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Thursday, May 20, 2010
Miliband odds-on to succeed Brown
BY FINBARR SLATTERY
LAST week Gordon Brown stepped down as Prime Minister of the UK, a post he held for just under three years during which he was the leader of the Labour Party.
Brown handed in his resignation as Prime Minister to Queen Elizabeth and she has asked David Cameron to take on that job. He and his visibly pregnant wife, Samantha, have already been photographed outside and entering 10 Downing Street.
At the age of 43, Cameron is the youungest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812 – he is a few months younger than Tony Blair was when he took up office.
Cameron’s party has teamed up with the Liberal Democrats to form the UK’s first peacetime coalition for more than 80 years.
He is Britain’s 52nd prime minister and Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has become his deputy.
Clegg is the same age as Cameron and he now fills a role that has been occupied by vererans like Willie Whitelaw, Michael Heseltine and John Prescott.
He was an MEP from 1999 to 2004 and became deputy prime minister after only five years in the House of Commons.
Like Cameron, he is a happy family man with a Spanish wife who is very supportive and levelling, by all accounts. At their wedding she gave a speech in which she poked fun at him by saying that she spent every morning in bed with Nick – and the Financial Times.
And so we bid adieu to Gordon Brown whose tearful farewell to 10 Downing Street was very dramatic and moving.
He was photographed for all the papers and seen on live television leaving the most famous address in the world.
For Brown (59) this is the end of the road in politics and for 13 years he was at the top of the tree in government circles.
In his concluding few words he let it be known that as prime minister he had been privileged to learn much about the very best in human nature and a fair amount too about its frailties.
His last words as prime minister were: "As I leave the second most important job I could ever hold, I cherish even more the first – as a husband and father. Thank you and goodbye."
The big question now is who will succeed Brown as leader of the Labour Party.
The strong favourite to land the job is David Miliband who was foreign secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.
Bookmakers quote his chances of landing the job at the short odds of 4/6.
Among the other candidates listed is Miliband’s brother Ed who is five years his junior so it is on the cards that you could see brother succeeding brother at the helm of Labour.
There is at least one lady in contention namely the present deputy leader of the party, Harriet Harman. One of the key posts in the UK government is the Home Secretary who looks after matters on the home front and as a result is continually in the public eye. Alan Johnson is the latest to hold that post but, it seems that he lacks ambition for the leadership post and that could be his undoing. Amont the others mentioned in dispatches is Jack Straw, the present Justice Minister. Likely outsiders who might contest the leadership include Andy Burnham and Ed Balls.
To get there, there are three hurdles to be jumped namely, MPs, MEPs and the trade unions. It will be interesting to see who succeeds.
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