Gordon Brown - staying or going?

May 28 2008 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

TO PANIC or not to panic. That is the question for Labour MPs, as they contemplate their by-election disaster and decide whether a coup should follow Crewe.

But the answer may lie in a further poser – does Gordon Brown resemble the John Major whose ship stayed afloat at the 1992 election, or the one who went down with all hands five years later?

Of course, that Mr Brown should be compared with the weak and vanquished last Tory Prime Minister at all speaks volumes about his plight – but that, truly, is how bad things are.

For Labour optimists – there are some – Mr Brown is like the Mr Major tipped to lose in 1992, an election which followed a deep recession, mass unemployment and the misery of home repossessions.

As the economy began to pick up, voters chose to stay with the devil they knew, rather than take a chance on an untested opposition party. Against all the odds, the Tories won.

Come 2010, the optimists argue, Mr Brown – a successful Chancellor, remember – will, similarly, reap the benefits of digging in and steering the economy through troubled times.

Nonsense, say the pessimists, who believe Mr Brown is now a figure of ridicule akin to the Mr Major of five years later, who was swept away by a landslide.

Don't forget, they add, that the economy was booming by 1997.

It did the grey man no good – because voters were heartily sick of him and had decided he was not up to the job. Hence, a new PM is needed, and fast. So who is right?

Well, for what it's worth, I don't think Labour can ditch a second unpopular leader within 12 months, without the voters having a say at an immediate election.

It would make a farce of democracy. However, there can be little doubt that Labour will lose the next election – whoever is leader – without some dramatic change.

The "hang in there, steady as she goes" attitude will fail.

What is needed is a spectacular policy shift. Next week, I will try to outline what that might be.

***

FEW people wish to contemplate what their parents were thinking about at the moment they were conceived – but George Howarth will.

The Knowsley North and Sefton East MP happily posed the question as MPs debated whether to allow so-called "saviour siblings", to save a sick older brother or sister with a genetic condition.

However, Mr Howarth drew the line at asking his 82-year-old mum, saying instead: "I remain grateful for the fact I was born."

In reply came a heartwarming chorus of: "So are we!"