HOON GOES HOME

Today two retiring Labour MPs have texted their parliamentary colleagues urging upon them a secret ballot to determine once and for all whether Gordon Brown commands the authentic support of the party. Those MPs are former health secretary Patricia Hewitt and former defence secretary Geoff Hoon and one can only think that they are receiving secret payments from Lord Ashcroft on behalf of the Tory Party. In the six hours since the texts went out, the only publicly voiced support for such a ballot has come from Charles Clarke, Barry Sheerman and Frank Field – in other words, the usual suspects. (Incidentally, when you see the name Frank Field, do you, as I am apt to do, think “I Remember You”?).

For the Parliamentary Labour Party to undertake a secret ballot on the Prime Minister’s support four months from a general election would be wholly self-destructive. It must do severe damage if – at the behest of two members, neither of whom has any constituency within the movement or anything to boast of in their respective ministerial careers – MPs run around like decapitated hens when the prevention of a Cameron government, either of a majority or a minority nature, is their sole mission. Party unity does still matter to the electorate and, even more so, to the party faithful at local level on whom the PLP rely. It is fanciful to imagine that a wholly unprecedented and unpredictable exercise can somehow make the party look more electable.

The febrile atmosphere at Westminster is stoked by the media, in whose interest crisis and hysteria is always to be preferred to calm and statesmanship, and by members who are unduly influenced by correspondents telling them what they have heard (or what they think sounds provocative). All this reporting of off-the-record briefings and “private” opinions (not so private if told to a journalist, I suggest) is deeply suspect. The right wing press necessarily want a change of regime. The Guardian has evinced a depressing level of glee at the Prime Minister's supposed plight, reinforcing a conviction shared long ago among its commentators that Labour would fall. If Labour does lose, nobody will be able to take any credit for pedalling a self-fulfilling prophecy. But MPs need to close their ears to this hubbub and concentrate on the vital task at hand. If there is a Labour prime minister as a result of the election, it will be Gordon Brown and no one else.