In recent weeks corruption scandals involving Labour MPs and Labour Lords were succeeded in short order by smear scandals – where one of his own closest advisors was found to be involved in a conspiracy to publish lies about political rivals – only to be ousted in turn by even more corruption scandals involving MPs up to cabinet level engaged in quite extraordinary abuses of their expense budgets. Labour plummeted in the polls. The talk became a shout, only none of the shouters were willing to be the first to go public.
Brown went into last week's local and European elections reeling like a punch-drunk sailor in a dockside mugging, no longer knowing whether he could sack government ministers faster than they could resign to undermine him. The answer proved to be no.
The local election results were carnage. Labour won 176 seats. Their rivals for power, the Conservatives, won 1476. Labour is now registering the worst polling scores ever recorded for a serving government.
Prior to and following the local election results, no less than 11 serving ministers departed from government, including a number at Cabinet-level. These include Jacqui Smith at the Home Office, John Hutton at Defence, Caroline Flint, the minister for Europe, Transport Minister Geoff Hoon, and James Purnell at Work and Pensions, who launched a spate of departures within minutes of the polls closing on Thursday.
Brown had been planning a cabinet reshuffle this Monday (June 8), when he hoped to dispose of some of his "enemies", notably Chancellor Alastair Darling, who was to be replaced by Brown's most trusted henchman, Ed Balls, and David Milliband, who was to be replaced as Foreign Secretary by Peter Mandelson.
Now Brown had to rush the thing forward to Friday 5th, in order to plug some of the rapidly-appearing holes. In a bizarre demonstration of defiance to the Prime Minister, Darling and Milliband simply refused to follow his instructions. Both have kept their existing office.
Meanwhile, some of the names that have been brought in look like they have been pulled at random from a hat in a darkened room. While the House of Commons is supposed to be supreme in the British body politic, such is the dearth of talent among its Labour members there that seven of the government's 33 Cabinet Ministers have now been co-opted from the unelected House of Lords.
Among the "new" faces making a comeback is Peter Hain, who resigned in disgrace as recently as last year after forgetting to register ￡100,000 worth of donations to a leadership campaign. Glenys Kinnock has been invited to join. The only democratic credential she can muster is that she is the wife of Neil Kinnock, a former Labour Party leader. Alan Sugar, a former businessman of somewhat erratic reliability who has become a reality TV star, has been conjured out of nowhere.
Oddest of all is the position of the aforementioned Peter Mandelson. He was twice disgraced and forced to resign from Tony Blair's cabinet under suspicion of mortgage fraud and dubious passport dealings on behalf of foreign businessmen. He was brought back from EU bureaucracy last year in a shock move when Brown began to covet his "talents" as a behind-the-scenes manipulator, and he was given a seat in the cabinet as Business Minister despite the fact that he has never run a business or even worked in one. There is not a constituency in the country that would elect him as an MP, so he was given a seat in the House of Lords, which renders him immune to any form of democratic electoral sanction. Only Milliband's intransigence prevented him from becoming Foreign Minister, but he received additional powers that effectively make him Deputy Prime Minister, the second most powerful person in the country.
Oh, and he hates Gordon Brown. Go figure that one out.
Meanwhile, the electorate looks on aghast and disbelieving. Amidst one of the worst crises ever to have afflicted the country, the government appears to have no thought whatsoever of governing, but instead seems to have developed a hypnotic fixation with name-calling, back-stabbing, and internal power-struggles. It is tearing itself to pieces like a wounded shark feasting on its own entrails, while "Prime Minister" Gordon Brown lurks somewhere in the background, pretending to be in charge.
The European Election results are in the process of being declared. Labour is limping home in third place, behind the Conservatives and the Eurosceptic UKIP (UK Independence party), and only fractions of a percentage point ahead of the Liberal Democrats. Labour has polled less than 15 percent of the vote on a 40 percent turnout. The governing Party of the UK has won the support of 6 percent of the eligible electorate.
To complete the surreal picture, nobody knows what will happen next. Every day brings new twists and turns to the saga. How on earth can any Prime Minister who has presided over such a catalogue of catastrophe, and whose support within the country has evaporated, continue in office?
And yet media opinion is divided between those who think he will be gone in days, and those who expect him to see the country through to the next election in June 2010. His authority appears fatally damaged, but there is no one within the Labour Party with the strength and backing to apply the coup de grace. Such is the nature of the British constitution that no one outside of the Labour party is able to exert any influence over the matter. And some powerful forces are shoring Brown up, no doubt for reasons entirely to do with their own self-interest.
So will Brown fall, or will he stagger on?
(China.org.cn June 8, 2009)
