Word: gordon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...billed as tragedy - an insurrection that would topple the Labour Party's flawed hero, Gordon Brown - but it played out like a Marx Brothers farce. The June 8 meeting that would determine Brown's fate attracted so many Labour MPs and members of the House of Lords that a House of Commons committee room quickly filled to capacity. And still they came, squeezing their way into the mass of bodies politic. When a clutch of tardy ministers wrenched open the doors, pressure-packed colleagues tumbled into the corridor, itself lousy with reporters poised to relay the verdict...
...case for his ouster. It was a whimpering end to an uprising that had seen attacks on Brown's leadership from across the party, and serial resignations from his Cabinet. Just four days before, James Purnell, one of the party's brightest young stars, had delivered a Dear Gordon letter on the eve of a reshuffle that would have reaffirmed his own place at the Cabinet table. "I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely," he told Brown. (See pictures of Brown as he prepared to become Prime Minister...
Watch an interview with Gordon Brown...
...been "blighted," says Neil Stewart, who was Political Secretary to Neil Kinnock, Labour's leader during its wilderness years in the 1980s and early 1990s. "This third term should have been the most reforming. It's been first waiting for Tony to go and then waiting for Gordon to make his mind up. I can hardly believe the damage of that internecine battle, just how utterly destructive and wasteful of huge amounts of political capital that...
...announced a raft of proposals, including a part-elected House of Lords, independent regulation of Parliament and a statutory code of conduct for MPs. "The expenses crisis has actually delivered us an amazing opportunity for radical change," says Ben Bradshaw, newly created Culture Secretary in Brown's reconstituted Cabinet. "Gordon is talking about reforming the machine, about real constitutional and political reform...