Intelligence and Ignorance

So, Labour have lost Glasgow East (how careless)

The SNP found it behind the sofa…

Gordon Brown is now presumably making frantic phone calls to other members of the Cabinet, to try an ensure that none of them challenge for the leadership (unlikely – bit of a poisoned chalice right now. Plus their almost exclusively not Leadership material, which is why Gutless Gordo keeps them around)

David Cameron has suggested that this would be a good time to call a General Election (blatant political opportunism).

So, what happens now? Well, Gordon will do all he can to stay in the job, probably acting like this hasn’t happened (or isn’t a bad thing). He’s going to try and ride out the wave, which will be difficult for him, as he’s a little too portly and unresponsive for surfing…

He could do worse than take up Cameron’s offer. Of course, at this point Labour would almost-certainly lose the election, but as one economist told Cameron the other day – that might be no bad thing… There’s no way that Gordo would keep hold of the Labour leadership, but he might hold on to enough dignity to come back as a front bencher after the Conservatives lost the next election (in much the same way as William Hague seems to be doing).

The alternative is to hold on as a deeply unpopular Prime Minister for a few more months/years, and then see himself become the Labour equivalent of John Major (but without the lure of Cricket to salve his wounds)

George Monbiot is today claiming that the current Labour government are the most right-wing since WWII. His case is pretty good on its own, but with this report from the guys at Gizmodo, you really have to wonder…

So after tons and tons of speculation, media hype, and plenty of comment from ministers, it looked by Friday morning that we were certain to have an election in the next month…

…and then Gordon saw the polls.

The press are having a field-day, which they quite deserve. It hasn’t been the political writers driving the speculation of the last couple of weeks, it had been the Labour party. I cannot believe quite how spineless our current Prime Minister seems to be. This is going to do huge damage to his political reputation, proving that he doesn’t have the instinct of his predecessor. And, in my eyes, it shows him as unfit to govern…

…if only the other guy was up to scratch…