And after the election, then what?

In a Spectator article (paywall for now, I think) Mark Wood, former editor-in-chief at Reuters and CEO of ITN, writes:

It is an open secret that nobody [in Europe] can stand Brown. Years of his arrogant lecturing of European governments on economics and his open disdain for other ministers at Euro gatherings have left an indelible impression – and a host of enemies.

This aggressive, patronising and behaviourally-challenged man’s notion of his own expertise and leadership skills is not shared by those whose support would be needed if he wanted a high profile European/international post. But maybe he does not want one.

He is bookish and lives a quiet private life. He has a young family with whom, given his eye problems, he probably wants to spend as much time as he can once he leaves office, instead of shuttling between airports and conference rooms. He would find a PM’s pension more than adequate to his needs.

And the driving force of his entire life has been war with the Conservative Party.

In the same issue of the Spectator, James Forsyth writes:

The Brownite political culture that now dominates [Labour’s] election machine has always been hard and aggressive. They do not enjoy government and they are not good at it. The Brown machine is fundamentally an attack machine. By contrast, the skills of the Cameroons are far more suited to government than electioneering.

Now, let’s imagine that the Tories win the election. The Labour Party will have until the conference season to decide what it’s going to do about the Leadership. Does it keep Gordon Brown or throw him overboard?

The man himself will have much to say and the right to be heard. He will pitch that he is the dream Leader of Labour in opposition. He will remind the NEC that

• he is universally acknowledged as temperamentally suited to attack (true)
• having been Prime Minister he could discomfit Prime Minister Cameron at PMQs more piquantly than anyone else (true)
• he is better-informed than anyone else in the Party about the minefield ahead of Cameron (true – he, personally, laid the mines)
• he is supported by blindly loyal, hand-picked, battle-hardened and viscerally Tory-hating Praetorians who out-class anyone else whom the Party could possibly propose for the front rank in the class war ahead (true).

Above all, Brown will argue that there is no-one in the entire Labour Party who is better motivated or who could possibly offer a stronger prospect than he of destroying the Conservative government within one Parliament and returning Labour to power in 2014/15.

Well, he would convince me. I’d hire him. For that job. Certainly not to lead the Party into the election in 2014/15, but to give Labour a fighting chance of victory? Oh, yes.

Gordon Brown may go down to electoral defeat but I strongly doubt that he is out. I suspect that given the experience of the past three years or so he would rather be Leader of the Opposition than Prime Minister. And I suspect he will fight every inch of the way for that post, just as he did for his current job.

Of course, there is one thought-provoking strategic argument against appointing Brown as Leader of the Labour Party, especially given that he will have delivered the Party up to its greatest defeat in modern electoral history and defeat by an Etonian, at that. This will twist his already Tory-hating viscera into a greater hatred than anyone can imagine, bringing to the fore the Corleone Caveat:

Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgement.

Quite a decision for the Labour Party. Almost as difficult as whether or not to force Brown out while he was clearly bringing them down to defeat. Much will depend on their evaluation of the magnitude of that defeat. Was it just a battle lost, or the war?