I can’t back Gordon Brown, I can’t back a coup

By Matthew Cain

I don’t support Gordon Brown. His leadership of the party has been vicious and nasty and his leadership of the country has been inept and hopeless. I always thought it would be bad but I never believed that he would be quite so bereft of ideas for what he wanted to do with the job.

And I can’t agree with Luke Akehurst that Gordon Brown doesn’t deserve this: he absolutely deserves this. His knifing of Blair was undemocratic, clandestine and completely reprehensible. His failure over 10 years and more to support allies and colleagues in difficulty was despicable. I give you, Harriet Harman’s battle with Frank Field, his silence over the fuel protests and the astonishing notion put about that he didn’t support the Iraq war but remained in cabinet. Look only over the last week at the way he has treated Alastair Darling.

But I don’t support the coup. This is not an honest, noble cause. There is no disagreement over policy. Gordon Brown is not a changed man as Prime Minister. It’s an electoral calculation about limiting the damage at the next election and it’s one in which the means destroys the ends. Yes, if we had another leader we would do better at the next election. But removing Brown now, against his will removes any authority the party has left.

I was moved to tears last night when my wife came back from canvassing, on her own, in a marginal ward, to find that another Cabinet minister had resigned (followed by a troop of politicians to the TV studios: why were they in central London rather than in their constituencies?) Whatever cack-handed, school-boy antics are going on (did you read the farcical Hotmail coup story in The Guardian?) they are destroying the party. The actions of the leaders of our party create a water cannon affect on Labour members going out campaigning. They ruin our credibility in the eyes of ordinary people. They destroy our ability to govern the country. And we will serve our punishment for a long, long time.

Matthew Cain also blogs at matthewcain.co.uk.