Gordon Brown must go – by June 5

[CHIMO]

Politics tests character, often to destruction. The character of some ministers, their shadows and MPs of all parties has been wrecked by ­exposure of their ­expenses. How can those caught pilfering from the public purse denounce benefit fraud? How can those with state-purchased silk cushions support the cash-limited social fund that denies beds and blankets to families sleeping on bare boards? MPs with fingers in the till will blush to justify paying the unemployed £60.50 a week to live on. Nor can they rant convincingly at City greed or tax-dodgers fleeing to Guernsey.

The one character who has been tested to final destruction is Gordon Brown. The music stopped on his watch, first for the economy and now MPs' sleaze, for which the government of the day takes most blame. Labour used to lay claim to higher moral ground, while the right always said greed was the motor of growth. When he first talked of his moral compass, Brown should have cleaned up party funding, MPs' expenses and honours – and linked these reforms with curbs on the power that money breathes over the nation's affairs. The expenses mess would not be fatal if the prime minister were upright and strong. But Labour is already ­dangling over a cliff, and this affair prises its fingers off the edge.

It's all over for Brown and Labour. The abyss awaits. As long as he remains leader, there is nothing that wretched Labour candidates can plausibly say on the doorstep at next month's European elections. They are struck dumb. Why should people vote for them? The horse manure bought on expenses is garnish for a decomposing government. The heart of the matter is the economy, and Brown's responsibility for the bubble years. He personally is to blame for Labour's failure to ensure that ordinary people on median incomes and poor people at the bottom received a bigger share in national growth: it turns out that they fell back and only the wealthy prospered. Labour made the rich richer and the poor poorer: growth for the few, not the many.

That is a failure so fundamental to Labour's purpose that the party can't go into the next election led by the man responsible. His other failings as leader pale beside this one monumental fact. While he is there, Labour cannot claim "fairness" or "social justice", so what is left to say? What is Labour's offer?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/11/labour-gordon-brown