That's not a knife, that's a spoon!

This is what I said on Friday:

But what made the Tory wilderness years so bad, and the start of Labour's time as Scottish Opposition so cringeworthy wasn't the defeat itself, but the party's reaction to it. Firstly, the jockeying for positions began before the election took place, so the parties went into the contest divided. Secondly, the parties turned completely inward and started rowing with each other in the aftermath. If Labour can avoid that, they might be back on their feet by 2011.

This is what Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt have said today:

As we move towards a general election it remains the case that the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is deeply divided over the question of the leadership.

Many colleagues have expressed their frustration at the way in which this question is affecting our political performance.

We have therefore come to the conclusion that the only way to resolve this issue would be to allow every member to express their view in a secret ballot.

This could be done quickly and with minimum disruption to the work of MPs and the government.

Whatever the outcome the whole of the party could then go forward, knowing that this matter had been sorted out once and for all.

Strong supporters of the prime minister should have no difficulty in backing this approach.

There is a risk, otherwise, that the persistent background briefing and grumbling could continue up to and possibly through the election campaign, affecting our ability to concentrate all of our energies on getting our real message across.

Equally those who want change, should they lose such a vote, would be expected by the majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party to devote all of their efforts to winning the election.

The implications of such a vote would be clear - everyone would be bound to support the result.

This is a clear opportunity to finally lay this matter to rest. The continued speculation and uncertainty is allowing our opponents to portray us as dispirited and disunited.

It is damaging our ability to set out our strong case to the electorate. It is giving our political opponents an easy target.

In what will inevitably be a difficult and demanding election campaign, we must have a determined and united parliamentary party. It is our job to lead the fight against our political opponents.

We can only do that if we resolve these distractions. We hope that you will support this proposal.

So Hoon and Hewitt have opted for the backbiting. And what an idiotic idea! Firstly, they've made up the procedure - it doesn't exist within any Labour party rules. Secondly, it's not just the MPs who are supposed have a say on who the Labour Party Leader should be - it's the affiliated organisations (trade unions, mostly) and individual members who have a vote in the process. Thirdly, there was a chance for all of them - Parliamentarians, affiliated groups and party members alike - to have a secret ballot on the Leadership. That was in the Spring of 2007, when there was an official vacancy. But instead of using that obvious time to put forward this idea - of people deciding who should be the Labour Leader - Hoon and Hewitt declined to do so, failing to nominate an alternative candidate. So they drop their little bombshell now.

And what a time to do it! I know it's a tired line, but there's truth in it: David Cameron really hasn't 'sealed the deal'. Look at the opinion polls from December 1991, when Neil Kinnock looked like ousting John Major (but, as we remember, failed to do so). Look at the opinion polls from December 1996, just five months before Tony Blair's Labour party routed the Tories, the polls projected a far more severe gubbing than the one that actually occurred. If you take a look at last month's polls, you see that the gap between what was expected in the 1991 and 1996 polls and what actually happened in 1992 and 1997 is the gap that could make the difference between the currently projected slim Tory majority and a finely hung Parliament in the Spring.

David Cameron does not have his majority yet and he knows it: that's why he's courting LibDem voters; that's why he's trying desperately to dismiss the governing party of Scotland as an irrelevance (way to foster cordial relations with Bute House, Dave); that's why they're unveiling the results of some very carefully massaged polls in Scotland; that's why Nick Bourne and Cheryl Gillan attempted to dress up the defection of Mohammed Asghar AM and his daughter from Plaid to the Conservatives as a major coup - it had a symbolic quality, given Asghar's status as the only non-white AM, and it gave the Tories a couple of column inches on the day Rhodri Morgan passed the Labour Leadership baton to Carwyn Jones, but significant? Well, not in the grand scheme of things. They still have a lot to do before they can persuade all the people they need to persuade, and they're trying everything. They're not necessarily succeeding as clearly as they would have hoped either.

Yet if Labour figures are willing to do this to their own party at this time, Cameron need do nothing as Hoon and Hewitt have decided to hand him a majority on a silver platter.

And then look at the attack: "It is damaging our ability to set out our strong case to the electorate. It is giving our political opponents an easy target." Nothing about the direction of the party. Nothing about its platform. Not a dickie bird about the policies needed (or not) to present. It's all about the delivery. It's about the medium. It's a McLuhanite approach to politics: the medium is the message. Or, in this case, the messenger is the message. The only principle Hoon and Hewitt seek to espouse is the principle of winning an election. They don't have any new ideas and they don't even appear to have an alternative leader-in-waiting.

This utterly lame attempt at backstabbing reminds me of that scene in The Simpsons, when the family are in Australia. While the family are eating a meal, a local looks at the knives they're using and says, "You call that a knife? THIS is a knife!" At which point he produces a spoon.

That sums up the Hoon-Hewitt attack: they don't want Brown out, but have dreamed up an entirely new mechanism to eject him; they want to win the election, but argue that the best way to do so is to have some sort of catharsis just a short while before an election; they're tired of leadership speculation being in the press all the time, but do something which catapults it back onto the front pages; they want to end the row once and for all, but do so with a suggestion that key Labour figures proceed to pour cold water on but do so in such a half-hearted manner that their real view is obvious: they're not happy either, but think that either the plan isn't the real deal, or its proponents aren't. It's not a knife - it's a spoon.

And Brown has played 'Knifey-Spoony' before. Since the Glasgow East result, Brown has faced all sorts of vituperation and attacks from his own side. But none of them have pushed him out, because every time the killer blow was supposed to come, it didn't. Every time someone was ready to move against him, they didn't. The challenge - or at least, the challenger - has not materialised and Brown stands alone: unloved, unwanted but unopposed. The time to get him out was before he got in, back in the 2007 Leadership election. But that came and went, and Labour are stuck with him until the Election.

People describe Brown as unlucky, but he's not. To oust him, his challengers have only had to be lucky once. To stay, Brown has to be lucky all the time. His luck has got him this far and it will see him stay in Downing Street until polling day.

But luck can only get you so far, and with Labour MPs willing to see the party rip itself to shreds just to prove a point, the furthest luck can get Gordon Brown is polling day. After that, there's nothing he can do.

The Premise of the Question

According to the BBC, Alistair Darling believes that Labour "can and will win" the next election.

However, he did slip up ever so slightly. And I'm not talking about the trial separation that he and reality appear to have begun.

Andrew Marr asked him: "Even under Gordon Brown?"

Darling replied, "Yes, absolutely."

Now, let's take a look at that sentence. Let's take a look at the word "even".

There's an incredulity about the word "even". It either means that something took place (or will take place) under unlikely circumstances, or that far more has happened (or will happen) than previously assumed. "Even" conveys a sense of surpassed expectations. What Marr was implying, therefore, is that Brown makes victory less likely, that he makes it harder for Labour to win.

And Darling walked right into that.

If he'd said "especially under Gordon Brown", there would have been no problem. Well, there would, as it would have meant that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had voiced an intention to stand in the constituency of Planet Zog North at the next election, but he wouldn't have accepted the underlying premise of Marr's question: that Brown is a millstone around Labour's neck, that he lowers the expectations of a Labour win next year.

But Darling didn't pick up on that.

Oh, dear.

That Was The Week That Was

This has not been a good week for the mainstream political parties.

On the one hand, the SNP finally have a candidate for Glasgow North East - and a fairly sharp one at that. Sadly, it's been a tougher road than we might have expected: the presumptive candidate didn't apply, the initial candidate withdrew, and so David Kerr, having already made an attempt to secure the selection, will now be on the ballot paper. Now, having a candidate is a good thing, and having a smart candidate like David Kerr is even better, but we're now at the stage of the press raking through everything that David Kerr has ever said or done. Frankly, I'm expecting headlines such as "Kerr put worm in Sarah Wallace's hair in Primary 1" next week. Interestingly, Willie Bain - Kerr's Labour countrerpart - appears to have received very little scrutiny and precious few column inches. On the one hand, he may not have to put up with tabloid muck-raking for the next few weeks. On the other hand, he's not getting any mention in the press at all. At least people will be able to match the phrases "David Kerr" and "SNP By-Election Candidate". Still, with the way the press seem to be operating this week, you can see why Grant felt it wasn't a good idea to put himself forward for nomination, and why James Dornan felt it necessary to stand down.

So the SNP can move forward from the frustrating events of the last couple of weeks. David Kerr will have to handle more journalistic egg-throwing, but 1) his name is in the papers while Willie Bain's isn't, and 2) I get the feeling that he'll withstand it, and dish it back out if need be...

For Labour, Gordon Brown has had to cope with the ghosts of Cabinets past. He's had former ministers complaining about the laddishness of his approach (here's something to think about: if a hypothetical male former minister said that an equally hypothetical female PM was 'girly', all hell would break loose, but hey, gender-based stereotyping and labels are perfectly acceptable if you're discussing men, it seems). Jacqui Smith told Iain Dale that she wanted to resign just before the G20 but was told not to (she also lamented not getting training). James Purnell's been telling the papers that he lost faith in Gordon Brown last December (that late?). Lastly, John Hutton has complained that the likely election campaign message is too crude, that while he - of course! - recognises Brown's many talents, the country as a whole doesn't, and has now jumped on the Afghanistan bandwagon (while eliding the obvious point that having been Defence Secretary until last month, it was his job to get the troops the equipment they need).

Now, this may seem like a bunch of has-beens mouthing off. Jacqui Smith complains about training - why couldn't she learn on the job like everyone else? James Purnell moans that he lost faith in the PM about a year after everyone else did but six months earlier than when he actually quit. If it was that bad, why didn't he have the cojones to go at Christmas? And John Hutton's "I'm not being funny, right, buuuut..." approach to criticising Brown is pretty shabby as well, particularly when, on the Afghan situation, he had a chance to make a difference and do the things he's now talking about, but didn't. In short, under normal circumstances, you'd expect Brown to brush this off. Blair would have. But Brown isn't Blair. This is how the Summer is going to go: more people coming out of the woodwork slagging the PM off, and just like last year, it'll be down to Sarah Brown to bail him out at Conference...

For the Tories, their European project has started badly: Edward McMillan-Scott MEP broke ranks with the rest of the party to stand for a Vice-President's post in the European Parliament, defeating official candidate Michal Kaminski of the Polish Law and Justice Party (part of the Tories' new ECR Group) in the process. By way of compensation, Kaminski has been appointed Leader of the Group, and now the press are going through his previous pronouncements as well - use of homophobic language, and today, accusations of anti-Semitism. When the Tories are trying to look human, they don't need this.

On the other hand, it is, after all the European Parliament and few people care about the niceties of European group formations, or, for that matter, the European dimension. Who refused to vote Tory because they were quitting the (then) EPP-ED Group? Did anyone in the UK vote (or not vote) Green because of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for example? Have many people in the UK heard of Martin Schulz? I doubt it. So the story will pass, and the fact that today's allegations were deep in the middle of the paper suggest that they'll have limited impact. Kaminski will occasionally be used (by Labour) for egg-throwing purposes. Besides, out of 45 million eligible voters, barely a third bothered to show up for the Euro Elections. And if Kaminski is a vote loser, then the Tories only have 4,198,394 votes to lose in European terms. And most of them probably agree with Kaminski anyway...

Finally, the LibDems. They made a good point on the lack of support being offered to frontline troops in Afghanistan. The problem is, the point was too good, and Third Party Syndrome kicked in. Now everyone wants more helicopters for the troops but no one remembers who suggested it, just as on the Gurkhas, the LibDems were the ones whose motion won a parliamentary vote, but Joanna Lumley took the credit for the eventual success. This is a problem: when the have a bad idea, they get the piss ripped out of them in ways that doesn't happen to the others. When the have a good one, everyone else nicks it and no one remembers who thought of it in the first place. At least, for the others, the problems are (relatively) transient. For the LibDems, they're pretty much existential. It'll take PR for the LibDems to be considered seriously, but it's only the LibDems who are proposing PR, and not Labour or the Tories...