There is no longer an alternative

This speaks for itself. For those not in the know, it was the David Miliband campaign blog.

Why Miliband has made the right decision

We have become accustomed in this country to politicians who make mealy-mouthed statements which don't actually mean what they say and which allow them just enough leeway to wriggle out of.

I suppose the most famous example was Michael Heseltine's declaration that he "could not foresee the circumstances" in which he would challenge Margaret Thatcher, allowing him to launch just such a challenge when the previously unforseeable circumstances actually came about.

So I applaud David Miliband's decision this weekend to deliver an unequivocal statement that he will not challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership.

It's no less than confirmation of what he has always said, but it represents a victory for political plain speaking that Brown himself would do well to take note of. More on this theme later....

That apart, I have no doubt that Miliband has made the right decision, and I explained why in my weekend column and acompanying podcast.

If you can't be bothered to read or listen to it all the way through, a potted summary might read:

He's too young, too inexperienced, and too lacking in gravitas.

He doesn't need the leadership at this stage of his career, and will get a big job under Gordon anyway.

A Miliband-Brown contest would have split the party and perpetuated the Blair-Brown feud into the next generation.

Brown is the best leader to take on the shallow PR man Cameron.

Today's Guardian speculates that either one of Reid or Clarke will still stand, and I share that judgement. Reid v Brown in particular would be a good contest between two men of genuine Prime Ministerial calibre. But neither he nor Clarke can win.

All of which suggests that it's all over bar the shouting.

The Portillo Myth

A propos of whether David Miliband should challenge Gordon Brown for the leadership of the Labour Party, there has been much discussion of late over whether there are tides in a politician's life which if taken at the flood lead on to fortune, etc, and whether, in apparently passing-up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Miliband is kissing goodbye to his chance of the premiership forever.

This point of view was exemplified by a supremely egotistical article in last weekend's Sunday Times by Michael Portillo, whose position in the 1995 Tory leadership crisis is seen by some (including himself) as analagous to Miliband's now.

Portillo wrote: "The premiership of the United Kingdom is almost within Miliband’s grasp, as it was for me in 1995. Unlike Cameron, Miliband could be prime minister without winning a general election, without even having to wait. He could be in No 10 by the end of June.

"If he does not grab it now, the opportunity may never recur. Brown will become leader, might lose the general election and condemn Labour to a decade in opposition. By which time Miliband will be a has-been, his best years spent fruitlessly harassing the Cameron government, for ever marked by his failure to seize the day, consigned to history as a vacillator. I can tell Miliband that this does not feel good."

Leaving aside the question of whether Portillo is over-estimating Miliband's current prospects, is he also over-estimating the strength of his own position back in that balmy summer of '95, forever etched on my memory as it was my first year in the Lobby?

I think he is. Over the years, a myth has grown up that if only Portillo had had the balls to challenge Major himself instead of letting John Redwood run as a stalking horse, he would have succeeded in dislodging the Prime Minister in the first ballot and gone on to defeat all-comers in the second.

It's a seductive theory, but it's not how I remember things. I recall a Tory Party that was split moreorless three ways - between those who wanted Michael Portillo to be Prime Minister, those who wanted Michael Heseltine to be, and those who couldn't care less who it was so long as it wasn't either of those two.

It followed that the only way either Heseltine or Portillo could have forced Major out was by working together, and I seem to recall one or two kites being flown to that effect. But the wily Major knew such a "dream ticket" was highly unlikely, which is why his "put up or shut up" gamble was always likely to come off.

The one time Portillo would undoubtedly have become Tory leader was in 1997 had he not lost his seat - but that is another political counterfactual.

This post was featured in The Times' daily blog round-up Web Grab.

Will this end the speculation?

Well, it ought to. See Nick Robinson's report HERE.

To be fair to Mr Miliband, it is no different to what he has always said. And he is right that the way Clarke and Co have approached the whole issue has made it very hard for him to enter the race without prolonging the Blair-Brown feud into the next generation and thereby splitting the party.

Cynics will say there's a deal, and that Miliband must have been offered the Foreign Office, or something. Sceptics will say he hasn't uttered the magic words "If nominated I will not accept, if elected I will not serve."

For what it's worth, I think that if he isn't standing, it's probably for the simple reason that he recognises that, at the present time, Gordon will be a better Prime Minister than he would be.

Johnson moves against Miliband

Last week I observed that one person who would be none too pleased if David Miliband threw his hat into the ring for the Labour leadership is Alan Johnson, who, I am sure, sees himself as Gordon Brown's potential heir apparent if the next general election goes belly-up.

Johnson's comments on the prospect of a Miliband candidature yesterday seem to bear this out, and demonstrate that, contrary to what many suppose, the Environment Secretary would NOT get the automatic support of the "Blairite" wing of the Cabinet if he stood - far from it.

Meanwhile the pro-Miliband blog There Is An Alternative seems to have had a redesign, including removing the photograph of the man himself from the site along with the explanatorty paragraph of why the blog has been set up.

Whatever can this mean? Is it possible that the author is having second thoughts about a campaign which is sure to split the Labour Party and hand the 2010 election to David Cameron? I think we should be told.

The Miliblog

Muxh excitement both in the blogosphere and the MSM today about the new pro-David Miliband blog, somewhat bizarrely entitled There is an Alternative.

I think it would benefit their cause if whoever is behind this were to reveal their identity. There is already speculation that it could be the work of a Tory blogger such as Conservative Home supremo Tim Montgomerie, and although I wouldn't have thought it was his style, such is the nature of politics that people will tend to assume the worst in such situations.

Either way, it is certainly looking more and more likely, as I predicted on Budget Day, that there will now be a serious challenge to Gordon Brown.

Brown is pretending to welcome this. He would indeed welcome a challenge from a useful idiot such as Charles Clarke. But Miliband is the one potential contender the Chancellor really fears, perhaps because he knows it could then be transformed into a generational contest he might struggle to win.

Clarke's own role in this is becoming increasingly transparent. His article in yesterday's Mail on Sunday seemed designed to create the ground for a challenge, arguing that once Tony Blair steps down events will assume their own momentum.

His argument that leadership elections always throw up unexpected surprises in these early stages might have been convincing if his article were not so completely historically illiterate - particularly in relation to Labour history.

Clarke claimed that Neil Kinnock emerged as a "surprise" contender following the resignation of Michael Foot in 1983. In fact Kinnock was overwhelming frontrunner from the moment the union leader and fixer Clive Jenkins announced he would be supporting him - before Foot had even formally announced his own resignation.

Similarly, he claimed that Jim Callaghan was an unexpected choice to succeed Harold Wilson, when everyone knows that the centrist Wilson purposely teed up the succession for Jim to scupper the Gaitskellite trio of Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland.

Update: Apparently the person behind it is called "Glass House." Not sure if this takes us any further forward, but apologies to Tim Montgomerie anyway.

Whoever "Glass House" is, what he needs to do is make clear not simply why he thinks Gordon Brown shouldn't be leader - it's fairly easy, though misguided in my view, to make an argument for that position based purely on current opinion polls - but to articulate why on earth he thinks David Miliband should be.

It would be an unprecedented step to elect, not just as party leader, but as Prime Minister someone who has not served in a major office of state. Environment is not even an executive department like health or education, and Miliband's is by and large a policy role, a bit like being head of the IPPR.

Given that Jack Straw is Brown's campaign manager, the only credible challenger to Gordon Brown in terms of experience and gravitas is John Reid. If he wants to prove that there is indeed an "alternative," that's where "Glass House" should be putting his efforts.

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

Will a Miliband bid bring Johnson in?

The man himself continues to deny it, but speculation about a David Miliband challenge to Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership continues unabated. Political betting guru Mike Smithson has today become the latest pundit to predict a Miliband candidacy, following last weekend's Sunday Telegraph tale that John Reid would be giving the Environment Secretary his backing.

But here's a question no-one seems to have asked as yet: what impact will a Miliband challenge have on other wannabe leaders who have thus far ruled themselves out of challenging Brown - ostensibly on the basis that he is the best candidate, but secretly because they don't think they can beat him?

Look at it this way. So long as Brown remains the only serious candidate, and overwhelmingly the most likely winner, there really is no great incentive for someone like Alan Johnson or Hilary Benn to challenge him. Far better to settle for the deputy leadership and (hopefully) a big job in the Brown Government.

But the moment that situation changes, and Brown faces a serious challenge which could theoretically result in him being defeated, then by my reckoning, all bets are off, and all earlier denials of interest so much hot air.

Such a scenario would present a particularly acute dilemma for the fifty-somethings Johnson, Benn and Peter Hain were the 40-year-old Miliband to be that challenger. The current consensus is that if Miliband does stand, he will at the very least establish himself as the heir-apparent, and could even win.

But that, of course, is the last thing Alan Johnson wants. He doesn't want the Labour leadership to "skip a generation" - at least not just yet. He wants to be deputy so that he can slip effortlessly into Gordon's shoes if the next election goes belly-up. The same may apply, to a slightly lesser extent, to Benn and Hain.

Hence my hunch is that if Miliband does stand against Gordon - and I'm still by no means convinced he will - he won't be the only one.

The "ultras" - Reid, Charles Clarke, even Blair himself - may all line up behind him, but he won't get a clear run. And at 40, with other, vastly more experienced people for the Labour Party to choose from, why on earth should he?

* Historical footnote. Similar calculations about whether a challenge to an established frontrunner could create a domino effect causing others to throw their hats into the ring also operated last time round, in the 1994 leadership contest.

One of the principal though lesser-known reasons Brown didn't stand on that occasion was that had he done so, it would have brought his old rival Robin Cook into the race.

With the support of the left and the likely second preference votes of Margaret Beckett and John Prescott, Cook would in all likelihood have come second, ahead of Brown, establishing himself as the de facto No 2 in the Labour pecking order.

People who knew Brown and Cook of old in their Edinburgh days have told me this was something Brown would have wanted even less than to see Blair leading the party.

May 3 and beyond

Today's column in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Evening Telegraph aims to catch-up on what happened while I was away and look ahead to the local election campaign and its likely aftermath. Here it is in full. It is also now available as a Podcast.

***

The Tories say they have a "mountain to climb" in the North of England. Labour are bracing themselves for heavy losses more or less everywhere. The Lib Dems bravely claim there are no "no-go areas" for their party. Sound familiar, anyone?

Excuse me if I experience a slight feeling of déjà vu when it comes to this year's local election battle.

The two main parties appear to be playing down expectations, doubtless in the hope that things will turn out better than anticipated. The third is playing them up, in the hope that the voters will take them seriously.

But as ever, the trick with this sort of pre-election positioning is to try to separate the spin from the reality.

What seems beyond dispute is that the Government is in for a hammering as voters vent their frustration at the sense of drift that has characterised Labour for the past year.

Last September, following the failed coup attempt against Tony Blair, I wrote that if the Prime Minister was still in place by time of these elections, the party would pay the price.

As it has turned out, it appears to be a price the party is prepared to pay in order to allow its most successful leader ever a dignified exit at a time more or less of his own choosing.

But whether that is how it will be seen by the hundreds of Labour councillors, Scottish MSPs or Welsh AMs set to lose their seats on May 3 is another question entirely.

The local councils are one thing. Labour would doubtless like to win back cities like Newcastle, but it won't do any lasting damage to the party's national powerbase if it doesn't.

Local government has, in any case, nothing like the power it had when I first started covering local elections two decades ago.

The Scottish and Welsh bodies are a slightly different matter, though. They do have significant devolved powers, as Welsh Assembly leader Rhodri Morgan's recent decision to scrap prescription charges showed.

Furthermore, because most seats in the devolved bodies are coterminous with Westminster constituencies, there is much more of an interplay between Labour's performance in Scotland and Wales and its electoral prospects UK-wide.

I must confess to being surprised that Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs have been prepared to put up with a situation which is likely to see their party's powerbase in those areas significantly eroded.

If, for instance, a Labour parliamentary constituency ends up with a Lib Dem MSP, it creates a situation in which Labour's hold on the Westminster seat can be steadily undermined.

It was for this reason that I expected Scottish and Welsh MPs to be in the vanguard of a renewed attempt to force Blair out well before we got into the local election campaign.

But they bottled it, and in my view, that is something they will fairly shortly come to regret.

So, I believe, will Gordon Brown. The prevailing consensus throughout the past few months has been that the Chancellor was happy to let Mr Blair "take the hit" for the expected May 3 carnage.

If that is the case, I think that he was taking an extremely defeatist view about his ability to restore Labour's fortunes if and when he finally takes over.

If Mr Brown truly believes that he is the man to renew Labour in government, he should instead have taken the view that the sooner he took over, the better for the party's prospects.

The more electoral damage that is done to Labour under Mr Blair, the more poisoned the chalice that Mr Brown will eventually inherit.

Assuming, that is, that he does inherit. The fortnight since this column last appeared has seen a further ratcheting up of the pressure on South Shields MP and Environment Secretary David Miliband to throw his own hat into the ring.

It no longer seems possible to take at face value Mr Miliband's denials of last autumn, when he declared that he was "neither a runner nor a rider for any of the posts that are being speculated about".

His failure to kill the current wave of speculation has led to suspicions in the Brown camp that he is, at the very least, still pondering a bid.

One Brown ally said last weekend: "Miliband knows exactly what he is doing. He could quite easily say specifically, `I won't stand against Gordon' or that he is far less experienced than Gordon - something he couldn't go back on. But he doesn't."

Mr Brown, meanwhile, is in an increasingly invidious position. Like the long-distance-runner who has spent too long anxiously looking over his shoulder, his position seems to weaken with each week that goes by.

Notwithstanding its historic import, his decision to announce a 20p standard rate of tax in the Budget appears to have won him few friends and the row over the 1997 pension fund grab has been deeply damaging.

Labour has a perfectly respectable story to tell on this, which is that an anomaly in the tax system needed to be removed in order to release funds to help the many, not the few.

Instead Brown's strategy seemed to be firstly to try to conceal the evidence that he ignored civil service advice, and then when that failed, spin a cock-and-bull story about how the CBI encouraged him to do it.

It is hard - very hard - to escape the conclusion that this is exactly what Mr Blair intended when he decided to "play it long" and drag out his departure until this summer.

Messrs Brown and Blair were united on the campaign trail for one last time last week as Labour launched its local election push - but it is hard to see who they were trying to convince.

The old double act has served Labour well over a decade or more, but it has long since run its course.

And the real story now is not what happens in the days and weeks leading up to May 3, but what happens in the days and weeks immediately afterwards.

Time for Miliband to stop the teasing

While I was away sunning myself, it was evident that a head of steam was continuing to build up behind a challenge from David Miliband to Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. One newspaper, the Observer, even reported that Blair himself was at the heart of the effort to persuade him to stand, and had privately predicted that if he did so, he would win.

Be that as it may, my Poll shows that Miliband is indeed the favoured contender of those who would like to see a Cabinet-level challenge to Gordon Brown - although his support is only marginally higher than those who would like to see Brown challenged by his own campaign manager, Jack Straw.

Miliband has several times appeared to rule himself out of the running, but has yet to do so in unequivocal terms. Writing in this week's Sunday Times, Crackers Cracknell and Isabel Oakeshott reveal that the Brown camp are not impressed by his failure to kill the speculation.

As one ally of the Chancellor put it: "Miliband can’t say it’s not his fault. He knows exactly what he is doing. He could quite easily say specifically, ‘I won’t stand against Gordon’ or that he is far less experienced than Gordon – something he couldn’t go back on. But he doesn’t."

I concur. I happen to believe David Miliband is a cut above most politicians in the honesty stakes and I have no reason to disbelieve his earlier declaration that he was "neither a runner nor a rider for any of the posts that are being speculated about."

If that remains the case, he should say so. But if he has changed his mind, he should make that equally clear. The current wave of speculation - egged on by the Martin Kettles and Mary Ann Siegharts of this world - is doing the Labour Party no favours at all.