Succession Planning

Bottling it Again?

Could it be that the Prime Minister is finally beginning to wonder if his tenure in Number 10 may be somewhat shorter than he may have hoped? After all, at Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday he did seem to be getting in some practice for what would almost certainly be a very brief spell of cross-examining a future Prime Minister Cameron from the opposition benches.

Now it appears that, perhaps with one eye to his legacy, a convenient diary clash has been arranged such that it makes his attendance at the signing of the EU reform treaty highly unlikely. Of course, it is protested, that he would love to be there but let's be honest the dates of both the treaty signing and the Commons liaison committee must have both been known for some time and it seems improbable to say the least that something could not have been arranged.

It would seem that the general opinion that Brown wouldn't be able to perform his Macavity act once elevated from the Treasury to the top job may have underestimated the depth of the Prime Minister's cowardice.

It looks then that the face that will loom from our TV screens over each fine leather bound copy of this most illegitimate of treaties will be that of David Miliband. Each time the European Court of Justice renders one of the much vaunted 'red lines' worthless it will be the same images that will be replayed, of a Foreign Secretary who Brown has already ritually humiliated over by taking the headmaster's red pen to his last speech on the EU.

Naturally, in his own opinion at least, the Prime Minister is a man of the greatest personal integrity, so to suggest that he would wish to poison a potential political rival with a slow acting political toxin would be ridiculous...wouldn't it?