Just Not Good Enough, Labour

“It is clear that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are at loggerheads; they are actively plotting against each other. What happens if there is an international disaster in the next few months? Either Miliband needs to come up with the courage to challenge Brown or Brown needs to move him. A poor working relationship between the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary is not just undesirable, it is positively dangerous.” William Hague has pinpointed a crucial characteristic of Brown's regime.

As Georgia's extraordinary assault on the enclave of South Ossetia ends in the predictable slap down from Russia and opens the way for Russian assertion of hegemony over other enclaves, the government of the United Kingdom has its Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary wholly engaged in Labour party infighting over the leadership. As British troops wait at Basra airport without role or permit to function, the Foreign Secretary, the part time Defence minister (to whom all action at Basra must be referred for permission to proceed), and the Prime Minister leave them publicly accused by the United States and the Iraqi government of secret deals with rebels so as to fail to carry out their ostensible mission of containing violence in southern Iraq; meanwhile the Prime Minister devotes himself to planning his nth relaunch. Attempting to appeal to the electorate, over the heads of his own Party and their contempt for his political and economic failure has taken precedence over running an effective administration, let alone sensible policies in those areas represented by ministers with whom he is feuding being produced. And characteristically, Brown is feuding with everybody, even Darling.

Failure to run an effective administration threatens us all; crises other than the collapse of the pound and the recession (and surely those are enough) are going to occur, one just has. It is imperative that a general election is called and a competent government, of whatever hue, put in place.