Not too late for Labour to ditch Brown and win

Get ready for one last effort to oust Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Some in Westminster are suggesting that if Labour MPs were not so concerned with having to save their bank balances - they could be required to repay thousands of pounds worth of dodgy expenses - they would be more intent on saving their government.

The fact is that, in the eyes of some of the smartest economists and political pundits of both persuasions, David Cameron and George Osborne performed pretty badly last week in Manchester and that Labour, with a new leader, would have a real chance of snatching this election back.

The Tory duo may have held the conference audience in thrall with their speeches in Manchester, but for those beyond the party faithful they raised more questions than they provided answers.

As The First Post reports elsewhere today, the economist David Blanchflower, credited with being the man who made the right call last year on cutting the Bank of England interest rate, has been relentless in recent days with his argument that Cameron and Osborne don't know what they're doing.

Their incompetence, he says, risks Britain being plunged into a depression the likes of which has not been seen since the Thirties.

Blanchflower - who let us remember has been just as critical of Labour in his time - is not the only one pushing this argument.

Will Hutton writing for the Observer yesterday argued that while the Manchester audience and the media were applauding Cameron's line that it was "more government" that got us into this mess, few commentators made the point that the Tory leader was actually quite wrong.

In Hutton's view it was too little government - manifested in a lack of City regulation - that was to blame. "The truth," he wrote, " is that markets need governments... The hysterical anti-government rhetoric does not allow him [Osborne] to admit that fiscal policy works as an economic stimulus and me be necessary if recovery falters."

The Mole could quote from Hutton and Blanchflower till the cows come home - and that's what is upsetting some senior Labour types. Why cannot Brown take the Blanchflower-Hutton playbook and simply repeat the mantra in interviews and speeches: "You don't cut public spending in a recession".

Or as Blanchflower put it in an article for the Daily Mirror at the weekend, "You don't start saving when you are unemployed - that is the time to dip into your savings."

Well, there is of course an answer to why Brown isn't doing this - and it's the one his enemies have been giving since before he moved into Number 10. He cannot communicate. Never has, never will.

As the Mole has explained before, the innate Labour bias in the electoral system means that to win the election with a majority in the Commons, the Tories need to be at least 10 points ahead of Labour in the opinion polls. With Brown leading Labour, they appear to have the advantage they need. With Alan Johnson or Miliband (David, not Ed) singing the Blanchflower-Hutton refrain, it would be a very different matter. ·