Just Gordon

You turn your back for two minutes…

Yesterday lunchtime, I blogged about the leaked resignation of Jacqui Smith, something which the Prime Minister had clearly not wanted to slip out until the weekend.  By the end of the day, while I was doing something else, two other ministers, Tom Watson and Beverley Hughes, had announced they were leaving the Government.  Gordon Brown’s authority is palpably ebbing away with astonishing rapidity.

Today, the word “meltdown” dominates the front pages of the newspapers, broadsheet and tabloid alike.  There is febrile speculation in the Telegraph that David Miliband is openly defying the Prime Minister and refusing to be reshuffled from his position as Foreign Secretary, saying (tongue in cheek, one imagines) that he wants to remain in post for another four years.   Meanwhile, Labour backbenchers, according to the Sun, are getting up a round robin demanding the PM’s resignation.

Most damagingly, the Guardian carries a lengthy editorial calling for Brown to be forced to go, if necessary, suggesting that his replacement could be appointed as quickly as early July.  Its assessment of the PM’s performance is damning:

The truth is that there is no vision from him, no plan, no argument for the future and no support. The public see it. His party sees it. The cabinet must see it too, although they are not yet bold enough to say so. The prime minister demands loyalty, but that has become too much to ask of a party, and a country, that was never given the chance to vote for him. Had there been a contest for the leadership in 2007 – and had Mr Brown called a general election – he would probably have won. He decided not to do these things. And he has largely failed since.

Today will be the first PMQs since the Whitsun recess.  It will be a huge test for Gordon Brown.  If his back benches fail to give him their support on the eve of a national election, it will probably be a fatal blow to his catastrophically lacklustre leadership.  By the weekend, he may well be gone.   As Steve Richards observes in the Independent, this is the most dangerous week in the PM’s career.

When Mr Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, Labour appointed Saatchi and Saatchi to handle its advertising for the next general election.  The poster that won the agency the contract showed an isolated-looking man nervously fiddling with his coat buttons.  The slogan was: Not flash, just Gordon.

And that, frankly, is precisely the Prime Minister’s problem. He is what he is.

He is, sadly,  just Gordon.