Ed under siege — and under threat

There was a fun game we used to play during Gordon Brown’s premiership: counting the number of ‘buck up, or we kick you out’ ultimatums that Labour MPs delivered to their leader. There were, suffice to say, a lot of them. And tallying them up illustrated two things: the constant, sapping pressure that the Brown leadership was under, and Labour’s persistent inability to actually finish him off.

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I mention it now because of this story in today’s Mail on Sunday. It collects the increasingly public criticism of Ed Miliband by his own MPs, including Graham Stringer’s warning that ‘Ed has got to get a grip and turn it around before the May elections.’ It’s not at the level of the Brown Ultimatums yet, but it’s certainly remiscent of them.