Controversial dealings with Libya could be a fatal blow to Brown's hopes of staying at Number 10
Monday September 07 2009
Gordon Brown's hopes of clinging on to power in Downing Street until the general election next year have been seriously undermined by the latest revelations about his controversial dealings with Libya.
Dissident Labour MPs believe that his authority has been badly weakened by what the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, yesterday called "an ever-expanding farce".
For Brown and his spin doctors it is not a farce but an ever-expanding nightmare which yesterday took its most damaging twist so far with the disclosure that the UK, unlike the US, decided not to press Colonel Gadaffi for compensation payments to victims of terrorist attacks that used explosives supplied by Libya.
The news has added to the pressure on Brown over what really happened when the Scottish government released the Lockerbie bomber, Al Megrahi, on compassionate grounds.
Brown claimed last week: "There was no conspiracy, no cover-up, no double dealing, no deal on oil, no attempt to instruct Scottish ministers, no private assurances."
There was astonishment at Westminster when he was almost immediately contradicted by none other than the justice secretary, Jack Straw, who blithely admitted that trade and a deal for the oil group, BP, were important factors: "Libya was a rogue state. We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal."
Straw used to be a strong supporter of Brown and was the manager of his successful campaign to become leader of the Labour Party and thus succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister.
But Brown has been a disappointment to the MPs who treated him to an unchallenged coronation and, at the party conference later this month, the main topic of conversation will be whether he can be replaced in time to improve Labour's chances of avoiding a disastrous wipeout in the general election.
Brown survived in June when several of his cabinet ministers resigned in what has since become known as "the peasants' revolt". It was a pretty ineffective attempt at a coup and it took only a few phone calls from Peter Mandelson, the business minister, to prevent it from succeeding.
But it left Brown weakened. He was forced to drop his plan to switch Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, out of the Treasury and he was obliged to promise MPs that he would change his style of leadership in the future.
Brown has now been weakened further by yet another resignation. Eric Joyce, the parliamentary aide to the defence minister, Bob Ainsworth, walked out last week in protest at the government's policy on Afghanistan.
He comprehensively shredded Brown's argument that the growing list of casualties can be justified because the war against the Taliban prevents terrorism in the UK.
Joyce used to be a major in the army and he is bitterly critical of what he sees as the disproportionate commitment by the UK to the Nato force: "Britain fights, Germany pays, France calculates, Italy avoids. If the United States values each of these approaches equally, they will end up shouldering the burden by themselves."
Opinion polls show that a majority of voters agree with Joyce's criticism, which was backed up by the former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, who said there have been "catastrophic errors" in the conduct of the war.
By the standards of previous wars, the number of UK troops killed so far in Afghanistan, at just over 200, is relatively low. More people than that die in road accidents during an average month in Britain.
But the political impact of the death toll in Afghanistan is rising rapidly, partly because of media coverage of the emotional tributes to dead soldiers when their bodies are returned to Britain for burial.
Afghanistan is also a massive financial commitment at a time when government borrowing is escalating. It now costs an average of €444,000 a year to maintain and equip each of the 9,000 soldiers committed to the campaign. That figure has more than doubled since 2006 and looks like rising further.
The dissatisfaction with Brown is underpinning support for right-wing parties. Controversially, the BBC is planning to invite the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin, onto one of its prestigious 'Question Time' TV programmes, even though Labour ministers may refuse to appear with him.
The UK Independence Party's leader, Nigel Farage, has abruptly resigned in order to stand for the Commons next year in the constituency of the new speaker, John Bercow. This is an inspired piece of political gamesmanship by Farage. Over the past two decades, a convention has been established that the main parties do not put up candidates at a general election against the speaker.
As a result, neither Labour nor the Lib Dems will be opposing Bercow, who is a conservative. However, Bercow is deeply unpopular with many members of his own party and only got the job as speaker thanks to support from Labour MPs.
The bookmakers were offering odds of 9/2 against Farage last week but they have trimmed them back to just 3/1 after strong demand from political punters.
