FAIR PAY FOR TIRE PAY NGHTMAN: Andrew Wiard lishment or the bulk of the Tory Party membership.
They are constrained at the moment because they are so desperate to see anything resembling a glimmer of hope and anything resembling some good opinion poll figures. But if he stumbles they will have him for breakfast.
All this becomes even more problematic when it comes to shifting Cameron's vague ideas about a different kind of Tory party into a set of policies in advance of an election.
He will then be vulnerable to Brown, who already used his recent budget speech to discredit some of his ideas, and by the Tory establishment who will find them increasingly hard to swallow dropping and his spooky forced grin. as they have to be spelled out more clearly.
None of this means that a Brown victory at the next election is in the bag. The rot may have gone to deep for Brown to turn it round at the level of a cosmetic makeover. Or Brown might fail to make a slash and get defeated by Cameron.
But a Labour fourth term under Brown seems to be the most likely outcome of the next election, and what the left needs to prepare for.
Before that of course he has to win the leadership which he could well to do without a mainstream challenger.
Whilst there are those who would like to challenge him, it is only someone already in the wilderness, like Charles Clarke for example, who is likely to do so - since they would certainly be in the wilderness afterwards.
Miliband (who is the closest thing to Blair himself produced by New Labour) is far
By waging the campaign John McDonnell is making an important contribution to preparing the movement for a life of struggle under Brown. Apparently there is already a team working on an image makeover for Brown in an attempt to get rid of all that jawCOCS EUR PAY FOR THE PASSPORT SERFICE END THE PAY NGHTMAREL too ambitious to want to mark his card at this stage.
The danger for the left is that if Brown does put on a new face between his election as leader and the next general election that a lot of people might fall for it.
The bulk of the union leaders are already batting for Brown despite his crackdown on wage settlements and his complicity in attacks on pension rights and on the NHS.
That is why John McDonnell's campaign for the leadership is so important.
Brown, rather than New Labour generally, is the specific target in McDonnell's addresses which he has been making up and down the country, targeted not only at individual Labour Party members but particularly at trade unionists.
So by waging the campaign McDonnell is making an important contribution preparing the movement for a life of struggle under Brown.
Meanwhile sections of the awkward squad in the affiliated unions are trying to suggest that support for John Cruddas or even Peter Hain in the deputy leadership election is a way of supporting an alternative to Blairism without supporting McDonnell. We should oppose such manoeuvres and concessions to new Labourism.
Outside the Labour Party the task of building a pluralist left alternative to new Labour remains key. The conditions for this may change to some extent under Brown, but the crisis of representation will continue and the need for such an alternative will be just as great.
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