Politics | 20 September 2008

When Number 10 said that Gordon Brown’s leadership had not been discussed in the Cabinet on Tuesday morning, it sounded a bit odd. After all, every other gathering of Labour MPs in the land has been talking of little else: how much more humiliation lies ahead, and when the end might come. So it came as no surprise to learn that the spin doctors’ claim was untrue. In fact, the issue did come up in Cabinet, raised by none other than the Prime Minister himself — and in the most extraordinary terms.

After Mr Brown had gone through the motions of discussing government business (not something anyone is much focused on these days), the PM declared that people should indeed have their say on his leadership. But they should wait until the economic crisis was over: now, he said, is the ‘wrong time’. Cabinet colleagues who want him replaced were stunned: this was precisely the formula disillusioned ministers like Douglas Alexander and John Hutton have been using — taken as code to mean that Gordon should indeed go, but not yet.

So Labour is this weekend heading for a party conference at which apparently no one in the party, from the Prime Minister down, will argue with any passion that he is the right man for the job. Were this the Conservative party we would be bracing ourselves for a week of high drama. Yet while the Tories have come to regard their conferences as a form of blood sport, and the platform a gladiatorial arena, there will be nothing much decided in Manchester next week. Mr Brown has diverted all his energies into ensuring it will be a unity rally, however unpersuasive it may be.