Jonathan Todd

Yesterday, Nick Robinson divided the PLP into plotters, quitters and fighters. Today, Cicero Consulting, Jonathan Freedland and Rod Liddle have done great jobs of putting further meat on the kind of arguments that sustain the fighters;  We’ve had a Queen’s Speech that seeks to frame the General Election in “caring Labour versus cruel Tory” terms; and reports suggest that Compass are considering joining the ranks of the plotters. So, much is going on, it would seem. But, fundamentally, nothing has changed since July, which was the last time that I said: Labour has three options: 1.) Back Brown, 2.) Replace him, 3.) Allow him to continue without backing him. The quitters only exist because they have concluded that the second of these worlds can’t be achieved by the plotters. The quitters are right to draw this conclusion. However, the continued existence of the quitters and the plotters threatens to leave Labour stranded in the third world, so to speak, which is the worst of all worlds for Labour. There remains, therefore, no logical defence for a Labour person not being a fighter and embracing the first of the three worlds. Labour should be fighters, not quitters, or even plotters, as someone didn’t quite say. The arguments of Cicero, Freedland and Liddle provide much reason to believe that the world of the fighter is far from an awful or hopeless world.