Those possible replacements for Gordon Brown in brief
I was just wondering which of the possible replacements could get the electorate to come back to the Labour Party:
David Miliband- Blairite career politician.
Harriet Harman- Brown acolyte who has been on-message as he lurches from disaster to comical tragedy. Her husband is Jack “Cash for Honours” Dromey the Party Treasurer, a gift to opposition MPs.
Alan Johnson- Teddy Boy union man turned New Labour bum-licker.
Alan Milburn- Blairite who has kept a low profile and gone along with everything since Brown took over.
James Purnell- Oily Blairite who is rumoured to fancy being the next but one leader.
Ed Balls- Brown’s cabinet best mate and the architect of the abandoned election plan last Autumn.
Jack Straw- Senior cabinet figure for much of the Blair era.
Charles Clarke- Top Blair ally who would suffer the same charisma gap vs. Cameron that Brown does.
Jon Cruddas- Soft-left backbencher who ran Harman and second-placed Johnson close in the Deputy Leadership contest.
Peter Hain- Well-groomed PLP yes man, an ex-CND member he voted strongly for replacing Trident.
John McDonnell- The ‘darling of the left’ failed to get 45 Labour MPs to back him to even stand against Brown following Blair’s departure.
Sadly, I’m still wondering. The better the candidate, the less likely it is that they’d get the job. The parliamentary Labour Party is incestuous and conservative. Anyone who gets the job of leader will almost certainly be seen by the electorate as offering more of the same. And with good reason.
My opinion is that Straw is the only person capable of bringing the party together if we chose to be regicides- I’d like to think he’d be good, given he’s had a good cross-section of govt service, but I have nothing firm on which to base that…