If you’ve been following British politics at all recently, then you’ll have seen the stories of bullying in Number 10. Obviously bullying is totally wrong and shouldn’t be tolerated in any circumstance (blah, blah, blah, standard ‘I’m not a right-wing reactionary disclaimer), but this whole story has strong whiffs of orchestration to it.

The latest incarnation is perfectly timed to counter Labour’s nicked campaign slogan (we were fair first!). People will apportion far more of their attention to a bit of scandal than to a plain vanilla campaign launch. The timing is being followed up by the story being divided into tasty, bite-size portions, ready for thorough digestion by the media (new and old alike).

Anyway, it’s just speculation with no solid evidence, but is this the first shot in a negative campaign running up ’til the election? Isn’t politics nice.

Talk about papering over the cracks: apparently we are to see a new ‘brand’ and a ‘policy plan’ to go with it from Labour this week. To be fair, it’s about time we started talking policy again, but when the Financial Times uses lines such as, “Lord Mandelson is characteristically confident of seeing off leftwing pressure” to refer to the drawing-up of the plans, I’m not sure how much confidence I have that the result will be recognisable as the new revitalisation of social democracy that Labour needs if it is to have anywhere near a remote chance of limping into a fourth term, or perhaps more realistically, if it is to be able to defeat the next Conservative government in a few years time. I’m not desperately keen on Labour, but they’re still much preferable to the wolf in sheep’s clothes that is the Conservative Party.

Try as I might, I couldn’t find the exact quote, but I remember that in The Prince, Machiavelli writes something along the lines that when open attacks against a prince start to build up, it is inevitable that the prince will find himself off his princely throne fairly shortly thereafter. As a piece of political insight, this one has held up pretty well since the 1530s; I have a feeling it will hold up this time as well: I’m going to hazard a guess that Gordon Brown will either go on Monday, or secure himself in office for a month or two.

Frankly, if he does go, I’d say good riddance. The government has lost any appetite for politics based on improving the UK and tackling the big global challenges. Instead it has opted for—or been co-opted to—the politics of power and survival. The problem is, even with a new prime minister, there will be no change or revitalisation in policy.

It is almost inevitable that we will end up with a Conservative government for at least one term of office, but the Labour Party need that time if they’re to have hope of reassuming power again in future. It would be interesting to think what Democrat government in the United States instead of George Bush could have meant for Barrack Obama’s chances of becoming President. I’m not an expert on US politics, but I think there’d be less chance of his election if Gore had won in 2000. He was able to use the discontent with the sitting government to present a coherent set of policies for his presidency, and differentiate himself from past Democrat administrations. Labour need to do the same. They need to reconnect with their grass-root activists, find an ideology of some form, and present that to the country with a new leader, showing that they can be a fresh force on the centre-left.

Of course, a Green government would be ideal, and what I really want is for our policies to be the ones which people want for the country, but in the electoral system that we’re stuck with, it’s Labour or Tory, and I’d probably always prefer Labour as the best of a bad pair.

UK politics is doing the cannibalism thing today. David Cairn’s departure from office, and the rumours of Caroline Flint’s soon to be announced plans to devote more of her time to her hobbies seem to be suggesting that the Labour boat is being rocked quite well. The next few days will be interesting.