Stacking the Deck

As I write, the reshuffling & patching-up of Gordon Brown's Cabinet is underway. Based upon the first two announcements, it's not much of a reshuffle, particularly with the alleged flat-swapping Chancellor Alistair Darling remaining at Number 11, and Jack Straw remaining as Justice Secretary.

The third announcement appears to indicate that the suturing process for Brown's authority is at full steam. Alan Johnson will accept the role of Home Secretary, shifting from Health. Johnson has been suggested for some time to be the next-in-line were Brown forced out or stepped down. His reportedly accepting this role bucks the report from the Guardian that backbencher MPs seeking Brown's removal had 75 Labour signatures. (This report happens to be one line toward the end of the main story reporting on the resignation from cabinet of Works & Pensions Secretary James Purnell, an MP from Manchester.) Purnell's announcement to leave the Cabinet came with a call for Brown to stand down if they wanted Labour to remain in power next year.

Although a reshuffle can shore up Brown's authority, his keeping in the highest echelons of Cabinet those under fire for their excessive expenses, particularly when their constituents are feeling the pinch of a global recession, will not help the Prime Minister generate a "Dewey Defeats Truman" type headline within the next 12 months. Already, Labour is experiencing significant losses in the earliest election returns, losing all but four council seats in the heavily Conservative and rural Lincolnshire county, about 120 miles north of London, and ceding sole control of Bristol's council to the Liberal Democrats by way of losing eight seats. Closer to London, Labour failed to pick up any of the 66 seats in the recently consolidated Central Bedfordshire council. It still remains likely that when European Parliament results are released Sunday night, Labour could fall to fourth behind the LibDems and the top two parties from 2004, the Conservatives and UK Independence Party.

Again, it takes just 33 of these backbench rebels seeking to douse Brown to force an election through a no-confidence vote proposed by Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationals, if they're willing to stick their necks out for the good of their constituents. Or their golden parachutes.