So the Labour party is continuing to devolve in to chaos. Rather than accept this and sort it out once and for all, Gordon and the senior ministers in the party are actively pushing to continue turmoil and heighten the disillusionment. Hanging on the power by less and less of a grip, people are trying to save the administration with vacuous statements such as...

I hope people will stop distracting us from the task in hand, which is to respond to the real problems people are facing in our constituencies up and down the country. - Phil Hope

I happen to agree, this isn't the right time. Labour should be carving a new way forward, knuckling down to combat the threat of the Tories taking power in a way that the Lib Dem's are currently doing so well in my opinion. But can they really be expected to do that while they have a leadership that has brought the party to their lowest standing in decades?

I've said in the past, Brown should have gone months ago when the rot first started. The party chose loyalty over common sense on issues like 42 days and that was the start of the rot moving away from an extractable person and in to a political body. Now they are sitting in a position where radical change is needed.

Some have cited the survey statistics that show the Brown is actually the most popular potential leader of the bunch, with people like Miliband not in a position to actually increase the popularity of the party, as to why no leadership contest should be called and why Brown would be crazy to step down. It's a fair analysis, but I feel neglects the real reason why people...people like you and me...are so disenfranchised with the party.

Let's face it, the reason we're so down on them is because they have no new ideas. They say about how they need to be dealing with the problems facing our economy but what are they doing? What can they do? It seems to be a tactic in weathering the storm and once again trying to take credit once the market sorts itself out. Meanwhile they negotiate packages with energy companies in a way that leaves them powerless to protect the consumer from more price rises and higher inflation, ignore regulatory solutions to problems in a period of time that is practically begging for a steadying hand, and ignore easy solutions to the most intrinsic of problems.

Take for example the documentary on BBC3 last night (yes, I know, BBC3) about empty homes. There are something like 800,000 homes around the country that are empty...have been for anything up to 9 years. Why? In a fair amount of the cases so that government and councils can try to demolish them in favour of building much more expensive housing that will make them loadsa money. Despite builders being willing to buy up entire streets of empty housing, renovate them, then sell them on as they are...areas such as Lib Dem run Liverpool council seem completely unwilling to let this potential fortune slip from their hands that easily. Even if it means leaving them empty for another 5 years while low income families live in squalor.

And ultimately it is our government that perpetuates this. Build more eco-homes they say, while ignoring these empty homes and allowing second home purchasing to continue unabated and unregulated. Is it really any surprise that people have lost faith?

But that's not to say that a change of leadership wouldn't bring about greater fortunes of the Labour party. It is my belief that people look at the list of candidates currently touted for leadership and ask themselves "Is this guy *really* going to be any different?" and their answer is "No". Get a leader contender there that can show that they will change things up and bring a new direction to British politics and I guarantee that view from the public will change.

But for now we live in interesting times, and some like myself will continue to gawp in awe at how the Labour party elite manage to perpetuate dissatisfaction with their party by not executively dealing with the problem at hand. By all means Brown, Darling, Miliband et al...keep telling people that they should stop their complaining, draw out this process that makes the Labour party look weak and broken, but don't kid yourselves that you're making yourself stronger in the long term, that you aren't handing power to the Tories. A strong party would have dealt with this issue over the summer recess to allow a new leader to take the stage at conference, it would have shown decisiveness and a true willingness to actually listen to the people rather than just saying "we are listening to the people". We would today be talking about how exciting the new policy direction will be for the future and how there are now 2 years to fight back the ground lost.

Instead it's the same old same old, and if 70 MPs don't rebel at this conference you can bet your bottom dollar they'll do so within 12 months as the hosing market falls further and the one area that the ex-chancellor is supposedly proficient in spirals out of control. By then it'll be too late to form a cohesive attack for a 2010 election, but that sort of decision is up to you. After all, you're in power and god be damned if anyone actually tries to convey to you something you don't wish to hear.