The Spectator, june 11, 2009

How bad does it have to get before Labour dumps its leader? wonders Matthew d’Ancona in the Spectator. After a spate of government resignations and a dismal 16% in the European vote, Gordon Brown’s party desperately needs to change. The problem, he argues, lies in the cowardly “pseudo-loyalty” of Labour’s new generation “paralysed by indecision” and ultimately over-dependent on the authority of the triumvirate of Blair, Brown and Peter Mandelson that resurrected the party’s fortunes in the nineties. Labour, he argues “cannot truly conceive what life would be like without these three chieftains”. Frightened of the future, Labour MPs console themselves that their catastrophic situation could be worse. Which for d’Ancona means that Labour is effectively dead, and Britain governed by “a parliament of zombies.”