Typical of a Gordon Brown announcement things weren’t quite what they seem. Yes he’s going to step down as party leader but in an “orderly” manner so not until conference in September and if the country needs him (fat chance) then he’ll generously agree to cling on to any leaver of power that he can for as long as possible. On an amusing quote front Mr Brown said “parliamentary and not presidential system“, so what were those leadership debates about then?
Meanwhile senior Labour types such as John Reid and Blunkett are saying that Labour should step down and let the Tories as the largest party get on with things. Nick Clegg has abandoned his previous stated intent to work with the party with the largest mandate and is trying to play Labour and the Tories against each other to secure the best advantage for the LibDems and sod national interest. Of course it seems likely that if the LibDems do get to power via the Labour Party that they’ll not be terribly popular and Mr Cameron can paint himself as the victim of a stolen election, regardless of if it’s actually been stolen or not under our system.
All of which of course ignores the fact that there are several seats which may be open to legal challenge due to lack of voting papers, people being turned away etc. Which might not change the balance of power but who knows.
What is certain is that who ever does manage to grasp the reins of power even for a short period of time is probably not going to be popular, due to the massive amount of cuts that actually need to be made to avoid going the way of Greece, who we’re being forced to bail out by something north of 10 billion (and remember before the election the 3 main parties were struggling to find ways to cut 6). Given the renewed interest people seem to have in politics these days (we do so love a farce) I think there may actually be a way to avoid that for the Tories at least, they need to take the radical move of actually telling us the truth. Regardless of if they’re in power or not they need to come clean with us and say “we’re screwed, fixing this is going to hurt a hell of a lot – sorry but it’s got to be done”. They won’t do it obviously and even if they did people would scream but they’ll scream a hell of a lot more if we end up in the same position as Greece.
To end of a more positive note Anna Raccoon has a delightful take on the position Gordon now finds himself in, oh and we already have our first exepenses scandal of the new parliament and they haven’t even sat yet.
