Despite an embarrassing drubbing of his Labour Party at the polls and the resignation of several key ministers, the UK’s Gordon Brown vows “I will not waver, I will not walk away, I will finish the work.”
As I explain in my New Atlanticist post “Britain’s Brown on Borrowed Time,” that’s unlikely to happen. Nor should it.
The bottom line is that Brown isn’t doing a good job of governing. He’s been holding on for dear life for a considerable period, hoping to ride out the rough patch, and things are only getting worse. And, as The Spectator‘s Alex Massie points out, this is not mere politics:
John Hutton’s successor as Secretary of State for Defence [Bob Ainsworth, it turns out -JJ] will be the fifth person to hold that job in the last five years. No wonder there’s a total lack of continuity at the MoD. This is, to put it mildly, no way to treat what should be one of the most important jobs in government. And this at a time when, however fitfully, we’ve been fighting two wars.
The Atlantic‘s Andrew Sullivan declares, ” This is how governments die in Britain – a country where elections are not held to a fixed calendar.” Despite his warnings against Tory hubris, Steve Hynd declares “it’s been clear for some time now that David Cameron would be the next PM whenever the general election was finally called. Today’s disaster for Labour will hurry that day along.”
More at the link.
