Of course Gordon Brown should be replaced yesterday at the latest, writes Matthew Norman. Of course anyone – Miliband, Johnson, Straw, Jon Cruddas, Kerry Katona, the late Arthur Mullard; even Charles Clarke – would limit the scale of defeat. This much we know. All it would take to remove Gordon now is a delegation of six cabinet ministers, or four if they were the right quartet. "You go or we go" is all they need say. Five words, and Sarah would be on to Pickfords within the hour. Five syllables to save, 60, 100, 150 seats. It isn't cojones that are required here, merely the human instinct for survival. But even that has been squashed out of them by a decade of bartering their political souls for chauffered Rovers and the run of John Lewis white electricals. Matthew Norman The Independent
Full article: Anyone would be better than Brown – even Kerry Katona

Charles Clarke has compared Brownites and Blairites trading insults to the squabbles between children in Richmal Crompton's Just William series, writes John Crace. But if you're looking for fictional metaphors to describe the present-day Labour party, then surely The Lord of the Flies – the story of a bunch of squabbling, murderous British school kids stranded on an island – is much nearer the mark. Yet even Golding doesn't get that close to the sense of futility, desperation and backstabbing with which the government is now riven. The only real parallel would surely have to be Downfall: Hitler's Berlin bunker in 1945, where an increasingly deranged and isolated leader stares unbelievingly at the inevitability of his defeat while his sidekicks tip-toe around him trying to put the best possible spin on news that gets worse by the hour. John Crace The Guardian
Full article: Just William is the wrong metaphor for Labour's Downfall

To squeeze the Russians, we should hold a public inquest into the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, writes Dominic Lawson. The real beauty of this is that such an inquest will have to – as our lawyer friends might put it – go to motive. Mr Litvinenko persistently claimed that FSB agents, and not Chechen rebels, had been behind the bombing of Moscow apartment blocks in 1999, which was used to justify the attack on Chechnya, and which in turn was so helpful to Putin in his campaign to be elected Russian president. Naturally the inquest will not be able to establish as a fact that Putin had Mr Litvinenko murdered; but his standing among his own people – which is what matters most to him – would be deeply damaged by a prolonged and legal public examination into the events behind the Moscow bombings. Dominic Lawson The Independent
Full article: How to squeeze the Russians
People: Boris Berezovsky faces costly divorce

Pervasive silences or gaps in knowledge around difficult issues of race, class and difference may be periodically breached by the Maverick Don, that mythologised figure to whom the media seem irresistibly drawn. Rather than a thoughtful intervention, this apparently eccentric academic or writer will toss out a provocative and authoritative pronouncement that appears to fly delightfully in the face of "political correctness". Such putatively daring truth claims ("Islam is the problem", "Racism is natural", "Men are being emasculated by women") allow for silences to be broken dramatically and temporarily, while closing off the possibility of sustained and knowledgable debate. Pronouncement, outcry, apology - so unfolds the soap opera after which we return to business as usual. Meanwhile truly substantial and necessary scholarship on race and culture, at Cambridge included, simply drops off the radar. Priyamvada Gopal The Guardian
Full article: Maverick dons inspire only those who hate, not think
People: George Steiner walks into race row