WHEN the Tories were trying to get shot of a deluded, unpopular, semi-detached Prime Minister, they at least had the good grace to go about it in a dignified way.
There were principled resignations on specific points of policy from the likes of Sir Geoffrey Howe. There was straight talking from senior ministers – friend and foe alike – who had the guts to knock on the door of Margaret Thatcher's study in Downi
ng Street and tell her face to face it was time to resign. There was a sense that a serious moment in the country's history required serious action from serious politicians.
Contrast this with the hysteria, selfishness and lack of backbone we've seen in the past week as a string of Labour ministers have sought to inflict a fatal wound on Gordon Brown, and others have sat on their hands. It has made for a pretty tawdry sight, but that's hardly surprising given the current dysfunctional state of the Labour party and the Labour government.
Brown is indeed lucky in his enemies. Mass ministerial resignations on the scale we saw last week should have been enough to topple a damaged Prime Minister. But the departures failed to have the desired result because of a combination of questionable motives, cack-handed execution and lack of co-ordination. As coups go, it's been lamentable.
Let's examine just four examples. It's now clear Hazel Blears walked out of Cabinet because she wasn't happy with Brown's criticism of her MP expenses (she had claimed for three different properties in a single year, bought an £850 television set and stayed at £211-a-night boutique hotels). So when she left her job – with her cheeky grin and her cheeky 'Rocking The Boat' brooch – it was some distance short of a high-minded moral gesture about the future of the government. Oh, how Brown must wish he had responded to the expenses scandal last month with a few swift surgical sackings.
John Hutton's resignation from the MoD gets more mysterious by the day. This is the man who famously said a Brown premiership would be "a f***ing disaster". And yet, when he decides enough is enough and he can no longer serve under this Prime Minister, he declines to say in public – even in a coded way – what he and fellow Blairites have long said in private. Instead, he pays fulsome tribute to a man he plainly regards as unfit to lead. Anything for a quiet life, eh, John?
Which brings us to the two ministers whose resignations were accompanied by overt criticism of the Prime Minister. Caroline Flint no doubt intended her departure from government to have the appearance of a principled stand by a woman standing up to male domination of power. Instead, she mishandled it so badly it looked like a petulant flounce.
Flint was one of the more interesting junior members of the government, with that rare asset in politics – a personality. I liked the fact she felt able to do those fashion shots for glossy magazines in scarlet dresses and killer heels. Politics could do with a bit more glamour, from both sides of the gender divide. (I remember the SNP's Roseanna Cunningham doing a similar fashion shoot over a good few pages of The Sun just after her 1995 by-election victory in Perth and Kinross. In fact, ahem, I think I may still have that copy filed away somewhere.) But for Flint then to complain that Brown used her as "window-dressing" simply beggared belief. Who put herself in the window? And who chose the fabulous dress? You can search Flint's self-absorbed letter of resignation in vain for anything other than thwarted personal ambition. Which is a shame, because there truly is a critique to be made of the male clique at the heart of Downing Street, where a knowledge of goal difference at the top of the championship is an essential attribute. No wonder Flint is getting it in the neck from other female politicians this weekend.
Purnell's letter of resignation was at least a coherent and concise political analysis of why Brown should stand down. But it was very much a solo mission. Other sympathetic Cabinet ministers – Alan Johnson and David Miliband for example – were not informed and were therefore ill-prepared to make their own contributions to the debate. What was remarkable about the resignation letters of both Purnell and Flint was their eagerness to emphasise they were acting individually and not with anyone else. You could sense the anxiety about not wanting to be seen as part of a cabal plotting to unseat the PM. Yet, if they truly believed it was essential that he went, that it was in the best interests of party and country, why not act in concert? This aside, Purnell's resignation was clearly the cue for other Cabinet ministers to knock on the PM's study door for that candid chat. None had the courage to do so. What a shower.
When Thatcher was being persuaded to resign, what we saw was the Tory party collectively facing up to an agonising decision that was nonetheless essential for both party and country. Issues of personal loyalty had to be wrestled with, then reconciled to the imperative of the moment. Issues of personal ambition had to be weighed against the greater good. Such sober thinking is hard to find in the febrile ranks of the Labour party this weekend. If Gordon Brown does indeed survive this coming week and continue as Prime Minister into the autumn and beyond, trying to persuade an increasingly cynical and disaffected public that his Cabinet of B-listers is the best that Britain can hope for, then we will know who to blame. For a party supposedly founded on the principles of commonality and solidarity, Labour seems woefully incapable of common purpose.
