Dr Peter Phillips has confirmed that he will challenge Portia Simpson Miller for the leadership of the People's National Party (PNP), which narrowly eluded him two and a half years ago.

The announcement on Sunday night was unsurprising, for Dr Phillips and his surrogates have been signalling his intent for months. To have backed away at this time, having taken his supporters so far along, would have demonstrated a lack of bottle and mocked Dr Phillips as a shaper without the confidence or conviction to follow through.

But, now that he has made the plunge, there are a number of things for him to consider, having decided to take his party into the uncharted waters of facing the first serious challenge to an incumbent leader. No one, of course, would seriously count a frolic of Paul Burke against Michael Manley.

Divisive contest

The party bosses, no doubt, will cast this contest as being within the democratic traditions of the PNP, but many will remember the serious rents caused by the divisive four-way contest won by Mrs Simpson Miller in 2006.

Indeed, the failure of the party to heal was partly blamed for its inability to retain power and a fifth consecutive term in government.

There will also be the argument that notwithstanding the claims of an undistinguished stint as prime minister or of her failures as party leader, recent opinion polls have shown a significant rise in Mrs Simpson Miller's stock and the possibility of the PNP returning to office in a general election.

A leadership contest, therefore, could weaken, if not fatally undermine this prospect.

This, therefore, raises the fundamental question and the one that Dr Phillips needs to answer to himself and the wider Jamaica: Why is he challenging for the leadership of the PNP?

If it is so that he can become the president of the PNP and sometime down the road, prime minister of Jamaica, as some form of destiny or personal aggrandisement, our advice to Dr Phillips is to forget it.

If this challenge is a statement of class delineation and the assumption of the inherent right of the 'Inheritors of Drumblair' to power, as his critics and the Simpson Miller camp profess, we say to Dr Phillips, don't bother.

Larger purpose

There has to be a larger purpose to leadership, of which Dr Phillips often hints, but so far has been unable to translate into a broad discussion or a movement within the PNP. A challenge for leadership has, ultimately, to be about the PNP recapturing its soul, as a party of morals and vision and a clear template for leading Jamaica out of the economic and social decay by which it has long been embraced.

This, of course, will mean, gutting the PNP, pulling up the rotten woodwork and fumigating the wood lice. In other words, Dr Phillips has to be unalterably committed to a new kind of politics. He cannot raise legalisms for failing to weed out of the party the corrupt and the muscled enforcers and those others who enslave policymakers with sychophancy and flattery and encouraged a gangrened state.

Such a platform does not easily lead to power. If it is not the one to which Dr Phillips is committed, we repeat: forget it.