Skipper

Even more pressure on Brown today. After the poll yesterday showing Conservatives on 52%, comes the poll in the Indie showing 54% of Labour activists, the group which some said would rail against the rebels at the upcoming conference, think he should be jettisoned. Yet an even worse poll result for Gordon is contained in the same poll. Two days ago I reported, laughingly, a website calling for the return of Tony Blair. The same poll shows that under Blair, the antcipated Tory majority would be cut from 182 seats to just 20. Imagine how that might play with Labour MPs in all those threatened marginal seats.

All this comes two days after a cabinet meeting when some several ministers were amazed there was no discussion of why Labour was so unpopular with voters. Martin Kettle today, in a tart little piece reports that:

Five or six cabinet ministers, perhaps more, none of them plotters and none of them looking for Brown's job, are ready to quit if someone senior gives a lead.

And as for loyalty to the boss, he asks:

'why should anyone in the party owe much loyalty to the most consistently disloyal Labour politician of modern times? Imagine the vicious briefing that would be taking place this weekend if Blair not Brown had been in No 10.'

It is now clear that, notwithstanding such assaults, more than a few would seem to prefer the previous leader back in place.