What does getting rid of Gordon Brown achieve?

There is what feels like a nasty coalition between the media and the political classes. There seems to be an acute desire to bring whatever it is to the boil and then lance it (mixing metaphors).

But I’m not sure there is actually anything very specific to bring to the boil beyond the residual right-left fratricide (in this case with a good splash of sororicide).

One junior minister – Jane Kennedy – and one new-named rebel, Sally Keeble, have surfaced this morning. Both are traditional Blairites.

Yet for Labour, in the aftermath of the worst national election results since 1916, it’s not easy to see what defenestrating Brown will achieve. They will have to have a more or less immediate election, and merely convert European disaster into national annihilation.

Mr Brown has his strengths and his faults. His strengths reside in his intellect and moral uprightness. His weaknesses reside in his conservatism – beyond giving the Bank of England its independence, his embrace of truly radical change for Britain appears to be little better than marginal.

But more critically, his greatest weakness remains the sort of hitmen he keeps about him that pander to some kind of collective paranoia.

After the ascent of the BNP, thanks entirely to Labour’s collapse, and after the ascent of Ukip thanks to the same cause, those advocating electoral reform will want to fine-tune what it is they are proposing.

I can’t think the De Hont electoral system that we have just experienced/suffered is going to endear itself…