If you were a Labour MP...

A thought experiment, albeit an unpalatable one: imagine you were a Labour MP (I know, I know, but indulge me) and the fate of the Prime Minister and thus, by implication, the nation lay in your hands tonight and tomorrow. What would you do? Your party has just suffered a historic defeat, taking a disastrous 15 per cent of the vote. The Government is enfeebled and without trajectory, propped up only by Labour cowardice and Peter Mandelson’s will-power. Your natural supporters have fled to the fascist Right, resulting in the election of two BNP MEPs. You face total obliteration in the general election, whenever it comes.

I take it as read that most CoffeeHousers, like me, regard the Cabinet as an appalling shower who showed their collective spinelessness to deplorable effect last Friday. But imagine –  I repeat, for the sake of argument alone – that you had to choose from within the parameters available to the PLP.

So: imagine a sort of nightmarish game of Fantasy Premier. What would you do, the country’s future in your trembling hands? Would you leave Gordon where he is? Would you try to prevail upon Alan Johnson or one of the Milibands to throw his hat in the ring? Would you ask Tony Blair to stand in the Norwich North by-election which will follow Ian Gibson’s resignation?

Count yourselves fortunate that you don’t have to choose in real life. But imagine that you did. What would you actually do? Go on, force yourselves.