Brown Must Be Defeated in Parliament Not By Labour Party Acts of Disloyalty

The end of the New Labour regime should not be decided by causing the downfall of Gordon Brown. That leaves the choice of the United Kingdom's next prime minister in the hands of the Labour Party - hardly the first choice for democratic practice. It is unpleasant also to watch the petty acts of aggression and the faint-hearted disloyalties of 'colleagues' and government appointees whose voting records for 11 years are a badge of shame.

The way to depose a government is by defeat on a major government policy in the House of Commons, followed by defeat in the subsequent vote of confidence. Clearly there are enough Labour dissidents to achieve this and enough major policy votes of highly dubious moral and political worth coming up well before Christmas - deferred in attempts to avoid just this kind of challenge by the current sickly Prime Minister. Shenanigans in the Labour party and at their tightly controlled and therefore infinitely dull conference in Manchester are of no interest to most of us.

We want a general election after the fall of the current government in Parliament. Not the replacement of Gordon brown by Jack Straw. And if Labour tries to manoeuvre the country into accepting a 'safe' pair of hands while remaining in power for another 18 months, shovelling all the blame for their abject failure onto their current sick man, they will let down the Party as well as the country (again).