Zzzz-Team Sends Voters To Sleep

Bullet-ridden Brown is wearing Mandy's crown. The Zzzz-Team has begun a fantasy fight-back sending voters to sleep. Dreaming up anything to cling to power, Brand Brown has a smug grin until the next time.

A mighty mandate for government change was delivered in the Euro election wipe-out but after beating off a limp challenge from lily-livered MPs, vengeful voters have to put up with the clap-trap for a little longer.

Bruised, beleaguered, battered and broken, it's not all bad news in the Bunker. Beaming Brown lives to fight another day in a fag-end government of the living dead, propped up by a self-serving bunch of yes-men henchmen.

The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) was Brown-beaten into submission in a carefully stage managed show of sweetness and light for the Dear Leader. Paul Waugh over at the Standard has a blow by blow account of the gory details.

Some put their heads above the parapet. Few wanted to be cut lose from their cushy jobs as lowly ministers and pay roll MPs. In the end greed, self-serving interest and blackmail won the day.

Few had the guts to stand up to the bully boys. Team Brown played the final blackmail card: stick with me or lose your cushy seats. But there's no reason for the Dear Leader to look so smug.

New Labour MPs must be kicking themselves. Todays poll for the Independent shows starkly what many including the Orange Party were saying all along. With Johnson at the helm, the Party stood a fighting chance of beating off the inevitable Tory landslide saving some dignity and some seats with a well-hung parliament.

Now if this squalid spectacle is allowed to run its dozy course, bully-boy Brown is well and truly stuffed and MPs will only have themselves to blame. They blew it and now they and the country have to live with it.

And things can only get worse. Listeners had to put up with the mind-numbing garbage of banana-boy Miliband gabbling away on the Today programme. Spewing out the Party spinning line made for excruciating listening.

To cap it all, even the smoke and mirrors economic recovery miracle was wheeled out as an example of what New Labour can do. And all that from the boy who would be king. No wonder the Party would rather just curl up and die.

The only bit of reverse ferret policy to come out of the whole sorry mess is that it seems Mandy's back-door plan to sell-off Royal Mail may disappear up its own fudge in a move to keep the backbenchers sweet.

Lessons have been learnt. Next time there will have to an organised, cabinet-level coup led by someone the Party takes seriously, instead of fannying around going off half-cock.

Have another go they will. New Labour will do what it always does in time of trouble - tear itself apart.

A couple of bloody noses in bye bye election defeats, more of the ruthless smearing tactics of the Downing Street reservoir dogs and here we go again. Brown will be breaking out into a sweat and the knives will be out perhaps at September's Party conference.

For now it's Carry On Regardless Up Their Convenience as broken Brown and his cabinet cronies dream up anything just to cling on to power for power's sake.

But what has become clear is that the fate of the struggling Supreme Leader won't be decided by voters, parliament or the PLP. Power lies in the grubby little paws of an unelected and unaccountable First Secretary of State rewarded with a whopping bunch of ministerial underlings for saving battered Brown's skin.

Mandy is lovin' it. He's got what he's always wanted. All the powerful pleasure of being prime minister without responsibility. No Party spin line, no speech, no strategy, no policy, nothing will come out of Number 10 unless it has the blessing of the blessed lord Mandy.

When Mandy decided to move against Brown he will. The power behind the throne is wearing the crown. It's third time lucky for Mandelson.

What a sad day for democracy, the Labour Party, the parliamentary process and the country, when the fate of a prime minister is decided on the whim of an unelected First Secretary who's living up to his grand title and putting himself first.