The Job They Really Want
May 19th, 2007It has long seemed strange to me that during the last elections the Conservatives were trying to get us to vote for them by warning us that if we voted for Blair, we’d surely end up with Brown, but once we had Blair they all started calling for him to resign and let Brown take over. Brown, for his part, doesn’t think that his appointment as Prime Minister is something the British public should bother themselves voting for, but apparently he does think that who wins Celebrity Big Brother is something we should all vote for.
So in what is at best a mildly surprising turn of events, nobody wants to be Prime Minister, which is pretty reasonable considering that Blair’s spent the last year or so being accused of everything you can think of, being pestered to resign, and generally having a less than wonderful time of it. The day Blair announced his departure date every newspaper in the land started printing lists of people who might replace him but in the event only one person stood and therefore he is pretty much a certainty to win.
About half an hour after Blair made his announcement, John Prescott also resigned, which wasn’t reported much because there was never any chance that whoever succeeded Blair would keep him on, and nobody really cared given that an important person had just resigned, and in any case Prescott hadn’t seemed to do anything for as long as anyone can remember anyway, except for play Croquet, earn lots of money, sleep with his secretary, pretend to be a cowboy, and generally lounge about in his free “grace and favour” country house.
Lots of people decided to stand for the post of Deputy Prime Minister. So you see they’re smarter than they look.
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May 19th, 2007 at 15:37
It’s not true that “only one person stood”. Brown got enough nominations to ensure that there weren’t enough left for anyone else to get onto the party ballot, and therefore that he would be the only candidate. John McDonnell put up a pretty strong fight under the circumstances, and Michael Meacher only dropped out because the only way either him or McDonnell stood a chance was if they pooled their support.
Though admittedly you could characterise that less as “wanting to be Prime Minister” and more as “wanting there to be a chance of the Labour party being vaguely left-wing”.
May 19th, 2007 at 20:30
What amuses me is the way the opposition tried to stop people voting Labour with the go-to-bed-with-Blair-and-you’ll-wake-up-with-Brown argument, and now that’s happening they claim Brown has no mandate and demand an election be called.
Of course, technically there are two opposition parties and it was probably different ones who made these two contradictory arguments, but I choose to ignore this.