The problem with the extreme-slow-motion-car-crash that is the Blair/Brown rift is that, apart from being appallingly tiresome, it tends to highlight to me why I don’t think Gordon Brown will make a particularly good Prime Minister.
For certainly the last 6 years, he has been plotting away to undermine the PM every way he can – we can now safely assume that all the rumours we used to hear about back then were actually true, yet he has always been terrified of revealing his hand. Instead he has just sat there and brooded.
Much of what is most wrong about New Labour – specifically the mindset that comes up with a hellish system like tax credits – he can take personal responsibility for. We have seen very little evidence to suggest that with other more Blairite issues – foreign policy and civil liberties – he would do anything different. His only real feuds with Blair in recent years have been over who calls the shots.
All of this suggests a mean-spirited, egotistical, petty man. He has signally failed to articulate over the past few years what, exactly, he will bring to the Premiership that is new, yet the way he has handled thing means that he will be saddled with a weight of expectation that would make Atlas blanche.
I simply cannot see how his Premiership will be good news for the Labour Party in the long run. This leaves me torn. Do I celebrate that his coronation will effectively mean the end of a government I have come to loathe? Or does making it too easy for Cameron mean that the Conservatives will not bother to block their worst elements from having a stake? From a selfishly partisan point of view, a poor Labour Premiership will increase the majority of an outright Tory one, and thus minimise the chance of the Lib Dems holding the balance of power.
That said, I can’t see what Labour can do to get out of this mess. A headbanger like Reid would rip Labour apart and cause its supporter base to rout even more than it has been. The least worst case scenario I can see would be someone like Alan Johnson getting it. Yet even he could never be much more than a John Major figure; it might mean Labour stand some chance of holding onto power, but once they won that first term they wouldn’t be in much of a position to do anything with it. In any case, it seems clear that Labour has already settled on Brown.