The Blairite coup against Brown may have misfired, but beyond the plotting the very direction of the Labour party is at stake...
...Of course, the net result of the half-cocked coup is also to weaken Brown's ability to reshuffle his cabinet and strengthen the hand of Mandelson, now effectively deputy prime minister, with all the dangers that brings, such as a greater likelihood of confrontation over plans for part-privatisation of Royal Mail.
Some will, meanwhile, argue that whole Blairite-Brownite split is meaningless nonsense: that they are two sides of a New Labour coin with barely a cigarette paper of difference between them. That has been largely true in the past. But events, and the crisis of neoliberalism unleashed by economic crisis in particular, have begun to create more significant differences.
As the government has begun to inch crab-like in a more recognisably social-democratic direction, the Blairite rump remains unashamedly wedded to accelerated privatisation of public services, corporate feather-bedding and low taxes on the rich (as Alan Milburn's recent warning against any shift to the left highlighted). The battle for Downing Street is about more than just the fate of Gordon Brown.
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