Open rebellion

If open rebellion hasn’t yet broken out within the Parliamentary Labour party, it is fair to say that barricades are being manned – or, in the case of Harriet Harman, personned. 

It was Harriet herself who threw the fat in the fire yesterday by stridently demanding that a female MP should always form part of the Labour leadership team.  That provoked a pretty blunt response from John Prescott, who berated her roundly in his blog:

I know you don’t choose the headlines. But you did choose the words in the interview.

You said: “I don’t agree with all male leaderships. Men cannot be left to run things on their own. I think it’s thoroughly bad to have a men-only leadership.”

Quotes like this just raise leadership issues once again just at a time when we should all be pulling together and defending our record.

But Harriet in the meantime has opened up a campaign on a second front by falling out with Peter Mandelson, who apparently refused to discuss her proposals for extended maternity leave at the recent cabinet awayday in Cardiff. 

Mandelson and Harman are apparently taking it in turns to mind the shop during Gordon Brown’s absence on holiday, an arrangement that appears only to have added to the friction that exists between the two.

Eric Joyce’s implicit reference to his boss, Bob Ainsworth, as “politically bonkers” has also stirred up a hornets’ nest.  One unnamed minister said that Joyce should be “toast” for his insubordination, but Joyce remains stubbornly and embarrassingly in situ.

Meanwhile, Alan Johnson’s protestations that he is unable to stop the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States because to do so would be illegal have been undermined by his former deputy leadership rival, Peter Hain, who last night criticised the way the Government had handled the case, asserting that it should have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider possible charges in a “British context”.

It doesn’t look good; in fact, it looks awful.

And while all this mayhem is breaking out, there is nary a word from Downing Street, not a squeak from Gordon Brown, who sits, brooding, somewhere in the Lake District, while what little was left of his authority is publicly, comprehensively and humiliatingly shredded.