A lot done, a lot still to do

Gordon Brown's fightback may have begun in Manchester on Tuesday - but there is still a very long way to go. Here's my column from today's Newcastle Journal.

***

There are some Labour conference speeches that literally changed history. Tony Blair’s ditching of Clause IV in 1994. Neil Kinnock’s murderous assault on Militant in 1985. Nye Bevan’s stand against unilateralism in 1957.

Gordon Brown has never been in the Blair, Kinnock or Bevan class as an orator. His talents as a platform speaker have never been more than slightly on the better side of workmanlike.

Yet this week, our beleaguered Prime Minister gave himself a fighting chance of making what would truly be a history-making return from the ranks of the political walking dead.

Sure, he is not yet even close to being out of the woods. But in Manchester on Tuesday, he finally delivered the speech that his admirers have wanted to hear him make ever since he took over as Labour leader 15 months ago.

During the Blair years, we became accustomed to regarding the Labour Party as a devastatingly successful electoral machine, but one that seemed devoid of any real values.

The party appeared to have moved a long, long way from Harold Wilson’s famous description of it as “a moral crusade or nothing.”

Mr Brown has not restored that lost moral compass at a stroke. Mere words alone cannot accomplish that.

But on Tuesday, in setting out his vision of the “fair society,” he finally reminded his party why it exists.

In a way, events have moved in his favour. The global financial meltdown has finally demonstrated the limits of free-market capitalism and made the idea of state intervention fashionable again.

As one commentator put it: “Labour folk have seized on the collapse and bailout of the big banks as evidence that the neo-liberal era is over.”

Hence it is made easier for Mr Brown to say on Tuesday that his “new settlement for new times” must be “a settlement where both markets and governments are seen to be the servants of the people, not their masters.”

To the biggest cheers of the day he added: “Just as those who supported the dogma of big government were proved wrong, so too those who argue for the dogma of unbridled market forces have been proved wrong.”

But though this was duly lapped up by the faithful, Mr Brown didn’t really get into his stride until he started to talk about his “fairness agenda” – the real emotional core of Tuesday’s address.

“Why do we always strive for fairness? Not because it makes good soundbites. Not because it gives good photo opportunities. Not because it makes for good PR. No. We do it because fairness is in our DNA,” he said.

“It's who we are - and what we're for. It's why Labour exists. It's our first instinct, the soul of our party. It's why when things get tough, we get tougher."

Here, at last, was some recognition that the Labour Party does indeed have a higher purpose than simply staying in power.

And yet., and yet……the towering question that, for me, hangs over this week’s events in Manchester is why Mr Brown could not have made that speech 12 months ago.

Had he chosen to set out his vision then, rather than winding-up the Tories about an early election, it is at least arguable that the collapse in public support for him over the past year would not have happened.

As it is, Mr Brown has done no more than buy himself a bit more time this week in which to try to turn a desperate political situation around.

The early signs are good – one poll showed a 7pc bounce for Labour in the wake of the speech – but the rhetoric must now be backed up with more action if the momentum is to be maintained.

Mr Brown can at least reassure himself that his main rival, Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband, had an uncommonly bad week.

He found himself on the wrong end of the Prime Minister’s clever two-in-one put-down "this is no time for a novice” – a line which had the brutal touch of Alastair Campbell written all over it.

Mr Miliband also got into hot water by being overheard comparing himself to the erstwhile Tory leadership pretender, Michael Heseltine.

Wrong, David. Michael Heseltine was a man of courage who resigned from a government on a point of principle and later openly challenged the most powerful Prime Minister of modern times.

Some of the shine was inevitably knocked off the Prime Minister’s speech by the 3am news of Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly’s resignation the following morning, but like so much in politics, this turned out to be cock-up rather than conspiracy.

Dark rumours had initially swirled around Manchester that Ms Kelly was part of a nefarious Blairite plot to undermine Mr Brown in his moment of triumph.

The truth was rather more prosaic. It appears that a Downing Street press officer got into a rather heavy session with some journalists in a hotel bar and became a trifle indiscreet.

It shows that things haven’t changed all that much in the five years since I last attended a party conference as Journal political editor.

For Mr Brown, the prospect of another humiliating by-election defeat, in Glenrothes in early November, still hangs over him like a sword of Damocles

The reshuffle, too, looks ever more problematical. Rumours persist that a cadre of ministers will refuse to be moved or even refuse to serve in a clear challenge to Mr Brown’s authority.

Over him, too, hangs the twin spectres of Sir Menzies Campbell in 2007 and Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, two leaders who got rapturous receptions from their party conferences yet were gone within weeks.

The Prime Minister made a great speech on Tuesday. But he has a long way to go before he alters what still seems to be the inevitable tide of history.

The lost moral compass restored

Gordon Brown has always been a man with a huge sense of Labour history. And while his speech to the party's conference today was certainly focused on the present and future, it was also deeply rooted in the history of the party.

Harold Wilson used to say the Labour Party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. During the Tony Blair years, it was pretty clear that it had become nothing. Yet in one passage of today's speech, Mr Brown restored the moral purpose that has been missing from the party for so long.

"And why do we always strive for fairness? Not because it makes good soundbites. Not because it gives good photo opportunities. Not because it makes for good PR. No. We do it because fairness is in our DNA. It's who we are - and what we're for. It's why Labour exists. It's our first instinct, the soul of our party. It's why when things get tough, we get tougher."

Although the pundits will doubtless focus on his clever two-in-one put-down of the two Davids - "This is no time for a novice" - this, for me, was the key message of the speech, a reminder to the country that this party is about more than simply a desire to stay in power for as long as possible.

The message was underlined, near the very end of the speech, by Mr Brown's use of the phrase "United we are a great movement."

The words "This Great Movement Of Ours" or "TGMOO" used to be practically obligatory in Labour leader's speeches in the pre-Blair days, but references to Labour as a "movement" went dramatically out of fashion during the NuLab era, presumably because, like "moral crusade," the word implies some higher purpose. The idealists among us will be pleased to see it back again.

Stating the obvious

Alan Milburn says that Labour must bring forward a message of "change" if the party is to win the next election. John Prescott says that in order to win the party needs to remain united.

They may be coming at the situation facing the party from different directions, but both are right.

There can be no happy outcome

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of blogging during the past few days. Partly it's down to other commitments, but also it's down a feeling of deep despair about the current state of politics and the apparent sad denouement to which the Gordon Brown administration appears to be heading.

Today has seen the resignation of David Cairns and by all accounts two more Ministers of State are likely to follow. Take your pick from Tony McNulty, David Hanson, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Kim Howells, Pat McFadden, Bill Rammell and Ben Bradshaw. It could be any of them, though Byrne would probably be the most damaging.

I still think these are essentially too disparate a group of people to be acting as part of some dark plot being co-ordinated behind the scenes by John Reid or even by Tony Blair as some bloggers have sought to suggest. But in that probably lies their strength.

If this was a Blairite plot, I think the charge would have stuck by now, and the party rallied much more strongly behind Gordon. The right-wing bloggers who delight in taunting Brown may find it hard to believe, but the very last thing the Labour Party wants - or for that matter needs - is a return to Blairism.

I myself thought it likely for some time that Gordon would face a leadership challenge this autumn, and before the recess, I argued that he probably should face one, on the grounds that he has failed to restore Labour's lost moral compass as his supporters hoped.

However he still had a few cards left to play - the September relaunch, the reshuffle, the conference speech, and finally the electoral test offered by the Glenrothes by-election. In my view, he should have been allowed to play those cards before the party was forced to reach a conclusion about whether his leadership should continue.

As it is, I think the failure of the party to remain united at this critical time has made it moreorless inevitable that there can be no happy outcome for Mr Brown. In other words, the rebels have created for the party a self-fullfilling prophecy - which no doubt was the intention of some of them.

It's not about numbers - remember that Chamberlain was never defeated in the Commons in 1940 - it's about momentum. And the political narrative created by these sackings and resignations will ultimately ensure that all roads conspire towards one end.

But what most deeply depresses me about all this is not the fact that a politician I still admire has failed to live up to the high hopes invested in him. It is the fact that politics is increasingly starting to resemble a reality TV show.

Political leaders who once might have expected to be around for a generation as Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher were, or going further back, for several generations in the case of Gladstone and Churchill, now have a shelf-life of only a few years before an increasingly superficial electorate becomes bored of them.

Over the past 11 years, the Tories have had five leaders, the Liberal Democrats four, and by the end of the year Labour will possibly have had three, but I don't think this rapid turnover is because the quality of political leadership is declining. It is rather a by-product of a national obsession with celebrity which in turn demands a style of political leadership based on glitz and "personality" rather than solid achievement.

For me, the accession of Gordon Brown represented a chance to put an end to all this rubbish. The most baleful legacy of his apparent failure will be to condemn the United Kingdom to twenty or thirty years of showbiz politics.

Siobhain McDisloyal

I have been as critical as anyone of Gordon Brown's failure over the past 15 months to set out what 12 Labour MPs* writing in Progress magazine term "a convincing narrative." But as I have written in my Newcastle Journal column to be published tomorrow, the Prime Minister - and Harriet Harman - have had some good things to say this week about tackling inequality and social mobility, and the emergence of a "fairness agenda" over the past week offered some small hope that this long-awaited narrative had finally started to take shape.

So to my mind, Siobhain McDonagh's call for a leadership challenge to Mr Brown today is singularly ill-timed and presents a gift-horse to the Tories at the start of a critical conference season for Labour.

If the Prime Minister had hoped to mount an effective fightback over the next two weeks, based around some of the ideas he and his deputy have been airing this week, then Ms McDonagh's intervention this afternoon has probably killed it. Instead, the Labour conference in Manchester looks set to be dominated by yet more speculation about the leadership.

I hope she is bloody proud of herself.

* For the record: Janet Anderson, Karen Buck, Patricia Hewitt, George Howarth, Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Stephen Ladyman, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran, Tom Levitt, and Paddy Tipping. I would say that only three of these (Anderson, Howarth and Joyce) are out-and-out Blairite loyalists, so speculation that they are part of a concerted Blairite plot is, in my view, probably misguided.

Visions of Brown

Gordon Brown tells the Parliamentary Monitor it is time to "adapt and rethink New Labour policy." But his spin doctors have played down the comments and Nick Robinson thinks we should not get too excited.

Nevertheless, there are, to my mind, some intriguing straws in the wind in this article for those of us who had all but given up hope of seeing Mr Brown set out a distinctive post-Blair agenda, notably his admission that after more than 11 years in power Labour has not improved social mobility.

"We need to be honest with ourselves: while poverty has been reduced and the rise in inequality halted, social mobility has not improved in Britain as we would have wanted," he says.

"A child's social class background at birth is still the best predictor of how well he or she will do at school and later on in life. Our ambitions for a fairer Britain cannot be satisfied in the face of these injustices."

If this is an attempt to finally give his administration some moral purpose beyond remaining in power as long as possible, then it has to be said that he has waited until five minutes to midnight to do it.

He now needs to put some flesh on these bones in Manchester the week after next. If he doesn't, we really will have to conclude the long-awaited "vision" is simply not there. Indeed, some of us could surely be forgiven for having concluded that already.

New Labour's Prophets of Doom

My Newcastle Journal column is back this week after the August break. In today's piece, I focus on the recent interventions by Alistair Darling and Charles Clarke and what they may mean for Gordon Brown.

***

Sometimes, the summer break can work wonders for a government. People forget all the things they disliked about them in the first place, and when politics starts up again in September, it’s as if the slate has been wiped clean.

But given the depths of unpopularity to which Gordon Brown’s government has plummeted over the past year, it was never likely that this would be one of those kinds of summers.

If the Prime Minister did entertain any faint hopes that the August political close-season would herald a turnaround in his fortunes, the interventions of Messrs Charles Clarke and Alistair Darling over the past week would surely have dispelled them.

One of them is among his most loyal and long-standing allies, the other among his bitterest and most implacable enemies, but essentially their message was the same: “We’re all doomed.”

Many people were initially bemused as to why Mr Darling, for so long the mild-mannered Sergeant Wilson to Mr Brown’s Captain Mainwaring, suddenly decided to start playing Private Frazer.

The message in his now-infamous newspaper interview the week before last – that the country faces its worst economic crisis for 60 years - could hardly have been more stark.

Had he, perhaps, been beguiled into saying more than he intended by the female journalist, Decca Aitkenhead, who conducted the interview? He certainly wouldn’t be the first male politician to be caught out in that way.

But no, it turned out that Mr Darling himself had taken the initiative in inviting Ms Aitkenhead to his holiday cottage in the Highlands.

Much more likely, to my mind, is that it was a pre-emptive strike by the Chancellor against being moved in the autumn reshuffle that Mr Brown has been planning all summer.

As I wrote before going off on my own hols three weeks ago, any meaningful changes to the senior reaches of government will have to involve Mr Darling moving on.

But by speaking out about the state of the economy – and being more than candid about the government’s own shortcomings in that regard – he was making it clear that he was not going to go quietly.

Hence if there is now a reshuffle, Mr Darling has probably now done enough to keep his job – especially as South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband appears not to want it.

What, then, of Mr Clarke? Well, if the essence of Mr Darling’s argument was that we all face economic doom, Mr Clarke was arguing that Labour faces political doom under Mr Brown.

We have become used to these eruptions from the former Home Secretary. He increasingly resembles a large beer barrel which explodes periodically whenever the gaseous matter within reaches a certain level.

But it is too easy to write off Mr Clarke as an embittered old Blairite has-been. While he may have very little support among Labour MP, his analysis of the situation facing the Prime Minister is basically sound.

It is, in essence, that if Mr Brown cannot start to revive Labour’s fortunes within a matter of months, the Cabinet should force him to make way for someone who can.

When Mr Miliband issued his original rallying cry back in July, it looked as though there would be some movement on the leadership issue as early as the start of this month.

All the talk then was of a “Prosecco plot,” conducted by Labour MPs via their mobile phones over glasses of sparkling wine in the grounds of their Italian holiday villas.

But the party has reflected, and appears to have arrived at a collective judgement that Mr Brown should be left in place at least until the end of the party conference season.

If after then, the party still remains stuck in the doldrums, that may be the time for senior members of the Cabinet to make the kind of move that Mr Clarke is urging on them.

Mr Brown’s response so far to the ongoing leadership crisis does not exactly inspire any great confidence that he will be able to prove Mr Clarke wrong and turn the situation round.

We were told to expect a “New Economic Plan” that would show the government working to alleviate the impact of the credit crunch on ordinary people, but like so much of Mr Brown’s premiership, it failed to live up to its hype.

Sure, the proposed stamp duty holiday on properties up to £175,000 will make an impact in some places, but probably not in those areas – including some of the wealthier parts of the North-East – where house prices have reached London levels.

And the fact that Mr Brown has been hastily forced to scrap plans to give people £100 to help them with their rocketing fuel bills does not exactly suggest he is on top of the situation.

Perhaps I myself am being hasty in rushing to judgement on this, and there is more of this so-called “New Economic Plan” to come.

But thus far, it all has the air of tinkering at the edges, a collection of disparate policies without any connective thread or vision to link them together in a coherent new political narrative.

If Mr Brown cannot discover this narrative, nor even hold a meaningful reshuffle, it is hard to see what can rescue him, short of a speech of Sarah Palin-esque proportions in Manchester later this month.

It currently looks about as likely as the Third Coming of Newcastle’s erstwhile footballing Messiah.

Class

Commenting on today's latest helpful intervention by embittered former home secretary Charles Clarke, former Labour minister Nigel Griffiths told the Today Programme: "In 2007 he and Alan Milburn set up a think tank called 2020 Vision. It didn't think but it certainly tanked."

A contender for Quote of the Year, surely.

To reshuffle, or not to reshuffle

The September reshuffle will be key to determining whether Gordon Brown faces a leadership challenge this autumn. Here's today's column from the Newcastle Journal.

***

This time last year, as I prepared to go off on my summer holidays, I openly speculated on these pages as to whether I would come back in the middle of a general election campaign.

Gordo-mania was then at its height and all the gossip at Westminster was that the Prime Minister was planning to hold an early autumn election.

Well, what a difference a year makes. Twelve months on, I am wondering whether by the time this column resumes on 6 September, we might be in the midst of a Labour leadership battle.

The one thing all Labour MPs seem to agree on at the moment is that the first week of next month will be crucial in determining whether or not the Prime Minister will survive.

Why is this? Well, that’s the week MPs start returning to Westminster for the three-week “mopping up” session that takes place between the summer recess and the conference season.

They will have had a chance to go away and reflect on their party’s plight, and reach some kind of collective judgement about whether or not Mr Brown’s position is recoverable.

At the same time, the Prime Minister will have to use that week to try to regain the initiative and demonstrate that there is

He has two potential weapons in his armoury – the proposed launch of a “new economic plan” to alleviate the worst effects of the credit crunch, and that old staple, a Cabinet reshuffle.

Taking the “new economic plan” first, this could well be a last opportunity for Mr Brown to set out some kind of distinctive agenda for his administration, based around the idea of “fairness.”

A series of over by measures to help the worst-off, possibly paid for by a windfall tax on energy companies, may well help win over rebellious Labour MPs.

But it’s the reshuffle that holds the key to the whole crisis. Mr Brown has to have one – partly as a means of reasserting his authority, and partly because the government is badly in need of refreshing.

But there is a very considerable risk that the whole exercise will backfire, with ministers either refusing to be moved, or even in some cases refusing to continue to serve under him.

Any meaningful reshuffle would almost certainly have to involve changes in the major offices of state, in particular the Treasury where Alistair Darling has endured a torrid 14 months.
But the trouble with Mr Darling is that he knows where too many of the bodies are buried.

He knows, for instance, that the 10p tax debacle was entirely of Mr Brown’s own making, and that the Prime Minister had been warned shortly after taking took over that the policy would need to be changed.

If he went to the backbenches, or was given a job which disagreed with him, there is always the risk that he could go nuclear.

There are those who might argue that Alistair Darling is too obviously nice and mild-mannered a character to do such a thing to poor Mr Brown, whatever the degree of provocation.

But in response to that I would say just three words: Sir Geoffrey Howe.

In 1979, Denis Healey said that being savaged by Sir Geoffrey was “like being savaged by a dead sheep.” Years later, Margaret Thatcher was to discover the inner wolf that lurked beneath.

It follows that Mr Darling is probably unsackable, although he might just decide go of his own volition following what has been a rather unhappy spell at the Treasury.

The biggest danger for Mr Brown, though, is not so much Mr Darling refusing to move as other people simply refusing to continue to serve under him.

One national newspaper reported last month, in the immediate aftermath of the Glasgow East by-election, that up to 15 ministers were prepared to do this.

If that is true, then I am very much afraid that Mr Brown is toast. No Prime Minister, not least one already as weakened as this one, could survive such a rebuff to his authority.

In these circumstances, the wisest option might seem to be not to have a reshuffle at all – except that this too would only serve to highlight his weakness.

But even if he manages to walk this difficult tightrope, Mr Brown faces another excruciating dilemma over when to hold the Glenrothes by-election following Labour MP John MacDougall’s death this week.

The obvious option seems to be to delay it at least until after the conferences, by which time Mr Brown may have had a chance to stabilise his leadership.

But that runs the risk that the by-election will reverse any gains made as a result of the “September relaunch” and deliver a final knockout blow to the Prime Minister.

If he makes the speech of his life at the party conference, carries out the reshuffle to end all reshuffles, unveils a new economic plan, and Labour still can’t win a by-election, then what on earth is there left to do except change the leader?

So, cards on the table time. Will Mr Brown face a leadership challenge this autumn? Probably. Should he face one? Regretfully, I have to say yes.

The past year has been, I don’t mind admitting, a depressing one for those of us who invested such hopes in the Brown premiership.

I had argued for years that his more understated style would put an end to the spin that marred his predecessor’s reign, and that his commitment to social justice would restore Labour’s lost moral compass.

The fact that Mr Brown has done neither of these things is the biggest single reason why he has forfeited the support of so many of those who once championed him.

Historians will argue for years about what went wrong, and why this considerable political figure managed to make such a hash of the premiership he coveted for so long.

The best answer I can give is that, like Anthony Eden, it was his misfortune to come to the top job when his best years were behind him.

The long years of waiting for Number 10 appear to have made Mr Brown old before his time, and worn-out his once legendary political stamina.

I think it will probably take more than a two-week summer break in Suffolk to revive him.

Miliband knocks at the door of Number 10

It's game on for the Labour leadership after David Miliband set out his stall this week - and Britain looks set to get another Prime Minister from a North-East constituency. Here's my column in today's Journal.

***

Harold Wilson famously coined the phrase that a week is a long time in politics. But had the pipe-smoking legend lived in the era of the 24/7 news media, he might have said it was an eternity.

Events have moved thick and fast since, a week ago, I concluded that Gordon Brown’s nightmare scenario going into the conference season would be to deliver his keynote speech against a backdrop of party dissension and open revolt.

Seven days on, I suspect the Prime Minister would now regard it as an achievement if he even makes it as far as the podium in Manchester next month with his leadership intact.

What has changed? In two words, David Miliband. The Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP, widely criticised last year for not having had the bottle to fight Gordon Brown for the top job, has finally decided to stand up and be counted.

Of course, Mr Miliband has denied that his article in Wednesday’s Guardian was intended as anything resembling a Labour leadership challenge. He had little option but to do so

He is, after all, treading a very fine line between careful positioning and outright disloyalty, and already two backbench MPs have called for him to be sacked over it.

But you do not write an article like that at a time of maximum vulnerability for the Prime Minister if you are not, at the very least, letting it be known that you would be available in the event of a vacancy.

Hence unless Mr Miliband is now forced to beat a humiliating retreat – which, if he does, will finish him for good as a leadership contender – it’s game on.

On the face of it, his much-pored-over Guardian piece said little that was new or original. In one sense, it was full of the kind of meaningless vacuities we have come to expect from New Labour politicians.

But for those whose job is it is to look for such things – the media, and Labour MPs – the signs were all there.

There was the non-mention of Mr Brown. The implicit criticism of his failure to get across Labour’s message by being insufficiently humble about its shortcomings. The attempt to set out a fresh “vision” for the party – something Mr Brown has palpably failed to do.

Above all, perhaps, the article radiated a sense of optimism that has been missing from Labour of late, almost as if Mr Miliband was telling his party only he could give it back its self-confidence.

Is Mr Miliband really an ideal candidate for Labour leader? Well, no. He still lacks enough experience for my liking, and has not exactly been a conspicuous success as Foreign Secretary.

But from an electoral point of view, he does at least negate some of Mr Brown's perceived drawbacks - for instance he is young, English, and reasonably charming on a human level.

Most importantly, he was not responsible for every mistake in economic and social policy that has been made by New Labour since 1997 – a legacy that is proving increasingly poisonous for Mr Brown.

One other point in his favour that is rarely mentioned is that he has a deep understanding of Labour history – something which distinguishes him from his old mentor, Tony Blair.

On these pages a couple of months back, I made clear my own preference for another North-East MP, Darlington’s Alan Milburn, on the grounds that he can offer greater experience combined with relative freshness.

I still think there was an opportunity for the former health secretary following the Crewe and Nantwich and Henley by-elections to steal a march on the potential Cabinet contenders by coming out publicly against Mr Brown.

It would have made his Cabinet rivals look lily-livered by comparison and put Mr Milburn in the vanguard of the growing Dump Brown faction among the party's grassroots.

But it didn't happen, and it's now clear from Mr Miliband's intervention that, far from allowing a leftfield stalking-horse like Mr Milburn to do their dirty work, the Cabinet contenders are preparing to move against the PM themselves.

Neither is it just Mr Miliband who has been making plans. Deputy leader Harriet Harman was forced to deny this week that she was assembling a leadership bid, but her actions are almost as transparent as the Foreign Secretary’s.

Some commentators are already convinced that, although as many as six candidates could enter the fray, it will boil down to a contest between Mr Miliband on the right and Ms Harman on the soft-left.

Those who argue Ms Harman could pull it off point to her success in last year’s deputy leadership election and her evident popularity with some sections of the party.

But electing a deputy leader is not quite the same as electing a Prime Minister, and somehow, I think Labour MPs, union leaders and party members will be mindful of that fact.

There has been talk of Mr Brown seeking a truce with Mr Miliband by making him Chancellor in the autumn reshuffle and formally anointing him as his heir apparent, but Mr Miliband would be mad to accept this.
Firstly, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the midst of the current economic downturn is a poisoned chalice, as Alistair Darling has found. Secondly, it would tie him in too closely to Mr Brown’s own electoral fate.

Most of all, though, if Mr Miliband allows himself to be bought-off now, after having also backed away from the fight last year, he will forever go down as the Michael Portillo of the Labour Party.

Mr Portillo, it should be remembered, was the promising young Tory hopeful who backed off from challenging John Major in 1995 at a point where he could have won. His career never recovered.

Will Mr Miliband win? In my view, yes. There will be a huge desire on the part of party members to signal a fresh start for Labour by drawing a line under the now discredited Blair-Brown generation, and he will be the beneficiary of that.

That’s bad news for the likes of Jack Straw, but timing is all in politics, and the graveyards are full of politicians who might once have made good Prime Ministers but who missed their time.

Between the retirement of Seaham’s Ramsay Macdonald in 1935 and the election of Sedgefield’s Tony Blair in 1997, the North-East had to wait 62 years for a Prime Minister who represented a seat in the region.

Now, just 14 months from Mr Blair’s own departure, it seems odds-on that another one is about to come along.

Miliband move means Milburn is out of it

So where do the events of the last 24 hours leave us? David Miliband has set out his stall in what despite his protestations is a barely-concealed leadership bid. Sam Coates and Francis Elliott on The Times reckon it will boil down to a contest between him and Harriet Harperson, which, with due respect to Sam and Francis, is no contest.

Meanwhile Alan Johnson is being speculated about as a running mate for Miliband rather than as a candidate in his own right and James Purnell is also reportedly backing the 43-year-old Foreign Secretary. Jack Straw is currently looking a rather poor third and other potential contenders such as John Denham are nowhere, although one must assume that on the broad left of the party, John McDonnell, Jon Cruddas and possibly even Ed Balls are also quietly making plans

I made clear a couple of months ago my own preference for Alan Milburn as the next leader on the grounds that, having been out of the Cabinet for three years, he alone could combine relative freshness with top-level experience. Speculation about a potential Milburn challenge at the time was running high, but his subsequent near-invisibility coupled with Miliband's latest move must mean he is now out of the running.

There was, in my view, an opportunity there for Milburn after Crewe and Nantwich and Henley to steal a march on the Cabinet contenders by coming out publicly against Brown. It would have made the potential Cabinet contenders look lily-livered by comparison and put Milburn at the vanguard of the growing Dump Brown faction among the party's grassroots. Sadly, it didn't happen, and it's now clear from Miliband's intervention and also from recent comments by Straw and Harman that, far from allowing a leftfield stalking horse like Milburn or Clarke to do their dirty work, the Cabinet contenders are preparing to move against the PM themselves.

I will give my more considered views on the main contenders at a later date, but if the field remains as it is, Miliband must be the man.I don't think he has all the qualities needed, but he does at least negate some of Brown's perceived drawbacks - for instance he is young, English, reasonably charming on a human level, and most importantly, was not responsible for every mistake in economic and social policy that has been made by New Labour since 1997.

I don't think he is an ideal candidate by any means - I would still prefer someone with wider experience such as Denham or even Johnson - but he would certainly be preferable to either Straw or Harperson in terms of articulating a compelling vision for a fourth Labour term and taking the fight to David Cameron.

The line that stood out for me in his Guardian article was the one about Cameron's project being about decontaminating the Tory Party rather than changing the country. For me, this message rings so true that the public will eventually be forced to concede it, once they can get beyond their current inability to see anything good in what Labour is saying.

I am reviving my poll on the potential contenders, minus Milburn this time, and this can be found in the sidebar and HERE

Brown-must-go watch

Just as I did with Tony Blair in 2006-7, I'll be keeping a tally over the next few weeks of which Labour MPs, union leaders, Labour-supporting MSM columnists and newspapers and also left-leaning bloggers are publicly calling on Gordon Brown to go. Messrs Stringer and Prentice have seemingly started the ball rolling at the Westminster end, while Mrs Andrew Marr has emerged as the unlikely cheerleader for the Dump Gordon faction in Fleet Street. Please feel free to email me any other examples you know about, and remember to include a link.

Labour MPs

Graham Stringer
Gordon Prentice

Union leaders

Paul Kenny

Labour-supporting columnists

Jackie Ashley
John Rentoul

Left bloggers

Skipper

A clear and demonstrable collapse

Crewe. Henley. Glasgow East. Are the voters trying to tell us something? Here's today's Newcastle Journal column.

***

When in years to come, historians pore over the long, slow demise of New Labour, the series of by-elections in the spring and summer of 2008 will, I believe, be seen as a crucial period.

First there was the catastrophe in Crewe, after the contest held in the wake of Gwyneth Dunwoody’s death saw David Cameron’s Tories win their first seat off Labour for nearly 30 years.

Then it was humiliation in Henley, as Labour lost its deposit and slumped to fifth place behind the British National Party and the Greens.

Finally, on Thursday night, the earthquake in East Glasgow, after Labour’s hitherto third-safest seat in Scotland disappeared to the Scottish National Party on a 22pc swing.

As he surveys the wreckage this weekend, Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be cursing the malign combination of political circumstances that forced him to fight three by-elections in as many months.

Had they not taken place, he might by now have been able to shore-up his position and even build some political momentum. As it is, a clear alternative narrative is now emerging.

There can be no writing-off these results as a short-term protest vote such as happened in the post-Iraq War by-elections in the predominantly Moslem constituencies of Leicester South and Brent East during the last Parliament.

No, the story of the three 2008 by-elections is of a clear and demonstrable collapse in public support for Labour in general, and Mr Brown in particular.

What is particularly damaging about the Glasgow East result is that this was a revolt not of the swing vote but of the Labour core vote, which now seems to be bleeding away.

When the by-election date was set for July 24 – two days after the start of the summer Parliamentary recess – there were those who claimed it had been deliberately timed to minimise the threat of MPs plotting against Mr Brown.

If that is the case, then Mr Brown’s strategists have clearly never heard of email or the mobile phone.

Labour MPs may be scattered to the four winds this weekend, but expect the lines to be humming between the beaches of Europe and beyond.

As it is, a number of Labour MPs and ministers will not be sunning themselves, despite the current unaccustomed spell of decent summer weather.

Instead, they will be at the party’s national policy forum in Warwick, discussing the contents of the next Labour manifesto with the trades unions and grassroots constituency activists.

Ostensibly, the conference is about whether or not to implement a.long shopping list of demands ranging from scrapping NHS prescription charges to the reintroduction of secondary picketing.

But the subtext will be the position of Mr Brown. To paraphrase the Bible verse, when two or three Labour activists are gathered together, the talk shall quickly turn to the leadership.

Up until now, the prospects of a successful challenge to Mr Brown have been hampered by the absence of a clear alternative candidate, but if one is to emerge, then now is surely the time.

Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell set out his stall this week by publishing a Green Paper on welfare reform, advocating the scrapping of Incapacity Benefit and making those out of work for more than two years work full-time in the community.

At one level, it demonstrated that there is intellectual life in New Labour yet, in terms of fresh ideas which could underpin what would be an unprecedented fourth term in power.

But at another level, it was hard to escape the conclusion that it was designed as a piece of pre-leadership election positioning, a warning to Foreign Secretary David Miliband that he is not the only Blairite pebble on the beach

Despite his undoubted intellect, though, Mr Purnell carries the air of a lightweight about him and his election would manage the considerable feat of making Mr Cameron look statesmanlike.

South Shields MP Mr Miliband remains the man to beat, although it seems clear he will not be the one to raise the standard of rebellion.

His old alliance with Health Secretary Alan Johnson could be key. The two were education ministers together under Mr Blair and became huge admirers of eachother’s work.

Mr Johnson has said he is not up to the job of Premier, but the idea of him playing John Prescott to Mr Miliband’s Tony Blair could be an increasingly seductive one.

Mr Brown’s instinct will be to plough on. We read this week that he is planning a September reshuffle, the centrepiece of which will be to bring back Margaret Beckett as the government’s chief apologist, or “Minister for the Today Programme.”

Now Mrs Beckett has been a loyal servant of the nation, and despite an undistinguished spell as Foreign Secretary, she was rather harshly treated when left out of Mr Brown’s first administration last year.

But if the Prime Minister really believes that bringing her back into a senior Cabinet role is going to restore his or Labour’s political fortunes, it demonstrates how out of touch he is.

Increasingly, the view among Labour MPs is that the only minister Mr Brown should consider reshuffling is himself.

A dream scenario for Mr Brown is that no clear challenger emerges over the course of the coming weeks, and he restores his authority with the conference speech of his life in September.

But such has been the scale of the public backlash against the government in recent months that it is unrealistic not to expect his leadership to now be openly called into question.

The corresponding nightmare scenario for the Prime Minister is that, against a backdrop of dissension and even open revolt, he makes a poor speech which reinforces the speculation about his position.

Sadly for him, this seems overwhelmingly the likelier of the two outcomes.

The Harman Hypothesis

Much comment in the MSM and blogosphere alike today over the leadership chances of Harriet Harman as she stood in for Gordo at PMQS. The Sun reckons she's already plotting to take over, as does Andrew Rawnsley. Mike Smithson on Political Betting rates her chances, but Ben Brogan thinks she's already blown it. Iain Dale suggests Jack Straw could be in on the plot, while a thoughtful Tory perspective comes from new-kid-on-the-blog Alan Collins.

So what do I make of it? Well, if Harriet Harman is seriously being talked about as the answer to Labour's problems, it merely demonstrates the depth of the crisis the party is in.

Harman is political Marmite - she has her very strong admirers among a certain stratum of politically-correct London society - but she is not, and never has been, generally liked by the broader mass of the British public.

This did not really matter when Labour was choosing a deputy leader. The job of deputy is more about reassuring the faithful than reaching out to the uncommitted. But it will matter if and when the party comes to choose a new leader - particularly after their experience with Mr Brown.

I suspect that Harman knows this, and that her comment at PMQs about there not being enough airports for the men who would leave the country if she became PM displayed a certain degree of self-awareness.

Her primary objective in any leadership battle will be, firstly, to hold onto the deputy leadership - a generational shift in the leadership, for instance to David Miliband, could make her a casualty along with Gordon - and to secure the sort of senior role in the next Cabinet that Gordon has denied her.

I suspect her real aim is to be Justice Secretary rather than PM, but letting the speculation ride for a bit will do her no harm in this context, as it underlines her claims to be seen as a "key player" and strengthens her position for the inevitable job bargaining that will accompany a leadership change.

My guess is that she will eventually throw her weight behind the "Anyone but Miliband" bandwagon that appears to be growing and back the candidate most likely to give the Foreign Secretary a run for his money. As things currently stand, that surely means either Straw, or Alan Johnson.

Labour after Brown?

A thoughtful piece by Andrew Sparrow in today's Guardian on what the Labour Party might look like after Gordon. It focuses on a speech by David Lammy - once dubbed "the Black Blair" by The Sun - which in fact sounded more Cameroonian than Blairite - particularly in its references to the "good society."

On a similar but lighter note, the Daily Pundit blog came up with a hugely entertaining prediction of what David Miliband's first Cabinet might look like, which I have been meaning to link to.

I have a few issues with his choices, mind. The Pundit reckons Prime Minister Miliband would make his brother Ed Foreign Secretary and James Purnell Chancellor. My money would be on Geoff Hoon and John Hutton for those two posts.

Perhaps we're all getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Over on Political Betting, HenryG Manson reckons Gordon Brown is good value at 50-1 to be still leading the party in 2013.

Will they stick their heads above the parapet this time?

Column published in today's Newcastle Journal looking at Gordon's staggeringly great result in Henley. Not.

***

One of the most enjoyable events in the party conference season is the quaintly-named Glee Club, a sort of semi-drunken community sing-song that occurs on the last night of the Liberal Democrats’ annual shindig.

There is a certain amount of black humour involved for the Lib Dems – the song lyrics mainly consist of self-mocking references to past political failures.

One of my favourites is the one which goes “Losing deposits, losing deposits, who’ll come-a-losing deposits with me?” to the tune of Waltzing Matilida.

They don’t sing that one at the Labour conference. But then again, the Labour Party doesn’t normally do lost deposits.

Well, the party didn’t just lose its deposit in Thursday’s Henley by-election, it contrived to finish fifth behind the British National Party and the Greens.

As an anniversary present to mark Gordon Brown’s first year in 10 Downing Street yesterday, it was probably about as welcome as a bucket of cold sick.

It was, by any objective criteria, the most embarrassing by-election result for a major party since David Owen’s “continuing SDP” finished seventh behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party at Bootle in 1990.

The SDP was duly wound-up soon afterwards. The question is: will Gordon Brown’s premiership suffer the same fate?

To some extent, we’ve been here before. Five weeks ago, people were asking precisely the same question in the wake of the Crewe and Nantwich by election, which saw Labour defeated on a 17.6pc swing.

Many anticipated that over the course of the ensuing week, a senior party figure would break ranks and move against Mr Brown.

Some predicted that Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn would spearhead the revolt, others that Justice Secretary Jack Straw would hand Mr Brown the pearl-handed revolver.

In the event, none of it happened. But this time round, it could just be different.

I sensed then that the prevailing mood in the party in the immediate aftermath of Crewe and Nantwich was that they needed another leadership contest like a hole in the head.

Instead, they wanted to give Mr Brown the chance to turn things around, although there was acknowledgement that he would have to be able to point to some tangible improvements by the autumn at the latest.

A month or so on, though, the mood among Labour MPs appears to have hardened.

There now seems to be a much more widespread view in the PLP that Mr Brown is now so badly damaged that the party cannot win so long as he remains in charge.

For what it’s worth, I am one of a declining number of people who actually think the Prime Minister could yet pull it out of the bag – though I admit it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances.

It would probably require him to be dramatically vindicated on an issue of such importance that the public was forced to reassess its view of him.

One such instance could be the kind of improvement in the economy that would restore Mr Brown’s now badly-tarnished reputation as a brilliant economic manager.

Another might be a terrorist attack so serious that the other two main parties were made to look foolish in their opposition to Mr Brown’s plans to lock up terror suspects for 42 days.

But both of these are unlikely scenarios. A much more probable outcome is that the Brown administration will either limp on and on to inevitable defeat – or that the party will finally bite the bullet and replace him.

For that to happen, it will first require someone to do what Tom Watson, Kevan Jones et al did in the autumn of 2006, and place their heads above the parapet.

Durham North MP Mr Jones was one of the signatories of a round-robin letter calling on the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to set out a timetable for his departure.

Mr Watson aside, the so-called “coup” failed to spark the anticipated wave of ministerial resignations, but it did ultimately succeed in forcing Mr Blair to cut his premiership short.

Were a minister to resign now on the grounds that he or she could not support Mr Brown’s continued leadership, it would surely do for the Prime Minister.

By bringing the whole issue of the leadership to a head, it would almost certainly spark off a domino-effect which would reach all the way up to the senior levels if the Cabinet.

Increasingly, attention is being focused on Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband as the man who, potentially, can save the party from a general election rout.

I personally remain to be convinced that he wants the job. But if he does want it, I think it’s probably now his to lose.

What is certainly the case is if there is to be a change of leadership, it would be better for Labour were that to happen sooner rather than later.

Some fatalists in the party advance the view that it would be better to let Mr Brown take the rap for the next election defeat so a new leader can start afresh with a clean slate.

But it’s bunkum. If there is the slightest chance that Labour can yet renew itself in office by turning to someone who can meet the electorate’s desire for change, they would be mad not to take it.

After all, they certainly don’t want to go a-losing deposits again if they can help it.

Gordon's paper anniversary

In today's column in the Newcastle Journal, I concede that I got it wrong about Gordon Brown. Well, sort of. You'll have to read to the end to find out what I mean!

***

This Friday, June 27, Gordon Brown will mark what, in usual circumstances, would be a significant political milestone – the first anniversary of his succession to the premiership.

When 12 months ago the newly-elected Prime Minister addressed the nation outside No 10 Downing Street, little could he have imagined how quickly his fortunes would turn around.

He spoke then of his old school motto: “I will try my utmost.” Later, in his first Labour Party conference speech as premier, he promised: “I will not let you down.”

But sadly, that is exactly what he has done. Indeed for many people, to describe the Brown premiership as a let-down would be the understatement of the century.

Over the years leading up to Mr Brown’s accession to the top job, there was a widespread view among centre-left commentators that he would be an improvement on what had gone before.

Since I was one of those who shared that analysis, this column amounts to something of a mea culpa.

We thought that Mr Brown would cast off his customary dourness once he got to No 10. We thought he would put an end to spin. We thought he would lead the Labour Party in a fresh and radical new direction.

And on all of those scores, the truth of the matter is that we got him wrong.

Part of my optimism about Mr Brown as a putative Prime Minister was based on my knowledge of him as a private man, and the hope and expectation that his personal qualities would shine through once he assumed the top job.

In all my admittedly limited dealings with them, I found he and Tony Blair to be an almost exact reversal of their public personas.

On the three occasions I interviewed Mr Blair for this newspaper, I found him shy, ill-at-ease and totally unable to make even the most rudimentary small-talk.

Mr Brown, by contrast, I found charming, witty, eager to engage in conversation - in short, nothing like the grim Stalinist control-freak he is now widely perceived as.

There were other grounds for optimism. Mr Brown had always portrayed himself as the serious one in the Blair-Brown partnership, and after a decade of showmanship from Mr Blair, the public seemed ready for that.

Allied to this was a feeling that the new man would eschew then reliance on spin that tarnished the Blair era - “not Flash, just Gordon” as the slogan put it.

It could have been a winner, but as the commentator Jonathan Freedland pointed out this week, Brown himself put paid to it by his behaviour over the election-that-never-was last autumn.

“The effect was to show that Brown was as much a calculating schemer as anyone else in the trade – he just wasn’t very skilful or subtle at it. Not flash, just a politician,” he wrote.

But above all, our optimism about Gordon Brown was based on his long record of championing the social justice agenda within a government that often seemed careless of traditional Labour values.

He, after all, was the Chancellor who quietly redistributed billions of pounds to the worst-off in society via his system of tax credits.

He was the man whose successive comprehensive spending reviews pumped billions more into the vital public services on which the worst-off in society most depended.

And he was the man who, each September, would stand up and reassure the party faithful that real Labour “var-lews” as he called them had not been forgotten despite all appearances to the contrary.

Was he just playing to the left-wing gallery all that time? Well, it would seem so.

When Mr Brown took over, the expectation was that he would “hit the ground running” with a blitz of an announcements designed to signal a clean break with the Blair era.

In his statement outside No 10, he appeared to encourage that view, declaring that this would be a “new government with new priorities” and concluding with the words: “Now let the work of change begin.”

But to paraphrase an old political joke, while he may have been elected as New Brown, but he has governed very much as Old Blair.

So there has been no attempt, for instance, to tackle the widening inequalities in our society, or address the decline in social mobility that occurred throughout the Thatcher-Major-Blair years.

And far from drawing a line under Mr Blair’s foreign policy disasters, if anything last week’s press conference with President Bush showed him in full Blair mode.

Our expectations of Mr Brown weren’t purely based on wishful thinking. Radical plans for his premiership were indeed drawn up before he took over, some of which were briefed in advance to journalists.

But when it came to the crunch, Mr Brown bottled it, just as he bottled out of the election and just as he has now bottled out of taking on David Davis over 42-day detention – a decision he may well come to regret.

The real tragedy, though, is that we didn’t really get Mr Brown wrong at all. He is indeed all those things we always thought he was.

He is a decent, serious man with a passion for social justice and an overriding concern for the underdog. What he lacked was simply the political courage to be himself once he got to No 10.

That fatal loss of nerve is the single biggest reason why Gordon won’t be hanging out the bunting as he marks his first anniversary this Friday, and why his primary emotion will be one of relief at having lasted even a year.

I for one would currently lay reasonably long odds against him making it to two

Blair says Brown not to blame

Oh well, that's big of him. Will he now admit that, actually, he is to blame for Labour's current plight by staying at least four years beyond his sell-by date and denying Gordon the chance to win his own mandate in 2005? Don't hold your breath....

Damage limitation may require new leader

Today's column in the Newcastle Journal, focusing on the potential fallout from Crewe and Nantwich and the prospects for a Milburn leadership challenge.

***

It would be fair to say that, during the course of her long parliamentary career, the former Crewe and Nantwich MP Gwyneth Dunwoody was not exactly a friend of New Labour.

As chair of the Commons Transport Committee, she regularly lambasted the government’s failure to make the railways a priority and, in particular, its slowness in tackling the chaos of rail privatisation after 1997.

Indeed, she proved so troublesome that, in 2001, the then Chief Whip, Durham North West MP Hilary Armstrong, made a ham-fisted attempt to keep her off the committee so she could not be re-elected as its chairman.

But backbench Labour MPs rose up in support of their doughty colleague, and Mrs Dunwoody continued to be a thorn in the side of the government moreorless up until her death last month.

There is, therefore, no little irony in the fact that the by-election caused by her passing has now resulted in Tory leader David Cameron hailing “the death of New Labour.”

But party stalwart that she undoubtedly was, I doubt that even Mrs Dunwoody would have wished what happened on Thursday night on Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Whether the 17pc swing to the Tories leaves Mr Brown’s leadership holed below the waterline only time will tell. It certainly constitutes the gravest crisis of his premiership.

It will, I suspect, become clearer over the next 48 hours whether there will be a serious attempt to depose him now, or whether he will be given until the autumn conference season to try to turn the situation round.

Is there a historical precedent for what happened at Crewe? The most oft-heard one this week has been the Eastbourne by-election in October 1990, won by the Liberal Democrats from the Tories on a 20pc swing.

Within five weeks of that result, the most successful Conservative Prime Minister of modern times, Margaret Thatcher, had been unceremoniously ousted.

As is often the case with Mr Brown, however, the case of James Callaghan provides an interesting counter-precedent.

In April 1977, the Tories won Ashfield from Labour on a 20pc swing, a year or so after Mr Callaghan had become Prime Minister. It was another two years before he left No 10.

The contrast between Mr Callaghan’s position then and Mr Brown’s now illustrates how much politics – and the media’s coverage of it – has changed in the ensuing three decades.

The loss of an old mining seat like Ashfield was a truly catastrophic result for Labour – but no media pundits rushed into print demanding that Callaghan make way, and certainly no MPs did so.

Perhaps the key difference was that Callaghan’s personal popularity ratings always remained high – right up to his defeat by Mrs Thatcher in May 1979.

Maybe because he lacks “Sunny Jim’s” avuncular disposition, the voters’ attitude to Mr Brown seems entirely more visceral. It is not just his policies which are the issue, it is him personally.

So should Mr Brown now do the decent thing to spare his party any further carnage? Well, the arguments for and against are not straightforward.

The Labour mantra about the former Chancellor being the best man to steer the economy though the current choppy waters still just about holds true, if only for the lack of an obvious alternative.

In my post-Budget column in March, I wrote that if Mr Brown can succeed in guiding the economy through the current slowdown, he will in all probability win the election. Crewe notwithstanding, I stand by that claim.

I would add, however, that it has become increasingly clearer since then that the situation may be beyond even his legendary powers of economic management

A more persuasive reason not to change leaders at this stage is that Labour could not possibly get away with foisting two unelected Prime Ministers on the electorate in close succession.

Whoever took over would therefore be virtually obliged to call an immediate election that Labour would be bound to lose, thereby negating the whole point of changing leaders in the first place.

That said, if the situation gets much worse for the party between now and the autumn, MPs would have very little left to lose by gambling on another leadership change.

At some point, it may become simply a case of damage limitation. The question would not be so much “could a new leader win?” as “could a new leader save at least some of our seats?”

A couple of weeks ago, I ran the rule over some of the possible contenders to take over should Mr Brown fail to recover. My view then, and now, was that Darlington MP Alan Milburn represented the best option.

During the past week, there has been some considerable speculation that Mr Milburn will indeed challenge Mr Brown, with backing from his old chum, North Tyneside MP Stephen Byers.

Some would regard the former health secretary merely as a stalking horse. My view, for what it’s worth, is that he would be a very serious candidate.

He is the right age for No 10 and having served in Blair's Cabinet, but not in Brown's, can combine top-level experience with relative freshness, enabling him to more credibly claim to be “the change the country needs" than Mr Brown has been able to do.

Were he to stand for the leadership, Mr Milburn would invariably have to deal with a certain amount of mud-slinging over the reasons behind his original Cabinet resignation in 2003.

Although he maintained it was to enable him to be a father to his two young sons, there are many other theories, not all of which would be particularly helpful in the context of a leadership campaign.

Whatever the truth of it, I always believed that Alan Milburn had too many unfulfilled ambitions not to return to frontline politics one day.

Could this now be a case of "cometh the hour, cometh the man?"

Has Milburn's time now come?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote the following sentences in my Saturday Column in the Newcastle Journal.

"Potentially the most promising “change candidate” is Darlington MP Alan Milburn, whose still-youthful appearance belies his five years’ Cabinet experience. More importantly, he alone among Labour’s big-hitters has demonstrated an appetite for thinking outside the box. Whether he actually wants the job is unclear, but in my view, this could be his time."

Today, as I noted earlier, Mike Smithson on PoliticalBetting.com has claimed that Milburn is preparing to challenge Brown for the leadership if Thursday's Crewe and Nantwich by-election turns out as disastrously for Labour as everyone is now predicting.

I have no idea if the story is true, although as Iain Dale has already noted, Mike is not the sort to take a punt on such a tale. But as I have previously made clear, in the event of a leadership vacancy, the former health secretary would in my view be an extremely strong candidate.

Like most on the centre-left who hoped that under Gordon the Labour Party would rediscover its lost moral compass, I have been extremely saddened by what has happened to his premiership over the past seven or eight months.

Granted, he has not played his cards well - although the critical strategic error was not cancelling the autumn election as most allege, but allowing the speculation about an autumn election to get out of control in the first place.

Much of what has happened since then, however, has either been down to the incompetence of minor officials and party functionaries (discgate, David Abrahams) or, in the case of Northern Rock and the whole gamut of issues stemming from the global credit cruch, down to economic circumstances way beyond his control.

If he cannot now recover - more specifically, if the voters of Crewe and Nantwich deliver him a knockout blow - then Milburn is in my view the next best choice to lead the party into the next General Election.

In historical terms, it would be a bold move. Milburn would be the first premier since Churchill to take over mid-term while not occupying a major office of state (Eden, Home, and Callaghan all went from the Foreign Office to No 10, Macmillan, Major and Brown from the Treasury) and Churchill had of course previously been both Home Secretary and Chancellor.

Of the three current holders of the major offices, David Miliband has been much touted but is still less than fully-formed as a politician in my view, much as William Hague was when it fell to him to lead the Tories. He is still in the next-leader-but-one category.

The younger contenders - the likes of Purnell, Balls, Burnham and Ed Miliband - are even more lacking in experience and gravitas, while the older hands - Straw, Johnson, Harriet Harman - have simply been around the block too many times now.

At 49, Milburn is the right age for No 10 and having served in Blair's Cabinet, but not in Brown's, can combine top-level experience with relative freshness, enabling him to more credibly claim to be the "change the country needs" than Brown has been able to do.

It is true that he lacks a power base in the party, but then so do most of the other names that have been mentioned. There has never been a "Straw-ite" faction or a "Johnsonite" faction for instance, and even Miliband has allegedly failed to cultivate much of a following in the PLP.

It is also true that there have been various unsubstantiated rumours about his private life prior to his present relationship which, in the context of a leadership election, could result in a certain amount of mud being flung, as indeed was flung at Gordon in 1994.

Milburn would also have to overcome the suggestion of dilettanteism arising from his two Cabinet resignations. Some claimed it was a case of "can't stand the heat," but I genuinely believe he made a long-range calculation about his chances of succeeding Blair, correctly realised that Brown had it in the bag, and resigned to spend more time with his young sons at what was a critical age for them (they are older now.)

One thing I always believed though was that Milburn would return to frontline politics. Could this now be a case of "cometh the hour, cometh the man?"