Reply #9: The chances of anyone else taking over Labour from Brown, before an election, are getting less

[muriel_volestrangler]

Brown seems to have just enough allies left to form a 'credible' cabinet - though it's meant that people he was rumoured to have wanted to get rid of (eg the chancellor, Alistair Darling, who's had a lot of criticism recently) have stayed in their posts. And as the OP says, he's said hthere's no way of stepping down.

For the party to get rid of him, about 80 MPs have to openly propose a different candidate. And few people think a change of leader would actaully enable Labour to win the election - just make the win less bad. And his potential successors may rather let him be the fall guy, and come in to pick up the pieces afterwards.

You're probably thinking of Paddy Ashdown (Paddy, or Patrick, isn't his real name, but a nickname because of his Irish connections that stuck with him). He stepped down as Lib Dem leader some time back (late 90s, I think), did some UN stuff, and is now an 'elder statesman' type. After him there was Charles Kennedy - very 'normal-seeming', compared to most politicians, and he led the opposition to the Iraq War in parliament, so he looked good after that. However, he turned out to be an alcoholic, and the party thought it was affecting his work, so they forced him out. They elected Menzies Campbell as leader - he'd been foreign affairs spokesman during Iraq, so also had a lot of credibility; but he was in his 60s, and got tagged as 'too old' - and he was forced out in about a year.

Now, the Lib Dem leader is Nick Clegg - young (in his 40s), and rather bland and unnoticeable, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with him, but he doesn't manage to get the media interested in what he says, unfortunately. At the moment, all the opinion polls point to a Conservative absolute majority at the next election, and it seems unlikely there's anything Labour or the Lib Dems can do about it. Unfortunately, a large part of the British public is 'Tory by default', and since they've been out of power for some time, and the leader David Cameron is an experienced PR performer who can make the Tories look acceptably human, the public are going to give them another try.