Political commentary in the post Blair-Brown era

Political commentators have been filling their columns with the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown since before the dawn of time it seems. It must have been a comfort to have it to fall back on with deadlines looming and not much happening in the Westminster Village.

Now that that particularly rich seam seems pretty much mined out (they hit pretty impure ore donkeys’ ages ago imho), what will they find to write about? Some clues are appearing. In the Guardian Polly Toynbee is almost as gloomy as I am; the headline sums it up “Labour has one serious candidate - but it also seems to have a death wish”. She writes “By the end of the conference ... there was a growing certainty that Brown was the destined man ... But what if he can't win? What if, in this celeb-struck era, the smiles do matter more than a strong economy? Even Brown admirers are nervy ...”.

In the Times under the headline “They think the leadership is sewn up. They're wrong: it's all coming apart”, Mary Ann Sieghart writes: “Even the Chancellor’s supporters concede that his appeal has been badly damaged by the events of the past few weeks. For all his flaws, Mr Brown had at least been seen by voters as a man with the integrity of granite ... Now, though, the Chancellor is seen as a would-be assassin and duplicitous to boot. When he claimed in a TV interview that had had always said it was for Mr Blair to decide when to leave office, the public fell about laughing....”

And the Telegraph leader writer, although no friend of Labour helpfully declares “As for Mr Brown, the conference simply confirmed that the more he reveals of himself, the more he is found wanting. ... Locked into this volatile and spite-filled process of transition at the top, the party has lost all momentum....”

Oh dear, I wish they’d go back to Blair/Brown baiting......