Pygmy rebels and a bloodied Mr Brown

By DAILY MAIL COMMENT
Updated:


So much for the Pygmies' Revolt! Though the dust has yet to settle - and this will be a crucial weekend for Gordon Brown - isn't it beginning to appear that the sickeningly self-serving rebels who flounced out this week have made precious little impact?

The Mail has said it before: what a contemptible, second-rate bunch they are!

Jacqui Smith, Hazel Blears, James Purnell (James who?) - does anyone believe these lightweights would have staged their exhibitionist resignations, at a time calculated to cause maximum damage to Mr Brown, if all three weren't up to their necks in sleaze over their outrageous expenses claims?

Hazel Blears wearing her 'Rocking the boat' badge

Infantile: Hazel Blears wearing her 'Rocking the boat' badge, as part of attempts to 'destabilise the Government'

What kind of people are these, who put their own interests before their country's, attempting to destabilise the Government at this desperate time for families, homes and jobs?

Well, so far, it's not working. The boat that Miss Blears sought to rock, as her infantile lapel-badge made clear, is sailing on much as before - though the reshuffle calls to mind deckchairs on the Titanic.

One thing is indisputable: Mr Brown, if he survives, is a deeply compromised figure who will have been seriously wounded.

The fact that he was unable to shift serial home-flipper Alistair Darling from the Treasury (though the country can breathe a sigh of relief that this meant he couldn't give the job to incompetent Ed Balls) is a devastating blow to his authority.

Meanwhile, millions will choke at some of his appointments. Is Glenys Kinnock, of the EU gravy-train family, really the best he could do to replace the ludicrously selfimportant Caroline Flint as Europe Minister?

   

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Is Mr Balls's wife, Yvette Cooper, up to becoming the eighth Work and Pensions Secretary in seven years (and look what's happened to both jobs and pensions since that post was created)?

As for Alan Sugar as 'Enterprise Tsar', we hoped we'd heard the last of populist gimmicks when Tony Blair resigned.

Mr Brown, bloodied but unbowed, is still far from secure. But he can take some satisfaction that the potential threats to his leadership - Alan Johnson, David Miliband and the rest - remain on board.

Meanwhile, others who might have been expected to join the exodus of rats from the sinking ship have peered over the deckrails and, for the moment, lost their nerve.

As for Thursday's elections, yes, Labour has taken a richly deserved thrashing from voters fizzing with rage over the expenses scandal. But while the Tories can derive hope from the swathes of blue on the newlook local election map, their overall share of the vote will disappoint them.

Of course, we still await the European election results. But we suspect that, with no figurehead of any weight, many rebels may think twice about signing a demand for Mr Brown to go.

Yes, we need a General Election, sooner rather than later, to cleanse Parliament and give a proper mandate for ministerial action, which this Government so manifestly lacks.

But the last thing Britain needs now is a second unelected Labour Prime Minister in just two years.

Lest we forget

On this day, 65 years ago, Britain had far more to worry about than a political scandal and a sharp economic recession.

For upon the outcome of the mighty seaborne invasion launched on June 6, 1944, depended the freedom of all Europe.

It could so easily have failed - but for the extraordinary tenacity and sacrifice of the men who fought that day.

In our concern over our present-day troubles, let us never forget our irredeemable debt to the heroes of D-Day.