The Unsinkable Gordon Brown

He's riding along on the crest of a wave. The unsinkable Gordon Brown better make the most of it. The Glenrothes Massacre is just around the corner. Will Vince Cable ride in to save the day for Labour?

Brown has lived to fight another day because of the financial "crisis". He has been saved by the economic mess of his own making.     

Only a few months ago, Brown was more unpopular than Hitler. Now he's saving the country from economic doom, global warming and malaria. How times change. 

One thing is certain. In the cunning world of Brown politics, he has the interest of one thing at heart - his own survival and that of his beloved New Labour Project. 

The economic "crisis" couldn't have come at a better time. One could be forgiven for thinking it was all planned with immaculate timing. 

A true Labour rebellion melted away during the summer. A Blairite challenge evaporated a few weeks ago. Cameron, spitting blood during the Tory Party conference, turned into Cameron soft soaping Brown during PMQs. Cable no longer shoots from the hip. No-one is prepared to put their head above the parapet.

But it won't last. And Brown and his new team of political spin doctors and plumbers know this.

For the moment, all eyes are on the doomed £500 billion bank bail-out, where the devil is in the detail. But even that will be short-lived. Brown needs a few more tricks up his sleeve if he is to survive. 

He's already started, with a regional tour to explain just why he's risking billions of pounds of taxpayers cash to prop up the City. That tour could well end up in his own backyard - Glenrothes.

The sticking point is Darling, a man clearly out of his depth. Likely replacements come from the two Eds. But Balls is too hated, Miliband too young.

Westminster speculation centres on the popular and respected LibDem economist, Vincent Cable, brought in as chancellor - a government of all the people. 

Cable and Brown share a long history together going back to the Labour leadership under John Smith. Time to cast aside Party politics and all that. And time to totally wrong-foot the Tories and SNP.

This has never been about putting the best interests of people first. This is about Brown's survival, New Labour's survival. Trying to out manoeuvre Cameron's Conservatives in England and Salmond's SNP in Scotland. 

A week is a long time in politics - four weeks is a lifetime. Anything other than a New Labour victory in Glenrothes and the unsinkable Gordon Brown will have to go down with his ship.

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Brown Keeps Enemy Close As Mandy Moves In

Arch Blairite, uber plotter, architect of New Labour and all round bad egg, Peter Mandleson, is back in the cabinet after a few years plotting behind Brown's back in Brussels and making sure his man Tony gets the top job of the EU presidency.

As Brown rearranges the Titanic's deck-chairs  with a cabinet shuffle, Mandleson's appointment to a beefed up business job, comes as a shock and much of the media, including Murdoch's Cameron supporting Sun, and the Mandy bashing Daily Mail will have a field day. 

With 'Mandy' Mandleson, it's a case of Brown keeping his friend close but his enemies even closer. But he should watch his back.

There's no love lost between Brown and the Prince, now Lord of Darkness, who was plotting behind the scenes and out in the open, in the Blairite leadership challenges to Brown. Brown even tried to prise Mandy out of his EU commissioner job, only to be told he had no authority to do so. 

To ease the pain of Mandleson and as a sop to the Party, popular left-winger, Jon Cruddas was at one time being spun as tipped for 'promotion'. 

But Cruddas, who wowed delegates at the Labour Party conference and is seen as one of the few true Labour voices that could mount a serious challenge to the New Labour gang, has been kept out of the loop.

It's third time lucky for Mandleson, as he said himself this afternoon but third time unlucky for the rest of us. The disgraced minister was in and out of Blair's government like a yo-yo. He held two cabinet posts before quitting over dodgy dealings and was finally given the plum job as EU trade commissioner.

The feud between Brown and Mandelson goes back years, ever since the odd couple fell out, when Mandelson backed Blair for the Labour leadership in 1994.

Elsewhere, most of the cry babies in the cabinet look to have kept their top jobs after threatening to quit en masse if Brown tried to move them. And Ed Miliband, tipped here as a possible chancellor, is climbing up the greasy pole, heading up a new energy and environment super-department. 

A tinkering at the edges sees a few other insignificant changes of insignificant faces as Brown tries to head off the increasingly powerful challenges from both within his own government and from the Conservatives and SNP.

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Brown On The Ropes In The Name Of Progress

The stalking horse reared up, then it became a stampede. That's Progress for you.

Battle lines are being drawn for a leadership challenge and it's all in the name of Progress - the New Labour group that worships at the shrine of Blair with the shadow of Mandelson lurking in the background.

Even the name 'Progress' conjures up old style New Labour spin and hype. Blair's disciples are using that catchy little phrase to put their names to the call for a "progressive narrative" from Labour. One of those meaningless phrases that when you scratch the surface, you find is all style and no substance. 

In this political game of poker, the Blairite MPs are crawling out of the woodwork in a move designed to force Brown's hand. But it is unlikely to succeed without a cabinet minister breaking ranks - again. Or unless Brown just gives up altogether.

The Blairite strategy has been to accelerate as many of Blair's policies as they can, before they are booted out of power, It is happening already in schools, hospitals and foreign policy. This is a last ditch attempt to cling on to power, in the dying days of their precious and debunked Project. 

But Brown, under pressure from the funding purse-strings of the unions, just isn't going fast or far enough for the Blairites, And he's useless. So it is time to strike. 

The group of 'Progress' MPs has Alan Milburn as its honorary president and the gang's all there, including ministers Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband. 

Brown was there on the side-lines at the birth of the New Labour Project and helped in its delivery. But the rapidly dwindling Brown cabal will do its best to cling onto power ahead of the Labour Party conference. 

There's much speculation about the 70 MPs needed to force a challenge to Brown. But that's not how it would happen. The end, if it does come, will be behind the scenes, trying to prise Brown out of office as happened to Blair. 

The tactic is to try to force the Party to issue nomination papers to all its MPs ahead of the Manchester conference. 

However, the distaste for Blair and the New Labour Project is widespread within some Labour MPs and the true Labour Party. And the Conservatives, SNP, true Labour and LibDems, without Clegg, all have something to offer.

Voters, should be allowed make up their minds, without the rancid smell of New Labour lingering in their nostrils. 

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Brown Set To Tighten His Grip On Power

The new EU Treaty/Constitution has passed through the Lords and Brown has survived his last political hurdle for the time being. He can now tighten his grip on the government and the country but had better watch out for those 'events'.

Expect a cabinet reshuffle to be announced anytime soon, to give the Brownite cabinet time to settle in. Expect David Miliband's brother, Ed Miliband, to be given a more prominent position in this cabinet. 

And expect an announcement of a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq, to head off growing anger ahead of September's  Labour Party Conference. 

Thanks to his New Labour cronies in the Upper House and the shameful tactics of Euro-Boy Clegg and his LibDem peers, the new Treaty is due to be given the Royal Assent today, making a mockery of democracy.

Brown can now head off to meet the EU Political Elite and plot what to do about the Irish Question, how they can get round it and how they can create this new powerful EU state, with a full time president and sweeping powers over defence and trade. 

Bush, on his farewell world tour, has told EU leaders what he and the global corporations want from this EU superstate and with his allies in Brown and Blair, the US will get what it wants. 

The Treaty was the last political hurdle for Brown and he thinks he's  now got a clear run until the September Labour Party Conference. 

There are no nasty by-election surprises coming up, no back-bench revolts in the commons to test his leadership on the horizon and he can't sink any lower in the opinion polls because he's already off the scale.

He may be the 'unsinkable Gordon Brown' at the moment, but 'events', particularly economic ones, have a nasty habit of creeping up on you when you least expect them.

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