Peter Hoskin

An essential article by Iain Martin in today's Telegraph, on a topic that Coffee House will devote more attention to shortly – are Labour on the path to annihilation? On Martin's account, the picture certainly looks bleak: "Endangered in England's largest cities, losers in London, out of power in Scotland and sharing it with the nationalists in Wales, wiped out in the south, on the run in the north-west marginals, under fire in the West Midlands, all but bankrupt and with a collapsing membership: what it to become of Labour? This is how, if they are not careful, parties die. Extinction is never the result of a single event, rather it happens more slowly, over several decades.

A quick update to my earlier post: according to the Evening Standard, ten ministers are now prepared to quit in protest at Brown's leadership.  Of course, they may not go ahead with it.  But the story still fuels the idea that dissatisfaction with Gordon Brown is hardening, rather than fizzling away over the summer as Downing Street would have hoped.  Apparently, most in Labour now consider a revolt at the beginning of September "highly likely".  It's becoming increasingly difficult to disagree.

What happens when politicians shut themselves away, and stare into an abyss both political and personal? After Bruce Anderson’s revelations about Gordon Brown yesterday, I think we need to know. So I re-watched Robert Altman’s 1984 film Secret Honor last night, looking for a bit of elucidation. Secret Honor gives us a fictionalised, post-Watergate Richard Nixon. He locks himself in a room - not with a computer and the garbled recollection of a Dominic Grieve quote, but with a bottle of scotch and a loaded gun - and delivers his political testimony to a tape recorder.  That's what we get for the next 90 minutes. Stephen yesterday referred to Brown's actions as "more that political paranoia".

Rachel Sylvester's article in today's Times is a perfect summary of the plots threatening the Labour leadership. Two passages jumped out at me: “Civil servants - who can sink or save a politician - have not warmed to Mr Brown. 'People say he's charming in private but it's completely untrue,' an official who has worked closely with him said. 'He's incredibly rude. He doesn't remember names. His e-mails are brusque demands. And his defining characteristic is anger. I've seen him kicking furniture.