Will Labour be out of power for a decade?

Will Labour be out of power for as long as last time if it loses the next election, asks Mike Smithson on PB.com today. I say no, for the following reasons:

1. The prevailing intellectual climate is still broadly New Labour. There has been no great shift in public opinion to the right, instead the main party of the right has shifted towards the centre ground. New Labour’s current problems are to do with personality issues and having been in power too long, rather than to do with losing any great intellectual argument as Labour in the 70s and 80s did.

2. There is nothing in David Cameron’s career to date to suggest that he will be anything more than adequate as Prime Minister. Comparisons with Blair were always wide of the mark, while comparisons with Thatcher are simply absurd.

3. The current ideological proximity of the two main parties would suggest a period of pendulum swings (similar to the 60s and 70s) rather than long periods of one-party hegemony.

4. For all Labour’s current problems, it is still more ideologically united than the Tories. The Tories underlying divisions, notably over Europe, would come to the surface again once they were back in power.

Why, Sparky?

Mark Hughes will shortly be giving his first press conference as the new boss of Manchester City. If I was going to be there, I'd simply ask him: Why?

Until this week, I would have said "Sparky" was a shoo-in to be the next boss of Man United when Fergie retires in two years' time. I doubt whether the Old Trafford fans will be too keen on that idea now.

Ever Decreasing Circles

Circle Line Parties were a regular feature of rag weeks and other student japes at UCL when I went there in the 1980s. In fact I once personally organised one as the end-of-year bash for the "Pi Collective," a weirdly assorted group of people who ran the college's student magazine at the time, at least three of whom went on to become professional journalists.

Somehow I never thought that putting a stop to this fine old London tradition would be BoJo's first act as Mayor, but as Brockley Kate has pointed out, Saturday night's revellers ("I'm going round and round until I vomit" said one) rather proved his point for him.

Haymaking while the tills ring

Hay-on-Wye is a gorgeously romantic little spot which can occasionally cause people to lose their heads somewhat...but even so, the behaviour of John Prescott and Michael Levy at the Hay Festival this weekend takes some beating when it comes to political mischief-making.

During a book-signing session for his autobiography, Prezza let it slip that he thought David Miliband would be a good leader of the Labour Party.

Although he made clear he was talking about the future rather than the present,his comments were predictably over-egged by the media into a story about possible alternatives to Gordon Brown.

Prescott has been in politics long enough to know that this was exactly what would happen, so just what exactly was he playing at here? Surely nothing as cheap and nasty as deliberately undermining the Prime Minister in order to garner a bit more publicity for his wretched book?

Meanwhile Lord Levy burnished his growing reputation for serial and gratuitous acts of disloyalty by opining that Gordon Brown "lacks Blair's way with people."

I have used this before, I know...but if ever there was anyone who needed to hear Clem Attlee's famous words of advice to Harold Laski, it is surely Levy. "I can assure you there is widespread resentment in the Party at your activities and a period of silence on your part would be welcome."