Gordon Brown's Coronation part II

During most of last year I thought there would be a challenger to Gordon Brown for the Prime minister's job. There has been much speculation on the issue over at politicalbetting.com. Many names have been mentioned. All for one reason or another appear to have fallen by the wayside. The last notable example being John Reid with his series of Home Office farces. (See here and here for example).

I had always thought there would be a Challenger because there would be a deputy leadership election, and there is not much money to be saved by only having the one vote. You may as well have two, one for leader, and one for deputy.

Then in December last year I spotted this article on the BBC, where an ex minister, John Spellar said he thought there should be no deputy election to save money, the post should be abolished. I wrote this, along the lines of "well, if there were a leadership election, then not much money would be saved by having no deputy election. Therefore someone wants to knock both elections on the head."

Well, Andrea over at political betting highlighted this article today, form the Evening Standard. Basically it says that the potential left wing challengers to Gordon are having trouble getting the required 44 MP's to stand. All the challengers on the right have been hobbled, so that leaves a coronation.

The story also flies the kite that there could be a communist style leadership election with just Gordon on the ballot, but some figures I have seen suggest this would cost £2 million, so I can't see it. Also what if the vote is less than a ringing endorsement? I don't think Gordon would want that! Do you? After all Gordon has a habit of running away when bad news is in the air, hence being in India when the inflation figures were announced. (See here)

Which largely goes to explain why in my other predictions for 2007 I though Gordon would be PM at the end of 2007, and there would be no deputy.