As reported below, it now seems inevitable to Maturin Towers that Gordon Brown will be gone within days, now that a Marcus Junius Brutus in the Cabinet has finally plucked up the courage to stab him in the front.
Will other refuseniks pluck up the courage to follow Marcus's lead?
Who cares.
The Bismarck is dead in the water. Only if a few lurking U-boats can now clear away the surrounding fleet will the limping Bismarck make it back to Brest. However, it will never leave the port again, so what's the point?
Though I suppose we should never underestimate the spinelessness and cowardice of Miliband and Darling, who could apply the final coup de grâce today, to put us out of our misery. No doubt both yellow-bellies will still sit on their hands to keep taking the salary and the pension until the final possible moment. But it matters not. Brown is finished.
But what is interesting about this is not the manner of Brown's exit, but the Labour Party's refusal to acknowledge the obvious truth surrounding the whole matter, that:=> Socialism does not work
They are all running around pretending to themselves that this is all down to Brown's 'personality' or 'lack of social skills' or 'inability to communicate'.
It is down to none of these things. As the Labour Party proved itself last year, when it only ran one candidate in its leadership race, Gordon Brown is the very best of them. When I was in the Labour Party in the 1990s, in my 'New Marxism' phase, Gordon Brown was clearly head-and-shoulders above every other Labour politician, with the possible exception of John Smith. The irritant Bambi Blair came along to spoil things, of course, but we all knew who our real leader-in-waiting was, even if we had to tolerate that lightweight Blair purely for presentational purposes while we foisted our sub-Marxist revolution upon Britain.
And that leader was Gordon Brown.
He had the ideas, the social skills, the communication skills, and the personal charm to create an enormous army of supporters, many of which still defend him to this day, despite his crass betrayal of their careers, as he has sought to survive himself personally at all costs to everyone else.
No, what has done for Brown, is that Socialism does not work. It was the same for Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro, Mugabe, Pol Pot, and a host of others.
Socialism cannot be made to work. It is a false God. It is the worst idea that ever existed. And. It. Does. Not Work.
It has two flaws. The first is that it goes right against the grain of the human condition. And even if this flaw is 'fixed' via social engineering (and we can all see the success of this program), it faces the insuperable flaw of being unable to calculate. Because when you destroy the market and the prices system which the market generates, you destroy all hope of knowing how to assign scarce resources.
No wonder so many socialists love Harry Potter and other fantasies. Because in that world, a wand can always be waved to get you round the problem of being unable to assign scarce resources. But in the real world, alas, there will always be scarce resources, particularly time and access to unique personalities, as well as the trifling ones of energy and matter.
All of the men I listed above, in their own ways, were brilliant men. Yes, horrible mass murderers for the most part, but still immensely charismatic and intelligent, who almost certainly believed that what they were doing was for the good of humanity.
But they were simply wrong. Because Socialism does not work. The reason they always end up being Stalin-like figures, is because the only way to continue believing in socialism, in the face of limitless failure, is to become extremely blinkered and extremely brutal. There is no other way of coping, except to give socialism up.
Because it does not work.
Though no doubt all of its supporters will keep going with it, until they are blue in the face with it. Take part of Purnell's resignation letter, for instance:
This moment calls for stronger regulation, an active state, better public services, an open democracy.
What a crass fool. More regulation? A More active state? Just why on earth does this ignoramus think we are in this mess in the first place?
How could we possibly have more regulation and a more active state in this country? We would have to have inspectors in every room of every house, ticking off, approving, and taxing our every move. Yes, I know they have tried to do this by brainwashing children into hectoring their parents about environmentalism, but if James Purnell thinks we need an even more active state and even more regulation, then I think we should all buy him a one-way ticket to North Korea, to find out what that would be like.
But let us at least admire him for daring to stand up to the tyrant, last night. That will have taken some personal courage so I, for one, can still salute him.
I think it's time for that chorus again:
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