A WHILE back, they asked 1,000 film buffs for their favourite line from the movies. Top of the poll was Michael Caine’s “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” from The Italian Job. I’m tempted to say “not many people know that”, but that would be a joke too far.

There’s an equally funny line in the film, though. Remember the final scene, the coach full of loot is hanging over the edge of a cliff, none of the gang dare move a muscle and Caine’s Charlie Croker utters the immortal words: “Hang on lads, I’ve got a great idea.”

I can’t help wondering whether Gordon Brown saved his bacon this week by saying something similar to his pals in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Somehow I doubt it – any similarity between the PM and a chirpy Cockney villain is entirely co-incidental. But there’s more than a passing resemblance between his party and the unfortunate crooks left dangling on the edge of an Alpine ravine.

If his colleagues are honest (a debate in itself) they would admit letting Mr Brown carry on for two reasons. The first is there’s no realistic challenger, someone with the ambition and aptitude. A glance at Labour’s ranks brings to mind the saying that you don’t replace somebody with nobody.

The second is that doing nothing, keeping perfectly still, like the gang in the movie, is really the only option for the MPs in his audience.

One false move – and saddling the country with a second, untried, unelected Prime Minister would be just that – would surely tip them over the edge and into electoral oblivion.

Mr Brown may give them only a slim chance of survival, but it’s a chance of sorts.

Changing leaders now would be like a football team sacking its manager when it’s ten points adrift with just a few games to go – a pointless act of revenge and self-indulgence.

Leaving him where he is buys them a few months grace. Some MPs, I know, will use those months to do what they have always done – work diligently and unselfishly for their constituents. Others, maybe a little too late, will spend them reconnecting with people and issues they have ignored for too long.

A third group will use them to play the system and engineer a comfortable exit to boardroom or quango. Let’s not judge them all by their standards.

What they must do is focus on the issues that affect ordinary people. People aren’t terribly interested in reforming the House of Lords at the moment. As for reform of public services, surely we have had enough tinkering with hospitals, health trusts and councils over the past 12 years, so why not let them get on with the jobs people expect them to do for once?

What people want is action over the economy and the recession, some certainty about jobs and livelihoods. This was a view put very effectively by the leader of the trade union Unite, Derek Simpson, this week in a TV interview.

Mr Simpson is one of those down-toearth union leaders that Labour used to heed before the money men and bankers began dripping wisdom into their ears. Maybe they should start listening again.

But make no mistake, whatever course the Government takes, its key objective now is survival, plain and simple.

I don’t suppose Mr Brown led his Westminster colleagues in a chorus of the Red Flag after their meeting. Maybe they hummed the cheery theme tune from The Italian Job instead.

It would have been very apt. Its title?

The Self Preservation Society. Could have been written for them, couldn’t it?