Mandelson looking to the future and briefing against Brown.
Good old Tory Rascal was sniffing around Parliament last night and, it appears, one of the MPs he got talking to in the Strangers bar let slip a little to much, revealing that support for Gordon Brown is ebbing away and that even Peter Mandelson has begun briefing against him.
There are few people in the Cabinet that could single handily bring down the PM, but Mandelson is one of them. It is for this reason that Brown has worked so hard to keep him happy.
Speaking to Rascal, the ...
high profile MP said:
“Peter has always said that he’d support Gordon in public, which always struck me as a bit arch.”
”Now he’s decided that the party’s only hope is the Milibands – which, frankly, is total bullshit,” the MP added.
According to Tory Rascal the MP went on to say that even Brown’s most ardent supporters are now resigned to him standing down, which could happen some time around Christmas:
”A few of us think there’s a good chance he’ll walk away, and now even some of his friends are nodding at the dissenters. It would break him, which would be a terrible shame – he feels that if he does walk away, his life to date will have been wasted. I’ve known Gordon for years, and I think it’s a shame it’s come to this – but the party has to get through.”
One of the arguments Labour use internally against removing Brown is the fact that the general public would not tolerate two unelected Prime Ministers in a row. If Brown was forced out around Christmas or New Year, as this MP sugests it is conceivable that Johnson or Miliband could get away with being installed as long as they immediately confirmed the May/June date.
Clearly Rascal’s contact is a firm member of the AJ4MP camp and believes that the Brothers Miliband don’t stand a chance.
“To be honest, no-one thinks either of the Milibands could win us the election at this point, and they’d be stupid to risk it. If one of them gets in, you’ll have Cameron, Clegg and another anodyne nobody, with nothing to tell between them. With Alan, we really do think we could scrape through the election. He has a story and a life before politics, unlike the Milibands. Apart from all that, he’s just a lovely bloke, which certainly isn’t something you could say of David.”
This I’m not so sure of, I have already written about the fact that any change in leader needs to be generational. This is something I think that Mandelson recognises, and will do all he can to make a reality. He backed the winner in 1994 and he will back the winner again.
What is most evident from Tory Rascal’s account though is that Brown’s time is rapidly running out and that his key allies are thinking of the future – a future without Brown.
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