James Purnell

[sir_guinglain]

I have never warmed to James Purnell as a person when seeing him on television, nor am I impressed by his background as John Birt's consultant at the BBC in the 1990s - the sort of job I can't imagine anyone so young with so little experience of the world doing, yet thousands of twentysomethings do this every day - and helping to wreak morale-sapping havoc on an already beleaguered institution. He seems to recognise (whatever the unworldly Matthew d'Ancona thinks on his Spectator blog) that he is not the person to lead the Labour Party at the moment. The resignation of someone without an obvious base of either power or sympathy in the Labour Party is not having anything like a uniform effect, with at least one critic of Brown also attacking Purnell as a careerist. Gordon Brown is nevertheless damaged by this resignation, but it's not in itself a killer blow to his premiership; just another suggestion of encroaching chaos.