Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite: Labour revolt against Gordon Brown: Party like it's 1990
[Patrick Hennessy is Political Editor at the Sunday Telegraph. Melissa Kite is Deputy Political Editor at the Sunday Telegraph.]
As her black, chauffeur-driven Jaguar swept through the familiar gates of Chequers yesterday, Margaret Thatcher's thoughts might well have turned to the subject of plots against prime ministers. Eighteen years ago, her own premiership fell victim to an assassination attempt that began among her own backbenchers. It became terminal when a significant number of her Cabinet ministers told her she could not carry on. Will the same fate befall her host, Gordon Brown?
This weekend's attempted coup, which began on Friday when Siobhain McDonagh, until yesterday a junior government whip, called for Mr Brown to face a leadership challenge, is the most serious threat to his authority that the Prime Minister has yet suffered. For the first time, in at least a semi co-ordinated fashion, backbenchers are going public with their demands for a contest. The aim of the rebel MPs, who are largely supporters of Tony Blair, is to oust Mr Brown. However, despite their declarations growing in number yesterday – with calls from Joan Ryan, Janet Anderson, George Howarth and Fiona Mactaggart – they do not appear to be able to muster sufficient strength to trigger a challenge themselves. Their tactics, therefore, are aimed at provoking a Thatcher-style Cabinet revolt.
A former minister who is in close touch with the rebellious backbenchers told The Sunday Telegraph that "frustration" had built up within the Labour Party over the summer, dating from the extraordinary intervention in July by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who wrote that "the times demand a radical new phase" – a warning widely seen as an attempt to position himself as the party's leader-in-waiting. He described how MPs got fed up of waiting for a Cabinet putsch against Mr Brown that never came, and talked of their despair when the Prime Minister launched his policy "fightback", a much-derided set of measures to boost the housing market and help poorer households with their fuel bills.
The tactics, in the run-up to Labour's annual conference, which begins in Manchester on Saturday, are to stiffen the sinews of a number of Cabinet ministers who rebel leaders still believe are ready to go to Mr Brown at 10 Downing Street and say the unsayable. A former minister said: "What this demonstrates is a degree of frustration that the Cabinet have been bystanders and not participants in the political crisis we are facing. There is a degree of frustration and anger that they haven't acted.
"There is a group in the Cabinet who are thinking about doing something, and they perhaps need to be pushed. There is a group gearing up to go in and tell Gordon that the game is up. The housing package and the energy package were big disappointments and people thought: 'If this is the relaunch, we are in trouble.' We are still stuck."..
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
As her black, chauffeur-driven Jaguar swept through the familiar gates of Chequers yesterday, Margaret Thatcher's thoughts might well have turned to the subject of plots against prime ministers. Eighteen years ago, her own premiership fell victim to an assassination attempt that began among her own backbenchers. It became terminal when a significant number of her Cabinet ministers told her she could not carry on. Will the same fate befall her host, Gordon Brown?
This weekend's attempted coup, which began on Friday when Siobhain McDonagh, until yesterday a junior government whip, called for Mr Brown to face a leadership challenge, is the most serious threat to his authority that the Prime Minister has yet suffered. For the first time, in at least a semi co-ordinated fashion, backbenchers are going public with their demands for a contest. The aim of the rebel MPs, who are largely supporters of Tony Blair, is to oust Mr Brown. However, despite their declarations growing in number yesterday – with calls from Joan Ryan, Janet Anderson, George Howarth and Fiona Mactaggart – they do not appear to be able to muster sufficient strength to trigger a challenge themselves. Their tactics, therefore, are aimed at provoking a Thatcher-style Cabinet revolt.
A former minister who is in close touch with the rebellious backbenchers told The Sunday Telegraph that "frustration" had built up within the Labour Party over the summer, dating from the extraordinary intervention in July by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who wrote that "the times demand a radical new phase" – a warning widely seen as an attempt to position himself as the party's leader-in-waiting. He described how MPs got fed up of waiting for a Cabinet putsch against Mr Brown that never came, and talked of their despair when the Prime Minister launched his policy "fightback", a much-derided set of measures to boost the housing market and help poorer households with their fuel bills.
The tactics, in the run-up to Labour's annual conference, which begins in Manchester on Saturday, are to stiffen the sinews of a number of Cabinet ministers who rebel leaders still believe are ready to go to Mr Brown at 10 Downing Street and say the unsayable. A former minister said: "What this demonstrates is a degree of frustration that the Cabinet have been bystanders and not participants in the political crisis we are facing. There is a degree of frustration and anger that they haven't acted.
"There is a group in the Cabinet who are thinking about doing something, and they perhaps need to be pushed. There is a group gearing up to go in and tell Gordon that the game is up. The housing package and the energy package were big disappointments and people thought: 'If this is the relaunch, we are in trouble.' We are still stuck."..