A small forest has already been cut down to print the column acres of analysis of the abortive Hewitt-Hoon plot last week. Nonetheless, I'm going to indulge in a little bit more.
This isn't really a bit of Kremlinology or speculation on who was behind it all, but rather an insight into the way the Left thinks.
Hewitt and Hoon's letter was not, as it is generally characterised, the announcement of a specific leadership challenge, but a call for a vote of no confidence. In its own way, that was quite a clever attempt at avoiding the pitfalls that wrecked previous challenges to Brown's authorit.
The anti-Brown rebels on Labour's benches have typically hit two major obstacles in the past. The first is that the potential challengers, such as David Miliband, have proved too cowardly to put their heads above the parapet. The second is that even if you have a willing challenger, the Labour Party's constitution requires them to get the fairly high number of 70 Labour MPs to publicly support the challenge for it to become official.
The idea for a vote of no confidence sidesteps both of those issues - no need for a challenger as a figurehead, and no constitutional requirement for a set number of MPs to back you. Of course, the plot fell down on its own in-built walking pitfall, Geoff Hoon, but their tactic did have some logic to it.
It was the reaction of Brown's allies and the Party authorities that was particularly revealing, though. They simply declared that the vote of the Parliamentary Labour Party proposed by the plotters was "unconstitutional" as there were no provisions for it in the Party Constitution.
This illustrates the fundamental philosophical difference between Right and Left. Whereas the Right generally take the view that you are allowed to do anything unless it is explicitly forbidden, the Left assume that you can only have rights that are explicitly granted by the rules. For the Right, your freedom was born with you and can only be taken away by rules and regulations, and for the Left, what freedom you have is given to you by the powers that be.
