Frank Field opposes Brown again

Brown looks likely to survive, if only for reasons of internal Labour politics, but Paul Waugh points out that Frank Field has returned to the attack on him.

I was one of the seven who would not support his coronation after Tony Blair was shoehorned out of Number 10. But even I didn't think a Brown administration would be as inept as this one.

This is the narrowly political angle which also interests the Spectator's blog, but it's incidental to his main message that voters have to be taken seriously. He points out that in the Wirral

the two parties standing in the election who hold the strongest views against our present relationship with Europe far out stretched the Labour vote, and almost toppled the Tory vote.

This has to be taken seriously, he says.

He claims a replacement leader for Gordon Brown could achieve legitimacy by naming a general election date immediately on appointment. But his concluding paragraph is the most interesting.

Similarly, the failure to deal with immigration and Europe is poisoning our political system. I have set out in the Balanced Migration campaign how we should counter positively the BNP. Similarly, we need to cut loose European politics from our domestic politics. Voters have no party to represent their worries on this score, only the BNP with their evil interests.

I don't understand what cut loose European politics from our domestic politics means, so I have asked and will post any clarification.

But I don't foresee any of the three main parties addressing these issues with anything but cant - or, as Richard North would say, elastoplast.