The next Labour leader is destined to be a loser

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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The battle to succeed Gordon Brown is ferocious because it matters so little, says Matthew d'Ancona.

Fans of Armando Iannucci's brilliant political satire series The Thick of It will recall the episode in which the spin doctors, apparatchiks and officials tear about Whitehall by night trying to position candidates for a party leadership battle. Such is their desperation that, as the hours pass, anyone – literally anyone – will do.

One ministerial contender is floated and then ruled out because "he's got such a tiny head". Another is dragged out of bed at 3am to be anointed and then dismissed because she has an online poker addiction. All that matters is finding new options. Why not Disraeli, or Oliver Cromwell, or "a fish that hasn't crawled out onto the land yet to form the first tetrapod"? It is, as an irate and confused news editor complains, "potential leader speed dating".

This is exactly what is happening to the governing party. In 1994, determined to win the next general election at all costs, the Labour elite pushed aside the heir-presumptive, Gordon Brown, to instal Tony Blair as leader. Such was the brutal focus of the tribe's collective desire to get out of opposition, even if the cost of spurning Brown was a decade of dysfunctional government. At least it was government.

That brutal focus is precisely what has now been lost. Labour's vision is blurred, its body flails, it acts without rhyme or reason. The present round of leadership hysteria has at its centre the great survivor Harriet Harman, whose protestations of loyalty to Gordon are carefully phrased so as to make clear that she would be more than happy to fill the breach on the sad day when the Dear Leader retires to spend more time with his library. As a variant on the main event, it is suggested by unnamed sources that Ms Harman might also be half of a "dream ticket" with Jon Cruddas, her former rival for the deputy leadership.

Meanwhile, from out of the blue, Yvette Cooper, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is touted as a "stop-Harman" candidate because of her "working-class, working-mum credentials." To add to the excitement, Ms Cooper's husband, Ed Balls, is a prospective contender, too. And, speaking of Ed, there is the Politician-Formerly-Known-as-the-Other-Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who, for reasons that are far from clear, is now regarded as a tip-top candidate for the top job. Well, Mr Miliband has Sesame Street hair, stands for "fair taxes", and is tall. What's not to like? Let's not be picky.

And let's not forget his brother, David, the Foreign Secretary, and a true veteran of these bouts of leadership speculation. Or indeed Alan Johnson, the candidate-of-choice for all those who like straight-talking postmen, who selflessly found time in his busy schedule as Health Secretary last week to write a Guardian article about how he would tackle David Cameron.

This, I confidently predict, is only the beginning. Many more names will be suggested in this "potential leader speed dating", some even more ridiculous than those already in the frame. The dying days of a regime are a happy time for political nonentities. It's a game that anyone can play. Anyone can have a go. This is Slumdog Labour Leader.

This feverish round of positioning is appallingly reminiscent of the 1997 Tory leadership contest. All Labour politicians who want a taste of what they are in for should get hold of a copy of Hywel Williams's book Guilty Men, which chronicles that race in gripping and ghastly detail. Still numbed and clueless after its electoral savaging, the Conservative Party lurched haplessly between the candidates – Ken Clarke, Michael Howard, Stephen Dorrell, Peter Lilley, William Hague and John Redwood (Michael Portillo having lost his seat) – before choosing Hague over the unlikely Clarke-Redwood axis.

It was a pitiful business, disfigured by entirely abstract arguments over Europe, the fragmentation of the Tory Right, and gutter allegations about Hague's private life. "The candidates are a mouldy lot," Alan Clark recalled in his diary. "This absurd and embarrassing 'leadership contest' rambles on." Iain Duncan Smith thought about running even then, and, having supported Redwood, pledged: "Next time, I'll be running my own campaign." When he said it, people laughed. But IDS stuck to his promise four years later – and won. That's opposition for you. Anything goes. No hat is too humble to be thrown into the ring.

This is not the first time that Gordon has faced leadership speculation. But in 2007 the question was whether he would be confronted with a competitor to replace Blair, or merely ascend to the job by acclamation. Last year, David Miliband looked poised to make a dash for the crown, but his chances were dished by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a conversation in a lift about Heseltine, and a banana. This time, the chatter presupposes that Labour will lose the general election and that Brown will resign as leader immediately thereafter. The suggestion that, having waited 13 years to take over his party, he will quietly relinquish the job before the election, tempted by some global economic role, is a triumph of hope over experience. Gordon isn't going to leave Number 10 voluntarily. All this positioning within his party is about what happens after he is forcibly ejected by the electorate. For the first time in more than a decade, Labour is actively and energetically preparing for opposition.

When a party reaches this point in the political cycle, it starts to please itself, rather than the electorate. It was temporarily Mr Brown's good fortune to find himself in Number 10 at a moment of global economic panic: for a few months, his reputation as a robust and experienced finance minister served him well and enabled him to globetrot, posturing as the saviour of the world. But the recession is having a disastrous impact upon Labour's collective state of mind, internal culture and strategic prospects. Having censored itself during the New Labour era, restraining its ingrained socialist instincts in return for electoral success, the tribe now believes that those selfsame socialist instincts have been comprehensively vindicated.

In Thursday's Independent, Mr Cruddas accused a "rogue element" on the "Labour Right" of pursuing "an agenda that the recession looks to have all but killed" and of clinging to "the Doctrine of Market Infallibility". Not for the first time, Mr Cruddas speaks authentically for his party's rank and file. It will be extremely difficult for a candidate too closely associated with the New Labour project to win the leadership in the wake of a traumatic defeat.

Fatalism combines toxically with self-indulgence. It is terrible to lose power. But it is fun to be able to say what you like. It is amusing to suggest, say, that Yvette Cooper might be the next Labour leader. Henry Kissinger famously said that "academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." Labour senses the vast expanse of powerlessness stretching ahead of it, years of irrelevance and introspection. The battle to succeed Gordon Brown is ferocious, precisely because the outcome matters so little.

Matthew d'Ancona is Editor of 'The Spectator'

[norbert]

Good article - Deckchairs on the Titantic comes to mind .

For the first time , the Tories have got what seems to be a decent leader :mfo

[Lounge Lizard]

Good article - Deckchairs on the Titantic comes to mind .

For the first time , the Tories have got what seems to be a decent leader :mfo

Deckchairs on the Titanic - how stupid to suggest that deckchairs would be out on the deck of a ship in such a cold climate as for it to be surrounded by icebergs.

Cameron, decent - well, that's equally stupid.

[k979aaa]

It's like walking the plank only the plank is Gordon Brown and sharks don't eat sh*t well not regurgitated sh*t!.

[norbert]

Good article - Deckchairs on the Titantic comes to mind .

For the first time , the Tories have got what seems to be a decent leader :mfo

Deckchairs on the Titanic - how stupid to suggest that deckchairs would be out on the deck of a ship in such a cold climate as for it to be surrounded by icebergs.

Cameron, decent - well, that's equally stupid.

it's metaphorically not literally , this is not America ! , the expression is often used in the PO locally about dubious staff and management being shuffled round the Office

doesn't matter what you might think about Cameron , compared to Dracula Howard , IDS , the grey man Major and Tory Boy , William Hague and the one eyed Scottish Idiot running the country for New Labour he looks to be a "good leader" and ironically he and his people have based his style on Blair .

[smokerjim]

Does anyone hear any of Vince Cable's comments or quotes? As hopeless as the Lib Dems are on some things, with Cable as their treasury spokesman they could have a chance of a great election result, cos he is very sharp, and I don't detect any bullsh*t coming from him.