Why the rebels will fail...

I see that the number of nomination papers submitted to initiate a challenge to Gordon Brown is now up to seven (although Guido reckons the number of sympathisers is now up to about 40) but I fear that it won't happen. Obviously there is an unseen guiding force behind all of this - it is surely no coincidence that a high number of these are women - but what then? Lets suppose for the sake of argument that the magical number of 70 rebels is found to start an election: who in their right (or left!) minds is going to be a token PM (Straw might even lose his seat if current polls are sustained) for 18 months until the next election? Surely the best policy for Labour is to accept that they are doomed (admittedly having a different leader might make them slightly less doomed - at least on an individual MPs point-of-view ie more Labour MPs can keep their snouts in the taxpayer's trough for longer) and then to regroup under a different leader in 2010 who might be able to bring them back from the precipice in 2015.