“How Gordon ever got there”

The second instalment of the serialisation of Chris Mullin’s sequel diaries, Decline and Fall, reminds us of one of the last mysteries of the New Labour Years. He recounts a “tantalising exchange” on 27 January with “a Cabinet minister of my acquaintance” about the attempted coup mounted against Gordon Brown by Geoff Hoon (and Patricia Hewitt) three weeks earlier:

‘A misjudgment,’ said I.

‘No. He was betrayed.’

‘You mean he was expecting a senior member of the Cabinet to join him?’

‘Yes.’

‘A vague assurance or a promise?’

‘A promise.’

‘Who?’

‘Ah, that will have to wait for my memoirs.’ He added: ‘When it’s all over, the big question will be how Gordon ever got there in the first place.’

It was speculated at the time that Harriet Harman and Jack Straw might have given the plotters a green light before thinking better of it. If so, that was the last chance to save anything from the wreckage of the 2010 election, and they should be blamed for its failure.

But there is “the big question”, too, as asked by Mullin’s informant, who by definition nominated Gordon Brown for the leadership in 2007 (only seven Heroes of the People emerged with honour from that episode). Why was the Parliamentary Labour Party so useless that it allowed Brown to succeed to the job unopposed?

Recent Posts on Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators -

• Michael Gove: future prime minister
• Why savers should forgive the Bank of England
• Germany: Crisis what crisis?
• Reform lost in "holistic partnership"
• Public sector inefficiency at its worst