How to lose an election in seven hours

Imagine how much better this would be if these two were badly air-brushed.

The farcical and stunningly ineffective attempted coup against Gordon Brown has been dominating Twitter since news broke during PMQs yesterday. Rather than repeat a lot of the (probably much better written and researched) analysis which will be in today’s papers and all over the opinion-sphere I just wanted to share with you my personal take on an hugely exciting day in the Village.

Let’s start with PMQs. Not a classic in any sense, although I would say that either Brown is getting better or Cameron is getting worse — despite his one good joke — although Guido suggested that he was pulling his punches.

Yeah. That was it.

This followed on the heels of two Conservative gaffes in two days: vacilitating on a tax-break for married couples and also on the EMA — not to mention the half-wits who let David Cameron be interviewed by Nick Robinson without make-up (or even angling his head face up slightly!), making him look like he had two black eyes.

[PLUG: In an upcoming post I will look at how badly the Tory message/image machine is run, particular around Cameron, and especially given his PR hack background]

By launching this attack as and when they did, Patsy “Patronising” Hewitt and Geoff “too bland to merit a nickname” Hoon have completely re-written the narrative in away which is certainly bad for Labour. This has all been covered to death elsewhere, so I’m going to focus on a couple of points which I think may have been missed.

First: David Cameron has been given a breathing space to sort his machine and message out. This was desperately needed, and incidentally this would be the perfect day for him to remove some dead wood from his team (I would start with Michael Gove). One bad day is bad enough; but two in a row, particularly this early, is unforgivably amateur.

Second: Who was going to take over? Patsy? Geoff? Peter Mandelson — even though he sits in the Lords? By attacking Gordon Brown, rather than aggrandising an alternative, they highlighted the sheer incompetence of this publicity-seeking gesture, never mind the bitterness and pettiness. There is no one else at the moment who could lead the Labour party. I don’t think anyone of the contenders would want to, even if they are desperate to replace Gordon Brown, because they would be tarred by the inevitable defeat this Quixotic rebellion has ensured.

Finally: I have commented before on David Cameron’s leadership. What this has really highlighted is the dearth of leadership in the Labour party at a time when the country is crying out for somebody to step up and make the tough decisions for us. No one knew who these two wanted, they just wanted someone who wasn’t Gordon Brown. None of the contenders had the testicular fortitude to confirm in public what they will mutter in private, although they are happy to snipe and offer lukewarm statements of support. At the very least they could have shown some leadership if they had attempted to rally the party around them. OK, Ed Balls did; but Ed Balls would praise his imminent execution as the greatest moment in modern British politics if Gordon were to order it. And while I would personally consider Gordon Brown to be a formidably intelligent man of great personal integrity (although I still wouldn’t vote for him) his leadership is a joke if, at this late stage in the game, it takes him seven hours to see off such a badly organised attempted coup.

— postscript —

A quick note on the new Conservative poster: if they had real balls at Conservative HQ they would have air-brushed Patsy’n’Geoff in a really obvious manner. A bit of self-mockery goes a long way.