“The rats are not just leaving the sinking ship, they are also gnawing at the captain,” says Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express. On Friday, it emerged that a handful of MPs had demanded nomination forms from the Labour Party ahead of conference. Asking for the forms – a largely symbolic gesture, since a nomination does not have to be on an official form – is the “most straightforward way” for a small group of Labour backbenchers to try and depose their leader, says Michael Lea in the Daily Mail. Although the plotters know they won’t trigger a formal contest (the support of at least a fifth of Labour’s 351 MPs is needed to back a single candidate), their aim is to harness the public support of “party big guns”. Former whip Siobhain McDonagh and former vice-chairman of the party, Joan Ryan, both admitted their involvement over the weekend and were sacked.
Since then, several other rebels have demanded a contest; on Tuesday, Scotland Office minister David Cairns resigned, saying it was time for a debate on the leadership. The Cabinet heavies sent to counter the message have been “unimpressive”, says the Daily Mail. John Hutton refused to condemn the rebels; chief whip Geoff Hoon said only that a contest isn’t “appropriate at this stage”. Unfortunately, the plotters – a bunch of “political pygmies” – appear clueless as to what to do next. Their main issue is the lack of a suitable replacement. David Miliband is “recovering from his aborted summer coup”; Alan Johnson looks “disinterested”; and the ambitious but crafty Jack Straw “won’t want blood upon his steady hands”.
While the party bickers, what about the rest of us? asks Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. “Would anyone care to address the point that this country is now sliding into recession, facing its worst property slump in more than a decade and its most serious foreign threat since the end of the Cold War?” Where is the Government’s sense of responsibility? The Tories aren’t blameless either. Shouldn’t David Cameron be resisting the temptation to sit back and watch Labour “implode” and instead point out that such behaviour from a governing party is “shamefully self-indulgent”? The Tories are in “no hurry” to act. They are well aware that the “economic heritage of the next administration will be ghastly, thanks to Mr Brown”, says Simon Heffer, also in The Daily Telegraph. And if the Chancellor doesn’t seem to understand what is happening to the economy at the moment, we can’t be sure that Osborne or his teenage advisers do either. Even so, it is time the Tories “turned up the heat on Mr Brown, if only to cheer the rest of us up”.
They will have to, says Martin Ivens in The Sunday Times. The Labour Party simply isn’t ruthless enough to “mercy-kill” its injured leader. Nobody rallied to Miliband’s standard in July; Charles Clarke was greeted with “deafening silence” when he told Brown his time was up; and the Union leaders grumbled last week but “stayed their hand”. And the chances of Brown resigning or calling a contest himself are nil, says Peter McKay in the Daily Mail. His decade-long struggle for power has made him desperate to cling onto it. John Major silenced his critics by calling a leadership election and winning it. Gordon could do the same, but instead seems to be planning a Viking funeral – “piling himself… and the Labour party on a longboat and setting fire to them”.