There is something nauseating in watching all those MPs and Cabinet Members now turning on Gordon Brown when only 12 months ago they so grovellingly nominated him in such large numbers that they blocked an election for Leader of the Labour Party.
The issue is not whether Gordon Brown is a personal liability or whether he is capable of getting Labour's message across to the electorate.
The reason people have turned away from Labour is the message not the messenger. Shooting the messenger and replacing him with yet another New Labour MP who has supported the politics that have nearly destroyed the Party would be absolutely futile.
The electorate aren't stupid. They would see through this stunt within weeks.
If Labour is to survive in Government and even as a party we need a new politics and a new policy programme. All of those mentioned in the fashionable media jockeying for the leadership contender position from Miliband, Johnson, Harman, Purnell and Cruddas have voted for and supported virtually every New Labour policy laid before them from the disaster of the war in Iraq to the 42 days latest assault on civil liberties.
If Labour is to survive we need a radical break with this type of opportunist politics.
Labour has a last chance to demonstrate political change through the policy programme that comes out of Warwick this weekend and is agreed by Labour Party conference in September.
If that opportunnity for radical change is not taken, it will be then that the Left will need to take the decision to challenge for the future direction of our party. Our challenge would be based upon political principle and not the career planning and plotting of politicians.
