Brits Say Gordon Is Unfit To Lead
Happy Easter, Gordon! As people all over Britain unwrap their chocolate eggs this morning, Gordon is discovering his very own sickly surprise as a Times/YouGov poll reveals that 57% of people think he is unfit to lead the country, after the damaging pensions trickery was revealed last week. Only 41% thought he was doing a good job as Chancellor, down from 51% in March. Meanwhile, over half of those polled characterised Tony Blair as “out of touch, untrustworthy and overly concerned with spin”.
Finance minister Gordon Brown, overwhelming favorite to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister, suffered a blow on Sunday when an opinion poll showed more than half of Britons thought he was unfit to lead the country.
In another setback for Brown, a newspaper said there was growing pressure for another member of the cabinet to challenge the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the leadership of the Labour Party when Blair steps down.
Blair is widely expected to quit in June or July after a decade in office. With no serious challenger yet emerging, Brown has been seen as a virtually automatic choice to succeed Blair as party leader and prime minister.
But some Labour politicians doubt Brown’s leadership credentials and opinion polls show he would fare badly against David Cameron leader of the main opposition Conservatives.
The Sunday Times said only 27 percent of 2,218 people questioned in a YouGov poll thought Brown was fit to be prime minister after a row last week over his handling of pensions. Fifty-seven percent thought him unfit.
The poll showed Britons were losing faith in Brown’s stewardship of the economy — his strong point until now.
Forty-one percent thought Brown was doing a good job as finance minister, down from 51 percent in March.
Not great for Gordon. Meanwhile, it seems a serious challenger in the upcoming leadership contest could be emerging as John Reid has revealed that he will back a David Miliband led challenge to Brown’s bid for Number 10. Gordon was hoping for a clear run to nextdoor, but now it is becoming increasingly clear that he may face a full leadership campaign, with all the dirty dealing revelations that is likely to bring out into the open.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, will back a Labour leadership challenge by David Miliband in order to stop Gordon Brown taking over, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
If Mr Miliband does not stand, Mr Reid is even prepared to fight the Chancellor himself as a “last resort”, friends have disclosed.
The revelations are a huge setback for Mr Brown’s hopes of taking over from Tony Blair, almost certainly at the end of June, as smoothly as possible.
They also offer the starkest evidence of the seriousness of the split between the Chancellor and Cabinet ministers who want to preserve the Prime Minister’s political legacy.
Mr Reid’s intervention means that Mr Miliband, the Environment Secretary, who was on a family holiday in France last week, is under the most concentrated pressure he has yet faced to run against Mr Brown, the overwhelming bookmakers’ favourite to be the next prime minister.
Mr Reid, seen as a potential candidate until a series of -crises at the Home Office, has been tipped as likely to remain in his job under Mr Brown. But that now appears impossible with Mr Reid ready, according to his friends, to act as Mr Miliband’s “standard bearer” inside the Cabinet and even to stand himself if no other credible challenger enters the fray. The decision raises the prospect of a Miliband-Reid “dream ticket” trading on the Environment Secretary’s youth and the Home Secretary’s experience.
“John wants David to stand against Gordon,” said a close friend of Mr Reid. “He believes he will do so - and that if he does, he can win. It will take balls to stand. But there is no use saying ‘wait till next time’, because there may not be a next time. John is making it clear he does not want to stand himself. He will be 60 next month. But if nobody else does, he will, as a last resort.”
The developments make it certain, for the first time, that a Cabinet-level challenger will declare he or she will fight Mr Brown. Any candidate must first obtain the signatures of 44 MPs, but friends of the Home Secretary say that would be no problem for either Mr Miliband or Mr Reid, such is the growing disillusionment about the Chancellor among backbenchers.
In recent weeks, according to senior Blairites, the party’s private polling has shown the Chancellor’s popularity falling badly among voters - particularly after his 2p cut in income tax was denounced as a Budget “con trick” by the Tories and he was found to have acted against warnings from his civil servants in his decision to launch a “raid” on pension funds in 1997 which has cost them £100 million.
Ministers close to Mr Blair also believe the next Labour leader should be English. They suggested that Mr Blair feared that Mr Brown would “wreck” New Labour’s achievements.
