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Labour MP: Mandelson is briefing against Gordon Brown
Posted by Tory Rascal (@toryrascal)
Tuesday, 27th October 2009
Lord Mandelson is privately briefing against the Prime Minister, according to a senior Labour MP.
The MP, who I met at Parliament last night, said Alan Johnson stands ready to fill a vacancy if necessary, following a serious breakdown in discipline and morale in the Parliamentary Labour Party precipitated by Gordon Brown’s embarrassmant at a demand that he pay back over £12,000 in wrongly claimed expenses.
“Peter has always said that he’d support Gordon in public, which always struck me as a bit arch,” the high-profile MP told me. “Now he’s decided that the party’s only hope is the Milibands – which, frankly, is total bullshit.”
The MP said he had spoken to journalists who confirmed that Mandelson had been briefing the press against the Prime Minister – leading to a stinging article in last week’s Times and threatening to undermine the Cabinet from within. “If even he [Mandelson] is acting on his doubts, Gordon’s lot know he’s in serious trouble,” the MP added.
According to the MP, the recent chatter in the media about the Milibands’ chances – notably in The Times last week – is widely acknowledged within the government to have been down to behind-the-scenes briefings by Lord Mandelson, causing some Labour MPs to speculate that the Prime Minister could be forced to step aside by Christmas.
“There are still those of us in the ‘5th Column’ hoping for change,” he said, adding that Alan Johnson enjoyed wide support as Brown’s potential successor. “I’ve taken soundings from Alan,” the MP said. “He’s absolutely consistent about not challenging Gordon, but privately he acknowledges that if there’s a vacancy, he’ll go for it. David [Miliband], on the other hand, says one thing and does another; we were all sure he’d challenge Gordon after James [Purnell] quit, but he just didn’t have the balls for it.
“To be honest,” he added, “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.”
According to the MP, even some of the Prime Minister’s keenest supporters seem to be resigned to his having to stand aside. “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.”
The MP said that government Whips were becoming increasingly concerned by a collapse in discipline. Monday 12 October saw a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in the wake of the now-notorious ‘Legg letters’ demanding repayments from MPs for excessive expenses claims. The MP was able to confirm that it had been a dreadful affair for the Prime Minister.
“People were talking over him and shouting him down,” the MP said. “That would never happen under Blair – the breakdown in discipline has been incredible.” At the meeting Brown came under fire for his own expenses claims, having been asked to repay over £12,000. “Geraldine Smith [the Morecambe MP] challenged Gordon on his Legg letter,” the MP said. “She asked Gordon why, if he hadn’t done anything wrong, he was having to pay back more money than most other MPs. He couldn’t respond – just spluttered. I don’t for one moment believe Gordon’s crooked, but he has a very thin skin and is taking this all very personally.
“The man’s an absolute gift to the other side. Tory MPs are shitting themselves about the idea that Gordon might not lead us into the election. Without him, Cameron knows we’re in with a fighting chance.”
Asked what had brought the PM to this point, the MP was adamant that the “beginning of the end” was Brown’s ill-received YouTube video on MPs’ expenses. “As soon as we saw that,” he said, “we knew Gordon was in trouble. What f**k-wit would look at that video and let it go online? Gordon is surrounded by sycophants who lack the guts to be honest to him when he needs it most.
“Whatever people think about Tony, he was always willing to listen to criticism. No one dares to speak out to Gordon. They’re all too bloody frightened to just say, ‘Gordon, this is shit. You look like a maniac.’”
