Rumour mill can’t detract from the question: what’s changed since June?

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

The Evening Standard, Guido, the Spectator and Channel 4 News are all circulating the rumour that at least one cabinet minister – and perhaps two – may still be willing to resign if it means a new attempt to remove Gordon Brown from the Labour leadership would follow.

The story, originally trailed by Paul Waugh in the Standard, also picks up on Peter Mandelson’s assertation that Labour cannot win the election on a core-vote strategy as a sign that new criticism of Brown’s leadership is heading towards an enforced change at the top.

Waugh says:

“The plotters have certainly asked a sympathetic minister to do so – but whether he will do so is another matter…There is certainly something going on, but with many MPs only just making their way back to Parliament through the snow and wind, it’s difficult to assess how coordinated this all is.”

Still at the back of my mind is last summer’s hushed talk within the Labour Party that a new plot to oust the PM would be launched in January, and it does appear that people are talking – and perhaps plotting – again.

But those thoughts were based on the assumption that Britain would be showing improved economic activity by the new year, that confidence in the Labour Party would by now have somehow surged, that a new leader would pounce on that and gain Labour a popularity bounce in spite of everything. Plainly, that is not the current phenomenon.

As I asked last week, what’s changed since last June’s failed coup, other than the passage of 6 months and the fact that we are now just four months from the presumed election date? Has Labour suddenly found some brave alternative leader to step forward and save the party from defeat?

If further hushed plots are again the doubters’ weapon of choice, I suspect not.

In remarking that Labour cannot win the eleciton on a core-vote strategy alone, Peter Mandelson is not rabble-rousing. He is stating pure electoral mathematics. Labour won the 2005 election with a reduced majority of 47 and just 35% of the vote – and 22% of the eligible vote. Appealing merely to one demographic is, as Mandelson suggests, the easiest route to electoral wipeout. It is his duty to let the PM and his backers know that.

There is always talk and behind the scenes maneuvering in politics, but if the rumours do come to anything – which I severely doubt – and a remaining cabinet minister has reserved the decision for this time specifically, you have to ask, why now?