SO, LET’S assume the autumn coup goes ahead and Gordon Brown is forced out of Downing Street. Is there a fresh policy agenda out there for Labour?
This question must be at least as important as which of the touted big names – David Miliband, Jack Straw, Harriet Harman – might become the next Prime Minister.
But here is the bad news.
It is even harder to find seeds of hopeful new policy ideas than it is to detect life in Mr Brown’s apparently moribund premiership.
Of course, it is hard for Cabinet ministers to put forward specific policy changes without being hit on the rebound by allegations of kicking the PM while he is down (and nearly out).
Nevertheless, it is depressing that no senior figure appears to be addressing the root causes of our economic woes – the blunders of the banks and recklessness in the financial markets.
It should be clear to all that it is time to shine a spotlight on the murky operations of the City of London and stop bending over backwards to appease it.
For example, there is strong evidence that so-called "short- selling" by multi-billion pound hedge funds – forcing down the price of shares before buying them back – is undermining otherwise healthy major companies.
Such speculation in London’s unregulated oil futures markets is blamed for much of the soaring price of oil and the misery that brings in the home and at the petrol pump.
A related issue – because of eye-watering City salaries and bonuses – is the growing gap between rich and poor that has prompted even some private equity chiefs to warn of a violent backlash.
Now banks and building societies have all stopped lending at the same time, but the Government will not step in because nothing is allowed to interfere in the free (non) working of the market.
This should be fertile ground for Labour, because the Conservatives are even more wedded to this disastrous ideology that the Government must stand aside.
The public is angry about the excesses of the uber-rich and furious at the bankers and speculators who got us into this mess.
Is there anyone in this tired and timid government with the courage to act on that?
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THE Schleswig-Holstein question was said to be so complex that only three people understood why it led to war.
One was dead, another had gone insane and the third was Lord Palmerston – but he had forgotten.
Now Tory peer Michael Forsyth has suggested the Barnett Formula – that Scot-friendly funding rule – is "a bit like the Schleswig-Holstein question".
No wonder it is so difficult to explain.
