Gordon in la-la land

Alistair Darling has wasted no time in capitalising on Gordon Brown’s impotence in the wake of Wednesday’s attempted coup.

The Chancellor has briefed both the Times and the Guardian that Britain faces the “toughest spending cuts for 20 years” if Labour continues in office.

Darling – supported, no doubt, by Peter Mandelson – clearly recognises that the electorate won’t buy the Prime Minister’s line that “investment” can continue simultaneously with “halving the deficit”; indeed, the only individual who still appears to accept that fantasy is the PM himself. 

Such a very public disavowal by Darling of the Prime Minister’s stance would, as the Times observes, have been unthinkable a few weeks ago.  His new boldness simply serves to underscore the extent to which Brown is now, post-putsch, in thrall to the cabinet members who lent him their muted support earlier this week.

Labour’s big continuing problem, however, is the very fact that Brown is still there and it’s too late to get rid of him.  Expressions of new realism from Mandelson, Darling and others will be of no electoral advantage to a party whose leader – apparently now about to ask voters for a “full second term” – continues to inhabit a political la-la land.