The last days of Mr Brown

I feel sorry for him- Blair f*cked him over royally. He has been backed into a corner on some very important decision where I feel he would have made different choices if time had been on his side. Blair should have left in early 2006, for Brown to have been reasonably sucessfull.

He's in a mess.

There are no good options for Labour. The UK constitution does permit change of PM without an election if the new PM has the same manifesto as his predecessor - ie in a situation when Brown took over the bulk of Blair's policies.

Labour could in theory appoint a third party leader as PM with the same policy as Blair and Brown. But there is very little point. There is no obvious charismatic figure, so it will achieve little.

They could appoint a new PM with different policies. This might actually win some support. In such a case it would be expected that there would be an election to get a mandate.

Of course they might change PM and policies and find an excuse not to hold an election. Yet just a few months ago Brown considered what would have been an unnecessary election on the pretext that the small changes in his policies and Blair's might be sufficient to require a new mandate. To argue that much bigger changes would not require an election would be perverse. They might do it, but there will be months of muddle if they do.

It looks as if we have a couple of years of muddle. In that time the economy will surely get worse. The Abrahams secret donations issue will probably get to court. The Lisbon Treaty might even be imposed. Nothing is sure in politics, but it looks like a long slog followed by a Labour collapse.

The right think for the country would be an election now. With a lot of luck there could be a no confidence vote to force an election - but the Labour backbenchers who would have to support such a vote are the very ones who will mostly be kicked out at the next election.

I think we are probably stuck with an incompetant and possibly corrupt government (the Abrahams case has the potential to find them corrupt in a court). The sadness is that their socialist stupidity is digging Britain deeper and deeper into a hole. The ultimate tragedy would be implementation of that wretched Lisbon Treaty - which Labour promised in their manifesto to give a referendum on, and have now reneged on their promise through the expedient of arguing that a treaty is not a constitution (though their own committee finds them substantially the same).

The really interesting point long term is how big Labour's collaps might be. Could we have the Lib Dems as the party of opposition, and the socialists become the third party? I can dream ...

I keep asking myself why did I vote LABOUR I've been taxed to the hilt ,my pension is shit,so much for being british.Dear Mr Brown now is the time to go .Good on FRANK FIELD tell it as it is.phil wirral.

Well jonnybegood, no longer content with thrying to rob the middle classes, Labour have decided it's time to rob the poor - the very people who they ought to try and look after if they were at all true to their colours. It's a policy which has backfired though in terms of the outcome of the recent local elections as well as the London mayoral election - and rightly so. It's my firm view that Labour's days are now numbered - unless by some miracle they manage to win back the hearts of those who voted for them at the last 3 General Elections.

Look at it this way jonnybegood:

- if you keep voting Labour you won't even be British. We look like getting the new European constitution/treaty forced on as without the referendum Labour promised in their manifesto.

- your pension will get worse. The UK pension position is better than most other EU countries, but the intention is to pool all resources, so we subsidise the pensioners of every other country in the EU (is it except for Sweden and Denmark?)

- your salary will get lower. Labour policies are resulting in job losses, and - we're just starting to see these. As unemployment goes up, avearage salaries go down.

- Costs will get higher. Petrol is now around £1.14 (wellover £5 or $10 a gallon), of which around 67p is tax. This impacts on every price in the high street, particularly food. Labour is busy redistributing money from the poor to the rich.

This is a failed government whose socialist economic policies have failed (it took them a decade to change a fundamentally sound economy into what is close to a basket case with the biggest deficits anywhere in Europe) and whose foreign policy is characterised by the failure of Iraq. Add laundered cash donations (court case forthcoming) and the cash for peerages which we are told didn't happen and you have a thoroughly nasty government.

Vote for almost anyone other than Labour at the next election.