Parris thinks so too

Matthew Parris has a good article in today's Times, where he writes about the attempt by Hewitt And Hoon to force a secret ballot for the Labour leadership. I wrote about this on Thursday, and said:

Perhaps it really is that simple: both are leaving the Commons at the next election anyway, and this was a move guaranteed to skewer their leader's auld enemy and ensure his defeat in the most public and humiliating way possible. Nobody could be that vindictive, could they?

Parris agrees with this analysis, although I included it as a kind of comic alternative which no-one would take seriously:

You’ll hardly find a commentator with a lower opinion of Mr Brown than me, so if even I can see that removing him now would only compound Labour’s problems, don’t imagine his own MPs cannot see the same. And don’t imagine that this never occurred to Geoff Hoon or Patricia Hewitt.

In which case, we must face the truth. Mainly they wanted to hurt him. Two senior Labour figures preparing to depart politics have delivered a huge kick to the prime-ministerial shins. Now, we may suppose — Lord Mandelson permitting — that Mr Brown will limp on to the defeat that the British voters wait to inflict upon him.

This new year putsch against Mr Brown, then, has succeeded. Mr Hoon’s and Ms Hewitt’s Night of the Long Icicles has achieved its purpose once you understand its purpose.

This, remember, is the party in charge of the British economy at a time of unprecedented crisis, during a time when we are was overseas and are getting our soldiers killed every day, and with a General Election less than six months away.

I utterly, utterly despair.