So *someone* will take on Brown

Labour left-wingers John McDonnell and Michael Meacher have announced that they will pool resources in the Labour leadership election to ensure one of them can be successfully nominated. (BBC News: Left rivals unite to target Brown) On the day Tony Blair does the most popular thing he can ever do, the two will meet and compare their levels of support amongst MPs with the less popular dropping out. From the tone of their recent statements about each other's levels of support (reaching a level of bitchiness normally associated with Judean People's Fronts and People's Fronts of Judea) it's more of a tactical admittance that individually neither can get the support needed for nomination rather than a great principled pooling of resources. It also opens up possibilities for the more Machiavellian Labour members to tactically support whichever they think it would be better to have in the contest, either to clip Gordon Brown's wings or to expose the left as hopeless. Given how effective Michael Meacher was as Environment Minister I do hope he's the one to stand, if only for the comedy value. (So there *is* an alternative to Gordon Brown)

Meanwhile the search for a serious challenger to take on Brown has still failed to yield results. As David Cameron asked at Prime Minister's Questions the other week:

Why is it that so many people who have worked so closely with the Chancellor think he would make a terrible Prime Minister, but they do not seem prepared to stop him?

(Hansard: 28 Feb 2007 28 Feb 2007 : Column 920)

Indeed anyone who wants to stop Brown has only one serious choice. And that choice is David Cameron.