Politics | 7 March 2009

If there is anything that can bring Gordon Brown a shred of comfort, it is that almost no one in the Labour party is now speculating about his future. There is no shortage of plotting in the bars, tearooms, corridors and urinals of the House of Commons. But what happens to the Prime Minister himself is a subject of negligible interest. He is universally expected to lose the next election and then be gone. Labour MPs are focused on a far more sombre matter: the coming battle not just for the party’s soul, but its very survival.

This is the key to understanding a run of political stories that might otherwise be baffling. Why is Lord Mandelson so brazenly insistent on privatising the Post Office but nationalising banks? Why is Harriet Harman talking about changing the law to claw back a banker’s pension that was approved by other ministers? Why, indeed, is Harriet Harman talking — and why do we listen? Why is Ed Balls making pronouncements on the economy at a Labour Yorkshire conference? It only makes sense when seen through the prism of the Labour leadership battle.