See, I just don’t understand why they’d want to take Brown’s place. There’s nobody else in Labour who has a noticeably better chance of winning over the media, especially with the economy collapsing and Cameron perfecting playing harmless. So whoever takes over is more-or-less doomed to lose an election inside the next couple of years. Who’d want that? Why don’t the Labour ministers just sit it out, try to pretend it’s not their fault, and position themselves to take over in May 2010?

At the risk of making a fool of myself with the news tomorrow morning, surely most of this is just straight media hysteria – the need to create news where there is a vacuum.

Cooler analysis suggests that the game is certainly a-foot but it is to ensure that, if Brown has to go, then the next Leader is someone who can be presented as a unifying force attractive to the electorate.

Unfortunately, a lot of people may probably think they are that person but there are fundamentals that suggest no serious player is going to move too quickly.

Whoever initially lunges the knife is, obviously, not that player so the ‘kamikaze’ who does so must be pretty sure that they are triggering an operation that ends up with what suits them and their faction.

Does the public ‘matter’? Do the members of the Party ‘matter’? Both are just cannon fodder for two successive ‘democratic’ votes in which a limited choice of two or three candidates and then parties will endorse the enormous power of the winner over the State machine.

So we are all spectators watching an elaborate game in which we have no voice greater than that of any man or woman leaning against a bar and pontificating on what should be rather than what is.

The media are merely the voice of the loudest and biggest man in the pub and the candidates will want his endorsement because most customers see the whole thing as a distraction, will accept received opinion and just want to move on

The Left (as such) has only two rival candidates – McDonnell and Cruddas. Both have wisely made it clear that they are not going to plunge in the knife themselves and open the door to one of the Blairite candidates.

Both know that they are more valuable attempting to effect policy change (McDonnell is now explicit on this) through building up their base for the final vote ,and then trading this base, rather than making the classic move where an outsider’s challenge only strengthens the insider team – the Left as an Aunt Sally.

Both factions of the Party Left have been dreaming for a long time of a re-alignment of the unions, whether more equidistant between Right and Left (Compass) or joining with the Left (LRC) to create a proper socialist Labour Party. Both, of course, are equally deluded, Compass only slightly less so.

Putting aside some of the has-beens and egos like Clarke and the ones touted by newspapers because they happen to know who they are (like Purnell), and noting that the Party does NOT need a caretaker but a leader (though Straw is, like Cook before him, a genuine kingmaker), then the candidates are really Johnson (the ‘workerist’ and trades union man) and Miliband (the heir to Blair’s progressivism). The Brown faction might like to think it is in the game but, if he goes, they go – at least for this shot at the job – unless they endorse one of the others.

If yet others emerge, it will be because they have been given reason to believe that the current prime candidates cannot stay the course and they can fill the slot or things get so bitter that a ‘bridge’ candidate (perhaps Straw in quiet desperation) emerges – otherwise, any other candidate is just asking for a share of the spoils when one of these two wins and has to placate the other.

The last decade has been about a tense coalition of the union special interest and the new political class led by Brown and Blair. Prescott was the guarantor of the union interest albeit a junior one. Beckett played a similar role.

Since the Left is close to irrelevant, in this coalition the struggle is now only about which of these two elements will be the senior rather than junior partner, much as it was over the struggle for control of the General Secretaryship.

And the key factor for both will be the degree to which their candidate can win over the wider public to assure power – in which case, the union interest has (in Johnson) the first politician in many years capable of reaching across to uncommitted voters against a creature of the political class, Miliband.

I believe we can ignore most media speculation for a long time to come. The key elements in the coalition will be cautious of being accused of disloyalty, sub-factions will be seeking to increase their influence as tradable units (making their own judgements on how noisy and controversial they should be), mavericks and off-the-cuff remarks will be given more credence than they deserve and the Left will be hoping (like the Liberal Democrats) to be a swing vote that requires being placated. This means a lot of heat but little light.

So, the key issue now is not who succeeds – they will have a long time to prepare for office – but how to get rid of a man who won’t go until he is defeated in a General Election. At a certain point, the incomer will have too little time to introduce himself to the public and he then risks loss in any case – and what if GB wins the Election by a whisker!? Nightmare! best let him lose and re-build on a platform of loyalty and change.

The whole thing will be fascinating but surely nothing will happen until Brown has made his next speech to Conference amidst continued low opinion poll ratings and been found wanting. Some political shock – an engineered defeat of the Government – within the PLP (bigger than 42 days) will be needed … perhaps some dreadful incident overseas or a new financial crisis … there are plenty of chances for that.

Avery good analysis there Tim. Don’t have anything to add… other than – yes, 42 days is dead.

I don’t think Tim quite understands how the Labour left works – not least that Compass is both a comparatively new phenomenon as a political force, and also hardly what those of us who’ve been around for a few years would call “left”. At best it can be said that it’s composed of people who stood still whilst the rest of the party rushed right. Furthermore it need hardly be noted that Compass’ parliamentary figurehead (Cruddas) is a former Blairite insider whose reinvention as a born-again left winger happened remarkably close to his decision to run for Deputy Leader of the party.

What is more, the mainstream unions (ie not USDAW) are not quite so umbilically attached to the Blair-Brown project as Tim appears to be suggesting. Staggeringly impotent, prone to dreadful political judgement, and now de-clawed completely of their own volition following last year’s party conference, yes. But active pushers of New Labour, no.

Just for clarification regarding the comments of Alan Thomas.

1. The LRC and other Left may not consider Compass Left but not only does Compass consider itself Left but so do just about everyone else in the Party and in the country. So, Left it is – albeit a fairly ‘soft’ Left by traditional Left standards. Such is the oozalum bird political discourse into which the socialist rump of British society is falling that everyone is scrabbling around trying to capture the definition for themselves and exclude others. The logic of the situation, in fact, would have the LRC and others swallow their sectarian pride and join with Compass rather than maintain a thoroughly non-productive civil war over their particular definition of right policy.

2. And the unions? Yes, the unions are turning away from New Labour but not really very far and only to trade for their special interests. Despite the steady erosion of their powers by their own consent within the Party, they remain central to the federalised Party with significant powers of patronage able to build a bloc in the PLP and manage the agenda at the Conference and NPF.

Having dealt with unions’ shenanigans in dealing with the grassroots Left in the 1990s, their political officers are adept at colluding with the ‘street’ when necessary to try and cut deals that are wholly to their own advantage as a special interest and then moving on quite rapidly when the deed is done.

Indeed, the reformed Mr. Cruddas was a key fixer in that process at that time. In theory, he is one of the few rising politicians with the experience to square the circle in favour of any union acceptance of a shift to the Left.

It is all a matter of judgement. The great hope of the ‘Left’ is always that the unions will detach themselves from the right wing political class and move towards the Left. Of course, many grassroots activists in the unions will, but the best you will ever get is a split union movement, with a ‘reactionary’ political core and the sort of civil war that means that Labour will never form a government (this part alone of the Blairite analysis was spot-on).

There are many , many permutations between LRC-type Left, extra-Party Left, Compass Left, all unions as a class and Left-unions, but they all come down to just two alternatives: either the Left pragmatically provides all unions with a better offer than the Right within a federalised Party; or all Left (activists and unions) seek non-party members in alliance against the Party machine in what amounts to a revolt leading to a split or expulsion.

Compass, typically, is trying to do both and so is doing neither particularly well. In both cases, the Left would have to learn pragmatism – either accepting the swing power of the union special interest inside the Party or of the centrist voter or (under electoral reform) bloc in order to get policies through.

My personal opinion is probably not relevant but I have come to the view that the federalised party structure and FPTP are the problems at the heart of the inability to move towards any form of neo-socialist revival.

Since Party reform is effectively blocked (and do not believe that it is not because of vested interests) and the Party is also not going to move on FPTP (because of those same vested interests), then, logically, someone with a policy priority has only two alternatives – to buckle down and work the system just as it is (effectively the Compass strategy) or get out and create something new with new allies – a centre-left coalition based on OMOV that adds democratic and liberal credentials to its socialist ones.

I now favour the latter but it is not in my hands … and, in the end, it may even become logical to work with a new government that has nothing to do with socialism to get through some policies that would be better than those ever offered by New Labour.

Personally I think that the only people who would run at the moment would be those who couldn’t hope to lead Labour in opposition- so that rules out Milliband and Cruddas. For both of them it would be stupid to take on the leadership now, simply because they can take over in opposition and lead Labour back to power having redefined the party in their own image. To be Prime Minister now is to preside over an election defeat and make it a better election defeat than Brown could- to be the Labour version of Howard.

In that case the people who would look at it would be those who couldn’t run to be Prime Minister in ten years time (ie run for leader of the opposition in 2010, hoping to win the 2015 election and be Prime Minister in 2020), looking at it that way the key determinant is age. So you are looking at people like Hillary Benn, Alan Johnson possibly John Hutton and John Denham as well and Jack Straw. Of those choices personally I’d go for Benn with Johnson as a good second choice.

But there is a real risk to changing now and that is the Brownites. The thing is that unless Brown is defeated there will remain a cusp of MPs probably around Ed Balls who think that he was stabbed in the back. Labour might well be better letting Brown lose the election in order to get rid of him, like the Tories should have let Thatcher go, rather than letting him try to undermine the next couple of leaders from the side with his phalanx of loyal backbenchers.

So what we are saying (if Henry is right and he sounds right to me) is that:-

* Unless GB walks away, we are stuck with him until 2010 (or late 2009 at the earliest)

* If he wins in 2009/2010 (even by a margin), we are stuck with him for at least another two years or so after that, and possibly much longer

* Under either scenario, the most likely successors will be spending all their energy in the meantime half-hoping for a defeat, but not such a cataclysmic one that they could not fully recover under their leadership within the next three to five years, and half-fearng that they will have to serve under GB loyally in order to be anointed or accepted widely as his successor in five or more years’ time.

* And even if he goes of his own volition before a defeat, none of them must be seen to have plunged the knife in directly while none (with Leftist exceptions) can criticise him – and so criticise the general thrust of the policy agenda that he and his predecessor supported.

* Whereas if the defeat is cataclysmic, then and then only can a leader emerge who can offer an alternative to the current agenda – which, if the general election victory goes to conservatism, is likely to mean something close to civil war as Blairites (claiming that the answer is a return to their first principles) and Leftists ( – ditto – )struggle for possession of the corpse.

Predictions Over Five Years

Scenario 1 – A weakened but surviving New Labour government under GB
Scenario 2 – A New Labour Opposition under a moderate right-winger
Scenario 3 – An internal civil war of unparalleled ferocity or simple irrelevance

None of these scenarios includes a victory for the Left beyond a bit of inclusion at the margins (Scenarios 1 & 2) where it will do no harm to the core New Labour offer and the third is more likely to result in the Party’s complete implosion than a return to Government.

Given how politics works, it sounds like the year ahead is going to be one of constant internal manouevring and spin with no one wanting to show their full hand – as if the destiny of the nation was little more than a poker game for high stakes.

It’s certainly going to be very boring for anyone who does not think politics is just entertainment, a sort of soap opera. And we are going to get a great deal of media manipulation, spin and lies while the country drifts … so what’s new

Tim – it’s not a “soft left”, it’s a refoundation of the Gaitskellite Right. Email me and we’ll have a proper chat about it.

Tim – those are some of the most fascinating, well-informed comments I’ve ever seen around here. Thanks.

Somebody give that man posting access!

Alan –

Looked at from the perspective of forty years of Leftwingers shooting themselves remorselessly in the foot and a New Labour Right that has turned into a clone party of Forza Italia without any of its efficiencies, I would think that being Gaitskellite Right is really not so very bad. But you are mistaken …

In fact, if Compass has a fault, it is not in being right-wing as such (you should hear some of the sub-Marxist clap-trap that you still get from the encircling academics), but in having its head far too far up the nether regions of the organised labour movement and failing to bring a candle to see which direction is ‘out.’

With the latest news that Unite has captured the Party through the General Secretaryship, we are about to be left with a workerist rump sitting sullenly for a couple of decades hoping the Tories will screw up, instead of what we should have – a determination on a mass united party of the centre left that could capture over 51% of the popular vote.

As it is, the combined centre-left is 6 points in the polls behind the Tories, meaning that Cameron has managed to dig so deep into the liberal centre that even the combined efforts of New Labour and Liberal Democrats could not win a majority for the centre-left. Now that is a truly remarkable achievement after a decade of New Labour maintained by the large trades unions.

But maybe I misjudge the Brothers and Sisters – maybe they will discover these things called democracy and community engagement … and liberty … as means to achieve equality and end exploitation.

Come on – history is moving faster than we are ….