you like, is that there really isn't a credible challenger to Brown. I think we all know what Blair thinks about that.
(Just in case you don't, remember that before there was an alleged plot by Brownites to depose Blair, there was an actual plot by Blairites to undermine the Chancellor and push Alan Johnson as the next PM!)
Mike concludes, rightly in my opinion, that that Reid will definitely not be elected as the next Labour leader. The Scum shows every intention of continuing their search for Reid's brain until any credibility he might have had is destroyed.
The fact that Reid is hugely unlikely to become the next Prime Minister makes me happy.
But does this mean that I'm grateful to Rupert Murdoch and the traitor for taking him down? Does this mean I'm now going to reconsider my opinion of these unscrupulous manipulators of public opinions? Should I now be not be quite so worried that Murdoch uses his power and influence to promote his own self-serving right-wing agenda while employees of his disingenuous rag pretend that it's all just a bit of a laugh?
No, obviously not; your enemy's enemy is not always your friend.
In conclusion, for reasons which should become increasingly obvious if you click through, here's a link to a post on he who speaks only in the third person. Hamster finds himself in full agreement...
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3 comments:
The unintended consequence of Blair's centralist approach, it's legacy if you like, is that there really isn't a credible challenger to Brown.
Maybe that is the case, but that assumes that Blair really wanted to hand over to an heir (but not Brown) after, say, ten years: we'll never know. On the other hand, every Blairite candiate touted by the media has crashed and burned in some way (Blunkett, Clarke, Straw, Milburn, Johnson, Reid) It's all too reminiscent of the touted successors to Thatcher who never made it.
In fact, maybe that's the point: Labour keep obsessing over not making the mistakes that the Tories made re. Thatcher's demise, that they fail to see that they've already made them: viz. the cult of personality re. the leader; the protestations of eternal fealty (see last September's conference), and the inability to groom a group of potential successors from which the party can choose (and yes, that does include Brown).
Totally agree about the Thatcher comparison. They've made the same mistakes only more so. And Blair has been an even more dominating figure so Labour will probably look even more hopelessly adrift once he goes.
From a purely party political point of view, Blair should have gone when no WMD were found in Iraq. Given how unpopular the war was among traditional Labour voters, he was never going to recover from that. Better a quick surgical removal than the slow death the party seems to have committed itself to.
The irony is that the Conservative Party supported the war just as much a Blair did but they're likely to reap the rewards of the shambles Blair has created.
Will Reid be in Home Office care longer than he imagines under Brown?
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