What happens when the Labour leader loses the Guardian?

The Observer today leads with a piece based on an internet poll of 5,000 eligible voters where Gordon Brown scores significantly lower than David Cameron in each test.  No real surprises there, he’s having a nightmare time that shows no signs of stopping.  What is significant, though, is the accompanying commentary piece by the paper’s Chief Political Commentator Andrew Rawnsley that suggests the paper is giving up on the beleaguered Prime Minister.  This is a big moment for Brown, his Head Cheerleader has thrown her pom-poms in the bin.

Coming just a fortnight since he scoffed at the suggestion that a change of leader would be of benefit to the party, Rawnsley’s article today suggests that he has written off Brown “The unravelling of his reputation for strength began with the fiasco of the Election That Never Was. It is ever clearer to me that this was the watershed moment from which he has never recovered” because the public have irrevocably done so ”The brutal but inescapable truth revealed by this survey is that the voters do not want to change anything about Gordon Brown. They want to change absolutely everything.“

By my reckoning this leaves only Jackie Ashley of the Guardian’s ‘big’ writers who thinks that Brown can salvage anything from the wreckage of his first year in charge.  Well, to be fair, the second half of his first year- it seems incredible now but he didn’t actually start badly at all.

Blogs and commentaries have been full of advice for Brown as the situation has worsened, I’ve even added my own two penn’orth for what it’s worth, but these are purely speculative pieces.  Brown is known as a man who doesn’t take advice on board easily- even when things are going well.  His current siege mentality means that we’d all be as well to save our breath, despite all his party’s protestations to the contrary he is resolutely not listening.

The situation, then, is as follows: the electorate have turned their back on Brown and his party by delivering its worst election results in 40 years, the party’s most influential media support appears to believe that its leader is finished and the man at the centre of events is pressing on regardless in the same manner.

How long before we see the Milliband/Balls/Clarke/Straw/Johnson leadership bandwagon rumble into view- presumably drawn by John Cruddas’ stalking horse?

~ by theraffishdandy on 11 May, 2008.