Tony Blair sacks Gordon Brown in 2004

In John Prescott's book that appeared in in the Sunday papers yesterday, that he told Tony Blair to sack Gordon Brown on several occasions, but he said Blair was two scared to sack him.
What if Blair had taken Prescott's advice and Sacked Gordon Brown?
 
The question is how will gordon react, and does he have enough power to challenge blair?

If he doesn't, or if he lets things be (possibly for a minor post), then Blair is secure for a while. If Brown thinks he can win a leadership contest, however, then Labour is in trouble.
 
It's the old problem of "Better in the tent pissing out, then outside the tent pissing in."

If you have Gordon Brown on the backbenches then Brown could - and that is the salient word - have all sorts of shit going on, depending on how Brown played it. I think if he had been sacked he would probably have drifted into irrelevancy eventually, frankly - whatever you want to say, Brown is no Heseltine - but it's hard to tell.

A lot depends on whether Brown would position himself as an out and out anti-Blairite rebel and probably challenge for the leadership, or whether he'd generally be more measured in his behaviour.

Also, a lot depends on the circumstances. If Blair just sacks Brown, then that is going to be quite different from if Brown is forced to resign somehow.
 
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I think 2004 is too late for Gordon Brown to be painlessly sacked. He had too much support, and there were lots of Labour MPs who had been ingratiating themselves with him for some time, aiming to get seats in his cabinet one day. Unless the sacking is because Brown is clearly a electoral liability and needs to be dumped (some large scandal, or an economic disaster traceable to his policies), there will be widespread dissention, which will cause open fighting in the Labour ranks.

Whoever comes out on top (it's not the definite Brown win it would have been in 2005-7, IMO, as the Iraq War hasn't bit quite yet) will be the leader of a demolished mob that's even more ungovernable than the Conservatives - and they've been fractious for the last eighteen years straight!
 
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