Thursday, July 06, 2006

They Can't Get Rid Of Prescott Any More Than Brown Could Sack Blair...

I could be wrong on this, I’m not a Labour man (as you may have noticed) because well frankly socialism is shite, doesn’t work and has been responsible for most of the 20th Century’s most barbaric and atrocious dictators. As such I’ve not got the full lowdown on how the Labour Party leadership works, if I’m wrong please leave it in the comments and I’ll get rid of the post.

Right… have a think about this.

The Parliamentary Labour Party has absolutely no method of voting no-confidence in its leaders.

If this is the case then Prescott’ in place as long as he wants to be in place unless Blair actually gets rid of him. To fire the DPM would be to fire the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and this is a right the PLP don’t have.

It is Guttersnipe’s belief that Prescott has some sort of hold on Blair that prevents this from happening.

Blair and the Labour Party bang on about how the Tories can’t decide on a leader but that’s chiefly because the Conservative Party has that right. If enough Tory MPs hand in a petition to Michael Spicer of the 1922 Committee then a leadership contest can be triggered.

We saw this happen with the crash of Iain Duncan Smith. Tory opponents always like to paint this sort of thing as ‘evil disloyal back-stabbing Tories’ but think about it. In the Tory party the sniping and counter-briefing that the Labour Party is currently suffering can be stopped in its tracks.

I recall William Hague mentioning on TV during the takedown of IDS that this was the case.

If so… we’re stuck with Prescott until either he or Blair decide that it’s time to go and I don’t see Prescott shifting any time soon do you?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actually, there is a way for the Labour party to shift him. Were a majority of Labour MPs to disavow allegiance to Labour and go independent, Tony would lose his majority.

At that point he either does something to get it back, or he's political dead meat.

Unfortunately, this is about as likely to happen as the Lib-Dems winning an election landslide.