Arrived at Millbank at 9.50 to do Dragon’s Eye, just as Nick Robinson was dashing out on his way to College Green.
There had been rumours all day that another cabinet minister was due to resign on the stroke of 10.00, when the polls closed. And so it was. As the titles of the BBC Ten o’clock News rolled, the captions below announced that James Purnell had resigned, urging Gordon Brown to stand down for the good of the Labour party.
This is the most serious blow yet for the Prime Minister. Hazel Blears’s criticism of him in her resignation statement was all subtext and implication. Purnell could not have been more explicit:
I owe it to our party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may be. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely…
I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning. As such I am resigning from government.
Purnell’s resignation has emboldened other Labour MPs. This evening, Barry Sheerman, Siobhain McDonagh and Nick Raynsford have all backed the call for Brown to resign. There are further rumours of the imminent resignation of another prominent cabinet member.
On Dragon’s Eye, Wayne David was doughtily defending the Prime Minister, calling Purnell’s resignation “unfortunate” and doggedly insisting that Brown was under no real threat from within the Parliamentary party. He reminded me of the dance band on the Titanic, and I said as much.
Brown is a dead man walking. His own resignation is but a matter of time.
Saw you on Dragon’s Eye tonight Mr Jones, you spoke very well and agreed with you 100%.
“He reminded me of the dance band on the Titanic, and I said as much” – with all these ministers leaving the cabinet, its more like the Mary Celeste than the Titanic.
Time for a change.
But do you really want him to go David?
I would have thought that if he is as fatally weakened as you say, he would be a great asset going into an election campaign.
If he quits then Labour bring in a new leader who has some time, not much, but some, to sort things out. The party will unite behind a new PM and they don’t have to go to the polls until next year.
OK, there might be an argument that a new PM should go to the polls for a mandate, but it’s not compulsory is it, and that argument didn’t work for Brown (even though he should have chanced his arm earlier, too late now, he blinked)
Plenty of time for events to unfold, the economy to pick up…maybe…and they slide back in on a much reduced majority.
To continue the Titanic theme, with Brown at the helm they’re unelectable, so isn’t that just where you want him?
Shrewd analysis, David.
But yes, I do want him to go. He is an utter disaster for the country. He has all sorts of personal deficiencies which it would be impolite to mention, but which everyone recognises. We simply can’t afford to keep him at the helm.
In any event, as a party we have already discounted his demise and are contemplating a post-Brown landscape.
I’m sure you are.
I think that unless the economy seriously picks up – and here we’re talking banks lending again, interest rates rising to protect people’s savings and businesses seeing some credit facility and cashflow – Labour are dead in the water. And that is just out of their control.
They’ll get a new leader bounce in the opinion polls, but I can’t see it being enough to give them any confidence of winning an election.
So, in a post-Brown, post-Labour landscape, where are we likely to see you in a Cameronian government?
Modesty forbids! I’ll do whatever I’m asked and just be pleased to see a Conservative Government.
Anyway, I’m taking nothing for granted and we have to win the election first.
The Dance Band on the Titanic…lovely parallel… I’ll have to use that one! Even my friends in the US that have never paid any attention to British politics have heard how terrible a job Brown is doing and have commented on it.