No not me, but not much surprise that Gordon Brown has been revealed to have met one of the key Labour plotters who tried to unseat Tony Blair this week.
The Sunday Times reports that the chancellor met Tom Watson, the junior defence minister who resigned last week, immediately before he became one of the rotten 15 Labour MPs who signed the letter.
This having been uncovered the Chancellor and Watson are now shamelessly denying they talked politics. Instead they want us to believe that Watson dropped by to give Brown a present for his new baby. They want us to believe they talked nappies rather than plotting. It’s a hard sell.
There was little doubt before that if Brown and his circle had not orchestrated the letter then they had at the least lent their approval and support.
There seems little chance now that Blair will give Brown the public endorsement he needs. Without that a short-lived Brown premiership will be even more damaged goods than it is shaping up to be now.
Even before this week I didn’t think that Brown could take over as Labour leader and win Labour a historic fourth term in power.
Now with Brown’s complicity in the plotting, backstabbing and party wrecking there seems very little chance he could win against David Cameron. There is nothing to Cameron, we all know he’s a Blair copy, but at least he’s not damaged goods.
Everyone has seen Brown for what he is, a man desperate for power. They might say Blair is desperate to hang on as well, but he has always said he would go before the next general election and by forcing the issue the Brownites have done no one any favours apart from the Tories.
And if Brown truly can not win then why have him as leader in the first place? It makes no sense.
The whole hand over on a plate always smacked of old style Labour Stalinism. There needs to be an election, a democratic process, and Labour members and trade unions need to be able to express themselves and speak up and decide who will be the next Labour leader, if not the fourth term prime minister.
