Gordon Brown - rewrote "loyalty to leader" rules.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown & the Labour Party seem to be in a spot of bother, according to all the polls, and the political pundits in the UK seem to think that Foreign Secretary David Miliband has shown his hand as a putative successor.

Brown supporters in the Labour party have accused Miliband of disloyalty and now demand that he be demoted as punishment for this heinous crime.

This is laughable.

Almost from the day Labour won their third successive general election in May 2005, Brown and his acolytes plotted the overthrow of Tony Blair and used every available opportunity to undermine him and hasten his pre-announced but undated departure. Multiple plots and attempted political coups were evidenced before Blair finally went in June 2007.

So Brown himself rewrote the rules of the British Labour Party with regard to loyalty to the leader and perhaps he’s now about to reap the whirlwind.

Tony Blair must have mixed feelings about the current situation. No doubt he allows himself a wry smile as he watches Gordon discover that it’s not that easy to be PM, but Blair cannot be happy to see his party face a future, and quite possibly a long one, in opposition.

But I’d like to be a fly on the wall whenever Blair chats with Alistair Campbell about Gordon’s tribulations. The cup of human kindness might not exactly be overflowing, I suspect.