The prevailing sentiment among parliamentary Labour members currently adheres to a Shakespearean principle. It declares that the extent of each adversity is solely assessed relative to unforeseen calamities. As the Bard makes the outcast offspring of the blinded Earl of Gloucester say within the tragedy: “The most terrible does not exist, as long as we are able to utter ‘this marks the bottom’.”
A Series of Intensifying Problems
According to Edgar's law, there is no public opinion measure so gloomy for Labour that it can't be followed by another more depressing; no economic projection so poor that the exchequer cannot worsen it with mixed indications about levies; no doubts concerning the Prime Minister that can't be amplified by malevolent briefing about a leadership challenge.
Asylum Policy Announcement
Considering this situation, the recent revelation of strategies intending to limit the number of displaced persons granted entry to Britain, based upon a notoriously mean Danish system, was taken better by representatives than might have been expected. There emerged flashes of MP frustration but no conflagration of opposition.
Hardening immigration policies is not Labour's comfort zone, however the present arrangement is obviously flawed and voters are angry. The majority of representatives grasp the position that open-mindedness and intercommunal harmony are more readily developed if assurance exists that national frontiers are secure.
Rising Unhappiness
Quiet backbenches may also represent threatening. Parliamentarians have realized that everything is negotiable with a directionless leader of malleable conviction. Today's declarations could be withdrawn tomorrow. There is no need to advance hastily if successes can be achieved through persistence.
A regular criticism involves the leader is hardly managing the administration in any meaningful way, after assigning strategic choices to his principal advisor. However, this doesn't mean the leader is without administrative energy, he merely chooses to refrain from intervening in departmental disputes or undertake long debates.
Leadership Style
The Prime Minister entered organized political activity during later professional life, first entering parliament when he was fifty-two. He misses understanding regarding party traditions – the collection of former discussions, campaigns, characters and cultural references which link a chief to the wider movement and its sense of common objective.
His most personal values are a mystery even to the cabinet. As one senior Labour figure puts it: “The leader is remarkably distinct as head of government in giving the impression that his individual beliefs is none of your business.”
Governmental Outcomes
The persona marketed as the Prime Minister in the recent polling battle has similarly not produced its claimed rewards: administrative capability culminating in national renewal. If Britain still had a binary political arrangement, the remembrance of how bad things were with the previous government might prolong tolerance for the party.
It indicates a crushing loss among government contenders in council and devolved elections in the coming spring. It shall represent a moment of extreme peril for the leader, assuming he survives until then.
Leadership Questions
Absent in these assessments exists consensus concerning the individual of an alternative leader and their intended agenda may differ from the current government's agenda. This weakness within succession arrangements is cited by supporters of the leader as one of many reasons to stick with the existing prime minister.
Although discontented representatives could hesitate regarding those warnings, they similarly perceive through them the well-known, empty ringing of low ambition which causes hopelessness at the status quo. It represents the noise of inability to describe the approach as simply a series of strategies for holding power.
Concluding Thoughts
It proves difficult to inspire faithfulness to such a cause. Numerous parliamentarians have tried. They have adhered to established policies, defended it on the doorstep, heeded instructions, believed assurances that their worries were considered.
Leadership removal involves significant danger, but is it riskier compared to feigning that the present leader holds responses regarding major issues that he never even names? Edgar's law suggests prudence when removing a sitting prime minister. The successor might prove more disastrous.
“The heaviness of this sad time we have to accept; Speak what we feel, rather than expected statements.”
