Decisions, Decisions…

Gordon Brown has pressed David Miliband to cancel a trip to India as he prepares the way to reshuffle his Cabinet.

The Prime Minister has ordered a series of meetings with his most senior ministers at the start of next month as he seeks to restore his authority, The Times has learnt.

The meetings — which include two so-called political sessions of Cabinet and an awayday — indicate that Mr Brown could be planning to reshuffle his ministers within weeks.

What a choice. He faces the options of picking the least worst ministers from the current bunch – talk about a poison chalice!

Mr Brown faces an acute dilemma about what to do with Mr Miliband in the reshuffle, an event that was supposed to relaunch his administration next month.

Although Downing Street sources dismiss speculation that he would appoint Mr Miliband as his Chancellor, thus binding him still more closely to the Government’s fortunes, one ally said that this was among options under consideration. The senior figure added, however, that the “nuclear option” of dismissing Mr Miliband had not been discounted.

Fun though it is to see the weasels fighting in the sack, I wonder if this could really harm Labour irreparably, as many bloggers seem to think? Ross at Unenlightened Commentary thinks not:

“The other reason why I think Labour will survive is because a lot of their current problems stem from the uniquely awful personality of Gordon Brown.”

That’s borne out by some of the callers to the Milibland interview on Radio 2 yesterday, who seem to view Brown as the lightning rod for all the Labour Party’s troubles.

Which begs the question – do they not realise that the pretenders to the throne are all probably equally to blame for the current state of the party and also likely to be far worse as leader than Brown?