Make your mind up, Gordon!

Last week we stood back in amazement at the unfolding of the Hoon/Hewitt plot to unseat Gordon Brown — which may go down in the annals of the Labour Party as the most half-a**ed leadership coup plot of all time.  They ran their flag up the flag-pole, but no one saluted.  All they did was to reveal the discomfiture of other Ministers, who came forward belatedly to make their toe-curling non-endorsements of Brown’s position.  And in Hoon’s case at least, it left him to face the wrath of his local constituency party.
 
Now Gordon tells us that the plot has made him “more determined” to lead Labour into the next General Election.  It seems reasonable to infer that before the coup emerged, he was less determined about soldiering on.  This can only bolster his reputation for indecision, and call into question his commitment to the job.  Given the lack of any clear support for him either in his party or in his cabinet, surely anyone less bone-headed than Gordon would be considering his position very carefully indeed.
 
He also added for good measure that if elected (we can hardly write “re-elected”, since he was never elected as leader of the Labour Party, or Prime Minister, in the first place) he will serve a full term.  This disheartening prospect surely gives all voters, including labour voters, the strongest incentive to boycott Labour in the General Election. 
 
But it also contains a message for Ministers like Miliband and Harman.  They seem to have accepted that Labour will lose the election, and their attention is clearly focussed on the Labour leadership election which they assume will follow the General Election.  If there is any chance at all, however remote, that even that consolation prize might be snatched away by an unexpected Labour victory, and that Gordon might stay in place until 2015, then they have the strongest incentive to sit on their hands and avoid doing anything to help the Labour party cause in the General Election campaign.