The week in Westminster
Another week, another step towards the opposition benches for Mr Brown.
In another sign that Labour’s chances of re-election have dwindled to the point of ridicule, the party lost the Crewe and Nantwich by-election to the Tories by around 8,000 votes.
It’s the kind of number which party strategists were dreading, a large unavoidable number, the kind of number that screams imminent electoral death.
David Cameron lost his cool slightly, turning his back on his ‘slow-burn’ strategy to announce “the death of New Labour”.
And MPs from across the Labour party came out to give their two-pennies worth about the ways in which they can turn things around – invariable according to their tribe. Left-leaning MPs, those grounded on the party’s Fabian wing, called on Mr Brown to sweep leftwards, hovering up disillusioned core Labour voters as he goes. Blairites urged the PM to re-engage with the modernisation of public services and prevent David Cameron from stealing Blair’s crown.
Mr Brown is, according to his nature, still oscillating between the two options. There are good reasons to be confused. He is as marked as Blair was by the intuitive sense that turning leftwards is just a euphemism for walking out of Number 10. But then, modernisation of public services hardly sounds like the inspiring stuff necessary to galvanise a moody electorate.
It was a climatic end to a week which had begun in an unusually good way for the mother of parliaments.
The vote on the human embryology and fertilisation bill reflected well on MPs, who debated endlessly over ethical matters which transcended party lines before coming down, on every point, on the scientific and liberal side of the argument.
Regardless of people’s beliefs, many observers got a rare shudder of respect while watching the Commons work its way through an issue without an outbreak of tribal warfare along the party lines.
Parliament is now in recess until the first of next month but the prime minister’s woes are such that events will continue to swirl around Westminster even as the Commons lays empty.
