Can Caesar survive a Brutus?

Can Brown survive his very British Brutus?
From Monday's Globe and Mail

E-mail Doug Saunders Read Bio Latest Columns
August 4, 2008 at 3:56 AM EDT

LONDON — It is a very British coup that has broken out on the beaches of Europe as Prime Minister Gordon Brown's cabinet members begin their summer vacations with talk of insurrection.

Very British in its thrust, which has been both nasty and secretive: Mr. Brown is guilty of "hubris and vacuity," his leadership "a lamentable confusion of tactics and strategy," said a letter, apparently from former prime minister Tony Blair, that was leaked to the London tabloids this weekend in an apparent bid by Mr. Brown's cabinet challengers to undermine him.

And very British in its subtlety: It began with a newspaper article, written by one of Mr. Brown's closest colleagues, that seemed innocuous and even laudatory in its language, but whose coded messages were quicky interpreted by the entire country to be regicidal.

At its centre is a most unlikely Brutus, a 43-year-old child of Eastern European Jewish refugees whose freshman demeanour and intellectual, wonkish bearing seem out of place both in the aristocratic circles of Westminster and in the calloused world of Labour politics.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is both the youngest member of Mr. Brown's cabinet and, until a few days ago, considered among its most loyal. While this widely admired politician had frequently been listed as a potential successor by many, notably by Mr. Blair's allies, he had turned down bids to run against Mr. Brown.

That all changed on Wednesday, when Mr. Miliband published an article in the Labour-linked Guardian newspaper that, to outsiders, looked like a benign call for Labour Party unity and renewal following a terrible by-election loss to Scottish separatists in the formerly safe Labour riding of Glasgow East.

But the article, written without the permission of 10 Downing St., immediately sent shock waves across British politics and media. This, everyone agreed, was the launch of a mutiny.

To insiders, its message stood out in bright red. First, while arguing that Labour could beat the Tories, it did not in any way defend the Prime Minister's leadership, or even mention his name.

Second, it was written in the language of a political campaign speech: "The times demand a radical new phase ... New Labour won three elections by offering real change, not just in policy but in the way we do politics. We must do so again."

The Times of London, on its front page, called it "the launch of his leadership bid." Most other media outlets followed, and the Ladbrokes betting agency immediately raised its odds on Mr. Miliband becoming Labour leader to 5 to 2.

Mr. Brown sent his loyal MPs - a dwindling group - to counterattack. "I would have sacked him. I think he's been grossly disloyal," MP Geraldine Smith said in an interview apparently authorized by Downing Street, calling Mr. Miliband a "non-entity." Her Labour colleague, Bob Marshall-Andrews, described the article as "pretty contemptible politics" and "duplicitous."

Those words might have worked better against an older and more battle-scarred challenger. But Mr. Miliband, formerly considered a brilliant policy mind but hardly a celebrity, has managed to capture the eye of the nation in a stunningly short period of time, and will be harder to dismiss.

He entered Labour politics 20 years ago as an office assistant, bringing with him a name that opened doors on the left. Mr. Miliband is the son of Ralph Miliband, the Marxist scholar who founded the New Left Review in the 1960s and whose works are known to almost everyone in the Labour Party. David's brother, Ed Miliband, is another member of Mr. Brown's cabinet.

At a moment when British politics, even in the Labour Party, is turning hostile to refugees, Mr. Miliband's experience provides a counterbalance. His parents, both Polish Jews, had fled Hitler's Holocaust across Europe, finally finding themselves in Belgium.

As the tanks approached, they tried to enter Britain legally, but were rebuffed by the Home Secretary, who happened to be the Tory MP for the riding Mr. Miliband now represents.

Fearing for their lives, the Milibands crossed into England as illegal immigrants, using forged papers. Despite this experience, the Milibands quickly rose in British academic life.

Their political dynasty has been pegged as a source of future leaders since David Miliband played a key role in drafting the New Labour manifestos that brought Tony Blair to office in 1997.

On Thursday, in a move widely seen as an effort to quell the unrest, Mr. Brown ordered Mr. Miliband to cancel a planned trip to India in early September, calling him and the rest of his cabinet to his official country residence to announce a large-scale cabinet shuffle.

Mr. Brown's aides said he hopes to rebuild public support for the party before the Labour and Tory conferences at the end of September, possibly by timing the shuffle to coincide with a special windfall tax on energy companies, a populist move likely to please beleaguered British voters.

The stakes are extremely high. Mr. Brown's popularity has fallen in the year since he succeeded Mr. Blair to the point that even Labour's safest seats are now up for grabs. Observers are seriously discussing the possibility that Mr. Brown, should he ever face a general election, worried he might lead his party to the sort of decimating defeat that completely eliminated Britain's Liberal Party a century ago or Canada's Progressive Conservatives 16 years ago.

While polls show that if an election were called today, Mr. Miliband would not beat Conservative Leader David Cameron - another youthful and unorthodox figure in British politics - he would stand a better chance of holding the party together and keeping its core of seats.

On the other hand, there is a strong desire to prevent the Labour conference in September from turning into a full-blown campaign against Mr. Brown, in which groups of MPs raise motions to unseat him in front of national TV cameras.

That would be almost unprecedented in modern British political history.

It would also likely be ineffective: The Labour constitution makes it almost impossible to unseat a sitting prime minister.

Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Blair last year and does not have to call an election until 2010, shows no signs of wanting to step down voluntarily.

But Mr. Miliband's gambit, if that's what it was, seems to have had the desired effect: It has put him at the centre of national attention, ahead of more senior colleagues such as Justice Minister Jack Straw and cabinet member Ed Balls.

As Britain's most volatile government in a generation tries to relax on Europe's beaches, people are talking about the "prosecco plot" or the "cava coup," as the Prime Minister's downfall is planned over glasses of the fizzy wines. And the first name mentioned, thanks to a clever act of newspaper understatement, will be David Miliband.