By-Election and Leadership Kerfuffle

SO, labour lost one of its safest seats, but are trying not to take it personally. Frankly I expected better than this "Running the country, bother me not with your trivia" attitude of Gordon's, they must have known that they were doomed to get nothing good out of this. If they won by a small margin then it would be a serious blow, and if they lost, well we'd be where we are now. No wonder they had to use their 3rd string candidate, no-one normally after a safe seat wants to be the one to loose it.

However a drubbing of some sort was always expected, an unexpected result would be a small change to increase in majority, and indeed all this shows is that some parts of Glasgow have realised that the Labour Party they voted for is not going to snap back to its old socialist ways once it uses all this new labour guff to convince the posh guys in newton mearns. Or alternatively, the "Labour, like my father and his father before him" lot are now to lazy to come out and vote.

Anyway, what actually concerning me is that it may have caused a leadership challenge. That is bad news. See, a career politician doesn't want Gordon brown's job at the moment, all the signs are showing a Tory win next election unless Boris Does something really dumb in London like bans football or sex. so if you take Brown's job now, you get to be PM for two years (I will be mildly surprised if we get an early election rather than desperately clinging to power for as long as possible) then are booted for evermore to the back benches for loosing the election. Since no-one just wants a shot at being PM because it looks good on the CV it is no small leap to assume that those after the job are so criminally deluded that they actually think they can turn things around. Anyone that deluded is going to be one serious liability in the top job. Worse, your should will belong to those you convinced to support you, both in getting a leadership contest called and getting you in power, in short, you'll have to vote for next leader once you've been turfed from the job post election defeat. Worse still, if someone gets the job, Brown can make good mileage in how the party crashing and burning was their fault and perhaps stay in a responsible position in the party.

No, let brown bring the party down around him, then wait until the Tories have been so unspeakable that you look like the better option again, and then nab power, but don't accept any deals about being chancellor, its not a good path.