Has Johnson really quit the race?

Unlike Ben Brogan, I don't seriously believe Alan Johnson plans to do a U-turn and come back into the Labour leadership race - but I have to say that his new campaign website launched today had me wondering a bit.....

Yesterday, Johnson made clear he would be backing Gordon Brown, describing the Chancellor as a "towering political figure" and praising his "gravitas, experience, and intellect."

Fair enough, but somebody should have told the person putting together the media section of his new website which seems to be slightly off-message in this respect.

It currently contains the following stories, all seemingly promoting the idea of Johnson as a candidate not for the deputy leadership, but as a rival to Gordon for the top job.

"Alan Johnson displayed his leadership credentials to the Labour Party conference yesterday when he announced plans to restore confidence in school exams and to help children in care." Greg Hurst, The Times

"When the backstabbing finally stops, could Alan Johnson be the man who delivers the fatal blow to Brown?" Rachel Cooke, The Observer

"For many Labour MPs he represents the perfect alternative to the Chancellor, being everything that Mr Brown is not." Anthony Browne, The Times

"Gordon Brown's enemies are pinning their hopes on Alan Johnson." 'Bagehot," The Economist.

November 13 Update: This was post was picked up over the weekend by both PoliticalBetting.com and The Daily, both of whom provide interesting angles on it. On balance I tend towards The Daily's verdict that it was an unintended hangover from Johnson's earlier plans to contest the leadership, rather than Mike's interpretation that AJ might re-enter the race at some stage.

Bloggers 4 Benn?

With Hilary Benn now officially in the race for Labour's deputy leadership, it is already clear that a head of steam is building up behind the International Development Secretary - in the blogosphere as well as among MPs.

A totally unscientific survey of leading Labour bloggers appears to show support pretty evenly dividing between Mr Benn and Jon Cruddas, with little support as yet for Harriet Harman, Peter Hain or any of the other possibles.

Among the Bloggers 4 Benn are Mike Ion who says: "I admire Benn enormously and feel that he is a man of real moral stature and courage and I am confident that he will have broad appeal both across the party and the country."

Paul Burgin, author of the Mars Hill blog agrees saying: "Like his father - although father and son are from different wings of the Party - he is charming, polite, sociable and thoughtful....He is also down-to-earth and the only sitting cabinet minister I have met who I have dared to address by his first name."

Against that, Reclaim Labour's Harry Perkins reminds readers of a speech earlier this year in which Mr Benn criticised the Make Poverty History campaign this evening for ignoring the role jobs and economic growth play in lifting the poor out of poverty.

Influential Labour blog Kerron Cross appears to be firmly behind Cruddas, as is The Daily, whose Westminster-based authors claim to have been the first to reveal plans for a Benn challenge.

And me? Well, I am really none too sure at the moment who I will back, although, as I will be supporting Gordon Brown for the leadership come what may, I will be looking towards the candidate who I think will provide the most balanced ticket.

In this context, there is a good case to be made for a gender balanced ticket, but Ms Harman was in my view one of the least distinguished of Blair's female Cabinet ministers and the only other female alternative, Hazel Blears, comes from the wrong wing of the party in my view.

No, what is needed to balance a Brown leadership is someone from the sensible left, and, although Hilary Benn may pick up substantial support from this section of the party, I don't think he really fits the bill in terms of bringing an alternative perspective to bear on future policy direction.

For me, then, the choice currently lies between Cruddas and Peter Hain. I like a lot of what Cruddas has been saying about reconnecting the Government and the party, but am not at all convinced that disconnnecting the roles of Deputy Leader and Deputy Prime Minister is the best way to achieve this.

As for Hain, I have great admiration for him and what he has achieved in his career as a campaigner and as a politician but I think there has to be some question mark over whether, alongside Gordon, he would provide a sufficiently fresh face.

So, for now at least, I'm keeping my options open.

Just whose candidate is Jon Cruddas?

There's a widely-held view abroad in the blogosphere at the moment that Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas is the Blogger's Candidate to become Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. I am sure this perception is at least partly behind Cruddas's recent surge in the betting from around 25-1 last week to 8-1 now.

There is also a related debate going on over at Labour Home as to whether the "Diamond Geezer" is the Left's Candidate. And there has also been some interesting speculation on Political Betting and in other places as to whether Cruddas is actually Gordon's Candidate, and whether the Chancellor is secretly backing him in return for the support of the big union leaders.

Well, I can't enlighten anyone on the latter point, except to say that practically everyone in the contest has been named as "Gordon's Candidate" at one stage or another. A few months back, the conventional wisdom was that he was backing Harriet Harman - until, that is, someone wrote a story implying he was backing anyone but Harman.

On another occasion, he was said to be backing Alan Johnson in return for the Education Secretary not standing against him. The truth is, no-one really knows who Gordon is backing except Gordon himself, and I doubt very much whether it would be in his or anyone else's interests to tell us.

What about "Blogger's Candidate," then? Well, again, I find it hard to see how this legend arose. Alex Hilton, probably the most influential Labour blogger by dint of his stewardship of both Recess Monkey and Labour Home was said by the Daily Pundit to be backing Cruddas, but this is emphatically not the case.

What Cruddas is clearly becoming, though, is, the "Heartlands" Candidate - or more specifically, the candidate both of the unions and, more generally, those party members who have felt disenfranchised by the Blair leadership and want a bigger say in the formation of party policy.

Rightly or wrongly, they perceive the other main candidates - Harman, Johnson, and Peter Hain - as establishment figures who are more interested in futhering their own Cabinet ambitions than repairing relations between the Government and party, and Cruddas's disavowal of any interest in becoming Deputy Prime Minister has proved a compelling sales pitch.

On top of all that, Cruddas is also by far the best organised of the four candidates, as the Daily Mail's Ben Brogan recognised some time back.

So can he do it? Well, there now has to be a very real possibility that Cruddas will gain first place in the trades union section of Labour's electoral college. Although it is union members, not their Gen Secs, who nowadays make that decision, the recommendations of the big union bosses still count for something and I expect most members will follow their lead.

But where the Cruddas campaign will almost certainly fall down is in the PLP. I would be mildly surprised if Hain does not top the MPs' ballot, and there will be significant support there for Johnson and Harman as well - all of which will leave Mr Cruddas needing to come either first or a very good second in the vote among party members to win.

For my part, I am also not at all convinced that having a Deputy Leader who is not actually a member of the Cabinet will necessarily improve the links between party and government in the way that Cruddas suggests, and that the flaws in this proposal may unravel as the campaign progresses.

Either way, you can place your own Labour leadership and deputy leadership predictions by visiting another of Mr Hilton's many internet projects HERE.

Deputy leadership podcast now live

My latest podcast focuses on the race for Labour's deputy leadership following last week's declarations by Peter Hain and Harriet Harman, with Alan Johnson, Jack Straw and Jon Cruddas also set to throw their hats into the ring.

My conclusion? Well, although I think Johnson is probably the man to beat, in my view it doesn't matter a great deal who wins, since as Denis Healey rightly concluded, the job is not worth a pitcher of warm spit.

"The week’s smartest move may been made by David Miliband, who this week once again confirmed that he will not contest either of the two leadership posts. If I was being cynical, I would say this almost certainly means that the Environment Secretary has concluded he would really be much better off as Mr Brown’s first Chancellor than as his deputy. For as Mr Brown himself has shown, that’s a job worth far more than a pitcher of spit – warm or otherwise."

The podcast can be heard in full by clicking HERE. To subscribe to the podcast, which updates every Monday, cut and paste the following URL into your listening software:

http://content.thisis.co.uk/podcasts/linford/linfords-week-in-politics.rss

Hain's debt to Ron Davies

Peter Hain's decision to run for deputy leader while supporting Gordon Brown for the top job is an astute move on his part and should help to further calm the situation at the top of the Labour Party following last week's troubles.

Given the prevailing view among Labour Party members - if not among the Blairite "ultras" - that the party needs to tack slightly to the left on issues such as social justice and constitutional reform - I think a Brown-Hain ticket will be marginally more in tune with mainstream opinion in the party than, say, Reid-Johnson or even Brown-Johnson.

But what few realise about Hain is that he might well have taken a lot longer to get a foot on the political ladder were it not for the unlikely patronage of Labour's forgotten Cabinet minister, Ron Davies.

Prior to the 1997 election, Davies went to see Tony Blair, who was initially sceptical about the former anti-apartheid protester's political abilities, to plead for the Neath MP to be given a job in government.

Over a beer in the Stranger's Bar later - I was the Lobby man for the South Wales Echo at the time - Davies revealed he had told Blair "just how bloody good Peter Hain is."

But the episode had a sting in the tale which had interesting consequences for Welsh Labour politics.

When Labour came to power a few months later, Blair did indeed give Hain a job - as Davies's number two at the Welsh Office in place of his close friend and long-time deputy, Rhodri Morgan.

Nine years on, Hain is on the verge of becoming Labour's deputy leader. Morgan is the First Secretary of Wales. And Davies is no longer even a member of the Labour Party.

Balancing the ticket

The Guardian's Patrick Wintour reckons Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain is leading the race for Labour's deputy leadership. Mike Smithson on PoliticalBetting.com is a tad sceptical, repeatedly highlighting Hain's young liberal background.

For my part, I reckon all speculation about the deputy leadership depends entirely on whether the two elections come off at the same time, because what happens in the deputy leadership election will inevitably be determined by what happens in the leadership election.

If Gordon is the only serious candidate - McDonnell is not serious and may not even get the required number of nominations - then we may indeed see the kind of wide-ranging contest for deputy that most are anticipating.

But if Gordon is challenged, either from the Blairite right or the sensible/soft left, then it's a whole new ball game. We will then be into pacts, deals, running mates and the rest, with the candidates seeking to demonstrate that they can unite the party by running on a balanced ticket

So far as I can judge - and in politics as in backgammon there is always the possibility of a late run - Labour's next leader and deputy leader are going to come from some or other combination of a dozen people.

Not all will stand, of course, but the potential runners are: Gordon Brown, John Reid, Peter Hain, Jack Straw, Alan Milburn, Alan Johnson, David Miliband, Hilary Benn, John Hutton, Hazel Blears, Harriet Harman, and John Denham.

Of these, Brown, Reid and Milburn will only the contest the leadership, while, in my judgement, Hain, Miliband, Blears and Harman will only consider contesting the deputy leadership,

The other five - Straw, Johnson, Benn, Hutton and Denham - could plausibly contest either post, but for reasons I shall explain, are more likely to end up as contenders for the deputy's job.

So the first question to answer, then, is will there be an "uber-Blairite" challenge to Gordon, and if so, who will it come from?

My hunch, for what it's worth, is that there will be. Brown has had to walk an incredibly difficult tightrope between outward loyalty to Blair and the desire to carve out his own agenda, and my guess is that eventually he'll fall off it.

In any case, such is the nature of politics that if Gordon is thought in any way to be beatable - and there are plenty of political pundits who think he is - then there is bound to be someone out there prepared to try their luck.

In my view Reid remains overwhelmingly the likeliest challenger, although Johnson might just run as the "English Candidate." I am certain that Milburn will dip his toe in the water, but may find his support somewhat lacking among MPs.

Let's for the sake of argument, then, assume it is Brown v Reid. Johnson will then be the big prize, the man with both the modernising credentials and the trade union links capable of delivering victory to either side.

If Brown can land him, he will have what looks like an unbeatable combination - a running mate who, like him, can authentically claim to be both New Labour and Real Labour.

If on the other hand Reid gets Johnson's backing, and all the other Blairites fall into line behind the Home Secretary, it will begin to look like a conspiracy to deny Brown the top job, and the Chancellor could end up looking isolated

Then again, this could work in Brown's favour, if Labour members as a whole decide that an obviously Blairite ticket would be incapable of uniting the party.

To me, the most intriguing possiblity is that the party ignores all talk of running mates and puts together a balanced ticket itself, as it did in 1994 when neither Prescott nor Beckett were officially aligned with Blair.

If so, then perhaps the most plausible potential deputy leadership contender in the frame is the one once described by the Brownites as the "when hell freezes over" candidate.

Almost alone of all the potential combinations, Gordon Brown as leader and Hazel Blears as deputy would give us a balance of Brown and Blairite, Male and Female, Scottish and English, Older and Younger.

Will it happen? I have no idea. But if it does - remember, you read it here first.

Who's running Britain: the annual non-story

Okay, so it's a great story, all the more so at a time of year when good political stories are in very short supply. Fat old working-class fool who can't speak the language properly and mispronounces the names of foreign leaders is left to run the country for a fortnight, opening up the prospect of a whole series of disasters along the way.

Or, at least, it would be a great story, if there was any truth in it. Because the truth is that, whether he is a fat old fool or not, John Prescott has never actually been left in charge of anything in Tony Blair's absense.

There seems to be an assumption on the part of the people writing this stuff that Mr Blair somehow ceases to be Prime Minister when he is on holiday. That might have been the case had we still been living in the era of carrier-pigeons, or when ocean liners were the only form of foreign travel, but not in an era of modern communications and transport.

Doutbless it won't stop the stories being written though, even if Mr Blair's decision to postpone his holiday means they have to be shelved for a few days.