In the end, the public got what it wanted

So is it a betrayal of millions of people who voted Liberal Democrat to stop the Tories getting in - or a noble attempt to set aside party differences in the greater national interest?

Is it a reflection of the public will as it was expressed on 6 May – or something absolutely no-one actually voted for?

Opinions have invariably been divided about the new Con-Lib coalition that took office this week following Gordon Brown's protracted but ultimately dignified exit - and doubtless will remain so.

Whether it succeeds or fails - and much will happen between now and the scheduled date of the next election in 2015 - British politics will surely never quite be the same again.

Given that I have said as much already, it won't surprise readers to know that I think this is probably the outcome that best makes sense of the inconclusive election result.

Whether by accident or design, the public has got what it wanted - change, but in a way that avoids entrusting the fortunes of the country entirely to the Tories.

Were it not for the case that the coalition had a fair wind of public opinion behind it, it would probably not have come about.

By contrast, the public's reaction to any Lib-Lab deal would have been far more hostile - as the likes of John Reid and David Blunkett realised from the start.

In retrospect, Mr Brown should have realised this too rather than allow himself to be persuaded by Alastair Campbell and Lord Mandelson into trying to stitch together such a deal on Tuesday.

Maybe he was playing a longer game. By staying in No 10 and holding out the prospect of a deal, he enabled Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to wring concessions out of the Tories that he would not otherwise have been able to.

Whether that was intentional or otherwise, we have ended up with a much less right-wing government as a result, and perhaps we owe the former Prime Minister a debt of gratitude for that.

That said, the enthusiasm with which the new Prime Minister David Cameron has embraced his new partners suggests that he may actually prefer it this way to governing alone.

There will be plenty of time over the coming months to analyse the new government - but what of Labour, in the week that it took its leave of power after 13 years?

Some think that by steering clear of a coalition that is destined to become hugely unpopular once the cuts start to bite, the party has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Had Labour somehow managed to stagger on in office, the resulting public backlash could have ended up destroying it for a generation.

As it is, the party now has an opportunity to rebuild and, free of the poisonous legacy of the Blair-Brown rivalry and the mistakes of the past 13 years, rebuild it surely will.

My own assessment of New Labour is that it was handed a remarkable opportunity to reshape British politics for good which, by and large, it squandered.

It has well and truly paid the price for its timidity. Mr Brown's opposition to Roy Jenkins' 1998 electoral reform plans finally came back and bit him on the bum this week - much as Jim Callaghan's opposition to Barbara Castle's 1969 trade union reforms were to bite him on the bum ten years' later in the Winter of Discontent.

He probably did save the economy from meltdown in 2008/9, but without a 'big idea' to take it forward, it was clear his government had run out of road.

It now falls to Messrs Clegg and Cameron to bring about the lasting changes which Messrs Blair and Brown ultimately failed to deliver.

Old school reunion

Contrary to what some people believe, I'm not a class warrior, and this apart, I'm generally feeling pretty positive about the Cameron-Clegg coalition thus far. But there must be some truth in the suggestion that the two former public schoolboys' shared social background made it easier for them to deal with eachother than with gruff old, state school educated Gordon, and this spoof report from the Daily Mash hits the nail on the head.

The coalition deal was finally sealed yesterday evening during a hastily arranged phone call between David Cameron and Nick Clegg where they compared notes on the daughters of minor aristocrats that they had felt up at charity balls in the 1980s.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said: "We knew we had a workable, four-year deal when David and Nick both realised they had probably fingered the Hon. Charlotte Brampton during the same Henley Regatta."

Sheer, er, class.

A strong-ish and stable government

So, what to make of the new Cabinet line-up unveiled by Nick and Dave (as they are now referring to eachother) earlier today?

On the whole, it looks like a good team. For those of us whose primary concern is to ensure that this is a radical reforming government, the key to it is Nick Clegg's appointment as Deputy Prime Minister with responsibility for constitutional and political reform. This should mean Clegg exercising real influence over the government's political direction, and should ensure he doesn't end up like Geoffrey Howe, for whom the title of DPM was no more than a courtesy.

Other plus points for me include Ken Clarke's move to head up the Justice Ministry - a suitably weighty job for a man who still has much to contribute to British political life - and the return of IDS, who now gets the chance to show that social justice and right-wing Conservatism are not necessarily contradictions in terms.

I'm also naturally delighted to see Chris Huhne given the climate change ministry, given his excellent work in this field on the Lib Dem frontbench prior to his 2007 leaderhsip challenge. Doubtless Matthew Parris will have other views, but Chris is a politician of the first rank and richly deserves this opportunity.

On the downside, I think the Tories have probably hogged one or two jobs for their own people that might justifiably have been given up to brighter Lib Dem talents. What will Owen Paterson bring to the Northern Ireland job that Paddy Ashdown, say, would not have done? What will make 1997 retread Andrew Mitchell a better International Development Secretary than, for instance, Ed Davey or Michael Moore? The need to retain a certain balance between Tories and Lib Dems has militated against having the best people in some areas.

I also think Cameron has missed an opportunity to bring back David Davis, and his failure to do so moreorless condemns the one-time leadership contender to seeing out his career on the backbenches. A pity, because like Ken, he too still has much to give, and his championing of the civil liberties agenda over the past couple of years would appear to be a very good fit with this new government's own priorities in that area.

On a more procedural point, I was surprised to see that the job of Leader of the House of Commons has been relegated to non-Cabinet status. This makes little sense when, in a coalition scenario, good business management will become more, not less, important to the government's fortunes. I was also surprised to see the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices all retained even though both parties have at various points in the past called for them to be subsumed within a single Department for Devolution.

Finally, for professional reasons, I was disappointed to see Jeremy Hunt go into DCMS - for what appear to be entirely ideological reasons he has vowed to scrap the independently-funded regional TV news pilots that could have provided a lifeline for the regional press, but doubtless this will be covered in greater depth in the days and weeks to come in another place.

Clegg has played a blinder

Okay, so I would have preferred a Lib-Lab coalition, but the numbers were never really there, the dangers for the Lib Dems in being seen to prop up a defeated party were obvious, and as it became clear today, elements of the Labour Party were not really fully signed up to it anyway, be that out of ideological purism (Diane Abbott), a desire to rub Gordon Brown's nose in it (John Reid, David Blunkett), or positioning for the forthcoming party leadership election (Andy Burnham.)

So instead we have the LibServative option, and on paper, it doesn't seem like a bad outcome. Whatever my own personal feelings, I have said on more than one occasion during this election that the will of the public was probably towards some sort of Con-Lib coalition, and as such I don't think there will be anything like the kind of backlash towards this deal that a Lib-Lab agreement might have attracted.

In terms of policy positions, the initial signs are good, with the Tories have dropped their absurd regressive stance on inheritance tax in favour of the Lib Dem policy of raising thresholds for the worst off, and of course the guarantee of a referendum on the alternative vote which, even if it is likely to be opposed by both main parties, stands a good chance of winning a yes vote from the public.

There also appears to have been a very broad level of agreement between the two parties over civil liberties issues, with the prospect of a 'Freedom Bill' to scrap not only ID cards, but many of Labour's little-used criminal justice measures of the past 13 years.

On personnel, I am obviously delighted to see Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and it is no less than he deserves for having not only fought a brilliant election campaign, but also for his conduct of the negotiations over the past few days. I am less delighted to see George Osborne move into the Treasury - Ken Clarke, Vince Cable or Phil Hammond would all have been preferable in my eyes - but you can't have everything.

The one outstanding mystery as we approach the early hours surrounds the post of Home Secretary. The absense of any briefing from No 10 clearly indicates that the job is not going to go to Chris Grayling, but may not necessarily mean it is going to Chris Huhne either. Could it be David Davis? If so, that would get the biggest cheer of all from me - the icing on the cake of what looks set to be a liberal government in the classical sense of the term.

Gordon makes the supreme sacrifice. Now bring on Bradshaw

Gordon Brown was always a party man at heart, and his decision to sacrifice himself in order to facilitate Labour's participation in a potential progressive coalition could yet go down as one of the great political game-changers in recent history.

Where Purnell, Blears, Flint, Reid and Co have failed, Nick Clegg has finally succceded, but for once I share Alastair Campbell's view - that Mr Brown never intended to stay long once the election result had become clear, and that far from 'squatting' in No 10, he was simply carrying out his duty to his country - and his Queen - by ensuring the business of government was carried on.

Against the odds, the prospect of a Lib-Lab dream team that can change this country for good is back in play, while the prospect of a 19th old Etonian Prime Minister has at least temporarily receded.

I am sticking by my view that Ben Bradshaw is the man to ultimately take this forward. Although I would be equally happy with Alan Johnson, it may be time to move to a younger generation of political leaders. David Miliband and Ed Balls will of course start favourites, but I think Labour now badly needs to move on from Blairite-Brownite battles and electing either of those two would simply perpetuate them.

Will they do the deal?

Usually, it’s all over bar the shouting by 3am, sometimes even earlier if it is clear that one party has achieved a landslide. But this has been no ordinary election, and this was never going to be an ordinary election night.

With each hour that came and went, the picture appeared to grow more and more confused as those of us watching on telly struggled to make sense of it all.

At various points in the evening, it seemed as though the Tories would either get a small majority, or at the very least come close enough to the winning post to govern as a minority administration.

But in the end, they fell 20 seats short, paving the way for one of the most dramatic days of political wheeler-dealing in recent electoral history and the prospect of the first Lib-Con coalition since the days of David Lloyd George.

David Cameron’s offer of a deal with Nick Clegg which could extent to a formal coalition was nothing if not bold, and demonstrated the Tory leader’s ability to seize the agenda.

As I write, the two men have agreed to explore the idea further, and fresh developments over the course of the weekend seem very likely.

But although Mr Cameron in his St Stephen’s Club speech yesterday was at pains to point out the potential areas of policy agreement with the Lib Dems, he was not entirely convincing on this score.

The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Trident nuclear deterrent and support for electoral reform are likely to be the big sticking points, although on the latter point, it has been suggested that the Tories could concede a referendum in which they would then campaign for a “no” vote.

Of course, it could easily have been very different. Another 30 seats for the Lib Dems and a handful more for Labour, and we could have been talking much more seriously about a Lib-Lab deal instead.

But although Prime Minister Gordon Brown is playing a patient waiting game in Number 10 in the hope that the Clegg-Cameron talks fail, his position is exceptionally weak.

The option of a Lib-Lab pact has least two big drawbacks. Firstly, it would not provide a “strong and stable government,” because the combined forces of the two parties do not in fact add up to a parliamentary majority.

Secondly, both parties performed so poorly in the election that a Lib-Lab alliance would be too easily portrayed by the Tories and the media as a “coalition of losers.”

Mr Brown is pinning his hopes on the fact that he has already offered a referendum on proportional representation, while Mr Cameron has so far talked only of an “all-party inquiry” into voting reform - but this is a chimera.

The fact is, I doubt that an electoral reform referendum could actually be won in those circumstances, as the public would simply see it as two defeated parties teaming up to change the system for their mutual benefit.

In any case, as I wrote last week, a Lib-Con coalition would be the outcome that probably best reflects the will of the public as expressed in this election – a desire for change, coupled with a desire to deny any one party a majority.

There are still formidable obstacles to a deal, not least the views of Mr Clegg’s own MPs. But the public’s evident desire for one is the biggest single reason why it just might happen.

The Lib-Lab Dream Team

Today has been quite the grimmest weather I can remember on election day since I was old enough to vote. It may be a case of rose-tinted spectacles, but in my recollection all the others dawned bright and sunny. "The sun's out, and so are the Tories," quipped Neil Kinnock in '92. They were - but not in the way he meant. They were out at the polling stations ensuring victory for John Major.

Maybe this is a good omen, however. All of those bright and sunny election days ended in disappointment for yours truly, with the election of either a Tory government (1983, 1987 and 1992) or a pseudo-Tory one (1997, 2001 and 2005.) Today, for the first time in my adult life, there is the tantalising prospect of something genuinely different.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath. I have made clear in my Saturday column that I think the likeliest outcome today is a minority Conservative government, with a second election a little way down the line.

The result I am hoping for, however, is one which paves the way for a pro-reform coalition between the Liberal Democrats and post-Brownite Labour which can put this country's bent electoral system right once and for all.

To my mind, the chances of such a coalition depend on the Lib Dems outpolling Labour in the popular vote, for two reasons. Firstly, because such a result would make such a mockery of the current system that it will be rendered even more unsustainable than at present.

Secondly, because a 2nd or even 1st place for the Lib Dems in terms of share of the vote tonight could actually facilitate the arrival of Nick Clegg as the first Liberal Prime Minister since David Lloyd George.

Of all the possible election outcomes that have been outlined by the pundits over the past four weeks, the one that made most sense to me was Will Hutton's piece in last Sunday's Observer entitled: "If Labour is wise, it will usher Nick Clegg into Downing Street."

To coin a phrase, I agree with Will. If Labour comes third tonight and the Lib Dems second, Gordon Brown should immediately fall on his sword, and a caretaker triumvirate of Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson and Alistair Darling should deliver the Labour Party into a Lib-Lab coalition led by Clegg, the undisputed winner of this campaign.

What might such a coalition look like? Well, I've sketched out a possible version below. It has nine Lib Dem members and 13 Labour members, the latter incorporating the most pro-reform elements of the current Cabinet - Alan Johnson, Ben Bradshaw, Peter Hain and Lord Adonis for example.

With No 10 going to Mr Clegg, the Lib Dems could not have the Treasury as well, so Alistair Darling would stay on, reflecting his hard-earned status as the most trustworthy of Labour's senior figures.

The new Prime Minister aside, Chris Huhne would have the toughest job - as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor it would be his task to pilot through the biggest set of constitutional reforms since those of the Liberal government of 1906, but the man who so narrowly missed out on the Lib Dem leadership is certainly equal to it.

As for Labour....it should take its time to elect a new leader, but my tip is Mr Bradshaw, an excellent minister who has very few enemies in the party, has an interesting personal back-story, and, unsurprisingly enough for a former TV journalist, is very good on the box.

The Great Reform Cabinet of 2010

Prime Minister: Nick Clegg
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Cabinet Office: Alan Johnson
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alistair Darling
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Home Secretary: John Denham
Justice Secretary: Chris Huhne
Leader of the House of Commons: Harriet Harman
Business Secretary: Vince Cable
Defence Secretary: Lord Ashdown
Education Secretary: Ben Bradshaw
Health Secretary: Andy Burnham
Work and Pensions Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Climate Change Secretary: Ed Miliband
Environment Secretary: Ed Davey
Transport Secretary: Lord Adonis
Communities Secretary: Julia Goldsworthy
Culture Secretary: Tessa Jowell
Leader of the House of Lords: Baroness Williams
Scottish Secretary: Charles Kennedy
Welsh Secretary: Peter Hain
Northern Ireland Secretary: Shaun Woodward
International Development Secretary: Douglas Alexander
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: David Laws
Chief Whip: Bob Ainsworth

It is still not clear who is going to win. It is clear, though, that Gordon is going to lose

In my Journal column today I'm calling the 2010 general election against Gordon Brown and Labour. Not an easy one for me to write for reasons I make clear in the text.

Here it is in full.

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Thirteen years ago, on John Major’s last Saturday in 10 Downing Street, I wrote in my pre-election column that the over-riding factor when people cast their votes would be the desire for change.

Politics tends to go in cycles, and so this election, too, is likely to see the curtain fall for a Prime Minister who now seems ready to leave the stage.

For all the talk of “Cleggmania” and “Duffygate” altering the dynamics of the contest over the past three weeks, the key dynamic – the desire for a new beginning - has been in place from the start.

It is still not clear who is going to win on Thursday. It is, though, becoming clear that Gordon Brown is going to lose.

It’s not easy for me to have to write that. I continue to believe that Mr Brown could have been a perfectly good Prime Minister had he got the chance to be one at a time when his party as a whole was still riding high.

I also believe that history will judge him far more kindly than his contemporaries have done, and that the actions he has taken with regard to the recession will, in time, be vindicated.

But once the country began to tire of New Labour, it was always going to be a big ask for a man who has been so close to the centre of power for so long to successfully represent change.

The party’s core campaign message – “don’t risk the recovery” – has been an essentially defensive operation in a situation which cried out instead for vision.

The Gillian Duffy incident in Rochdale this week – which could have happened to any of the three party leaders – only put the seal on Mr Brown’s already fading prospects.

The real significance of it was not that he views the voters with contempt – he doesn’t – but the fact that he thought the initial exchange had been a “disaster.”

It wasn’t - Mrs Duffy had actually promised to vote Labour. But Mr Brown thought it was a “disaster” because he has lost both his self-confidence, and his ability to judge political situations.

His inability to make any inroads in the polling that followed Thursday’s final TV debate shows the public has by and large made up its mind about him, and they won’t change it now.

So, then, Clegg or Cameron? Well, I won’t dwell at length on the potential hazards for the North-East that may result from an outright Conservative victory.

Mr Cameron’s comments last weekend, suggesting the region receives too much public money, probably tell you all you need to know, however hard he later tried to row back from them.

Irrespective of that, I have argued previously that both Britain and the North-East need a balanced Parliament, for two reasons.

Firstly because the Tories cannot be trusted to govern on their own. Secondly, because this must be the last election fought on a bent electoral system which could yet produce a result on Friday that is beyond parody.

All along, the polls have suggested it will happen, but that may yet change as minds are concentrated over the remaining few days of the campaign.

The outcome that would probably best reflect the mood of the country at the moment is a Lib-Con coalition – but that can only happen, of course, if Mr Cameron puts electoral reform on the table.

If he does not, the likeliest scenario is a minority Conservative administration and – joy of joys! – a re-run of all this in a few months’ time as Prime Minster Cameron seeks a working majority.

One thing will be different next time though. Mr Brown will not be there.

What if none of them ends up in Number Ten?

Before the current election campaign got under way, there were some pundits who predicted that it could become the first such contest to be decided over the worldwide web.

But apart from one Labour candidate who made a fool of himself by using foul language on Twitter – the twit in question was swiftly forced to quit – talk of an ‘internet election’ has proved wide of the mark.

Instead, it has been the relatively old-fashioned medium of television which has led the way, with the debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg proving to be the pivotal events in the campaign.

Indeed, they have assumed such a degree of significance that much of what has happened in between them has seemed a bit like waiting for the next course to arrive in a restaurant.

After the first debate, I wrote that it was beginning to look as though the will of the public in this election may be to deny both of the two main parties an outright majority.

At the time, it was a somewhat tentative conclusion, but the “Cleggmania” that erupted over subsequent days suggested it wasn’t far off the mark.

If proof was needed that it is the Lib Dem leader who is setting the agenda in this campaign, one need only look at how the second debate on Thursday contrasted with the first.

Whereas in the first one the prevailing attitude of the other two leaders was “I agree with Nick,” in the second one they were finding as much to disagree with him about as possible.

Another thing I wrote last Saturday was that the Lib Dems can expect an onslaught from the 'big two' over the next few days such as they have never seen.

In truth Labour has been rather muted in its criticisms, but the attacks on Mr Clegg in Thursday morning’s Tory-supporting newspapers will have done Mr Cameron’s party little good in my view.

The public has come to see that kind of journalism for what it is – not journalism, in fact, but merely an extension of the yah-boo politics they have come to loathe.

If the Cameron camp was hoping it would burst the Clegg bubble, it is already clear that it has signally failed to do so.

That said, both Mr Cameron and Mr Brown can certainly take heart from this week’s debate, which saw all three contenders much more evenly-matched than the previous one.

Indeed, Mr Brown’s ratings improved so markedly that he might even entertain hopes of coming out on top in the final, surely decisive confrontation this coming Thursday.

The Prime Minister is nothing if not resilient, and his “like me or not” passage in which he tackled his own lack of personal charisma head-on will have gained him a certain amount of respect.

There remains, though, a strong feeling in the electorate that, after 13 years and a record that can best be described as mixed, this government has finally run its course.

For that reason, we can expect to hear Mr Cameron continuing to hammer away at his core message over the next week that only a vote for him can spare us another five years of Mr Brown.

It is not, as it happens, strictly true. The price of a Lib-Lab pact could well be the Prime Minister’s head on a platter, in which case expect to see South Shields MP David Miliband summoned to the Palace.

Of all the possible denouements to this extraordinary campaign, that would surely be the most bizarre – that none of the three contenders who have slogged it out over the airwaves actually ends up in Number Ten.

The fact that such scenarios are even being discussed is a measure of just how unpredictable this whole election has become.

Tories win battle of ideas - but Clegg wins battle of personalities

Whether you take the view that politics is essentially about the big issues facing the country, or whether you see it as merely a clash of egos, there has been plenty to chew on this week as the election battle continued to shape up.

The 'policies v personalities' dichotomy was perhaps most elegantly summed-up by Denis Healey, writing about his former colleague Roy Jenkins in his autobiography 'The Time of My Life.'

"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change," he wrote.

So while Healey doubtless saw the publication of the parties' manifestos as the key event of the last seven days, Jenkins would have been more likely to incline towards Thursday's TV debate between the three main party leaders.

First off, then, the manifestos. In a nutshell, Labour's was the dullest, the Lib Dems' the longest and most detailed, and the Tories' by far the cleverest.

That is not to say the Tories had all the best ideas. Some of them - such as allowing local people to sack failing police chiefs and headteachers - may well cause more problems than they solve.

But the point is, at least are they are ideas, and at least they are fresh.

By going big on the 'new localism,' Tory leader David Cameron may well succeed in capturing the 'anti politics' mood that has gripped the country ever since the MPs expenses debacle of last summer.

The absence of such an overarching vision or ‘big idea’ in the Labour document, by contrast, seemed to underline the view that the party needs a spell in opposition to renew itself.

That impression was scarcely dispelled by the TV debates, in which a greying, seemingly exhausted Prime Minister was forced to square up to two younger, more vigorous and more charismatic rivals.

Mr Brown could have tried to use his greater experience to advantage, but perhaps constrained by the format, he seemed oddly reluctant to attack his opponents.

For instance, instead of trying to engage intellectually with Mr Cameron's claims that Labour’s National Insurance rise is about wasting money rather than cutting the deficit, he should have told him to stop talking rubbish.

The opinion polls have already declared Nick Clegg the big winner of the debate, and I have to say that confirmed my own impression

He made a slight fool of himself by refusing to say whether he agreed with Mr Brown's plans for a referendum on the voting system when we all know he would love nothing more, but that aside, it was an assured performance from the Lib Dem leader.

His best moment came when he pointed out that both parties had blocked his plans to allow constituents to recall their MPs in the event of serious wrongdoing.

This idea has since appeared in one form or another in all three parties' manifestos - a perfect illustration of how the old, adversarial politics frustrates real progress.

So will Mr Clegg's 'victory' change the dynamics of the contest?

Well, one thing is certain. The Lib Dems can expect an onslaught from the 'big two' over the next few days such as they have never seen.

But though it is still early days, it is beginning to look as though the will of the public in this election may be to deny both of the two main parties an outright majority.

If so, it is just possible that this could be the election that finally changes the face of British politics for ever.

Not a good start for Labour

And so at last they're off, as the race finally gets under way in earnest in what promises to be the most pivotal UK general election since 1997 and the closest since 1992.

Not that that is saying much. Labour's victories in 2001 and 2005 were moreorless pre-ordained from the start, the only real interest being in whether the Tories would do well enough to save first William Hague's, then Michael Howard's leadership.

It's a different story this time round. This election is David Cameron's to lose, and if he does lose it, he will swiftly go the way of those two predecessors.

Labour, by contrast, is having to come from so far behind that, already, it is giving the impression that a hung Parliament and a deal with the Lib Dems is the best it can hope for.

The leaders' photocalls on Tuesday in the wake of Gordon Brown's visit to the Palace were nothing if not revealing, in terms of the subliminal messages each of the parties were trying to get across.

There was the Prime Minister outside Number Ten, flanked by his entire Cabinet as if to say: "We know you don't like Gordon, but we're a team, not a solo act."

Then there was Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, flanked by Vince Cable in acknowledgement of the fact that the 66-year-old Treasury spokesman is easily the most compelling reason to vote for the party on 6 May.

And most tellingly of all, Mr Cameron, surrounded not by a frontbench team which is largely distrusted by the public, but by a group of fresh-faced candidates - although it was not long before his own star turn, wife Sam, joined him on the campaign trail.

So what of the story so far? Well, it has not been an especially good start to the campaign for Labour.

First off, the government was forced to shelve a series of measures it had previously championed, including the proposed regional ITV news pilot in this region which the Tories have perplexingly vowed to scrap if they win.

Most ironic was the scrapping of the Bill to provide for a referendum on the voting system - on the very day Labour sought to highlight its constitutional reform credentials in an obvious play for Lib Dem support.

Mr Clegg was rightly contemptuous of this. After all, if Labour had acted rather sooner on its 1997 promise on electoral reform, the wretched Bill would hardly have run out of time.

Equally clumsy and cynical was yesterday's foray by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, advising Lib Dem voters in marginal seats to vote tactically for Labour.

The fact that Labour is already reduced to begging for Lib Dem votes this early on in the campaign speaks volumes for the government's lack of confidence in its own message.

But Labour's biggest difficulties this week came with the concerted assault by business leaders over its planned 1p rise in National Insurance.

Mr Brown’s response – that some of Britain’s shrewdest business minds had allowed themselves to be “deceived” by the Tories, was hardly an exercise in how to win friends and influence people.

This week has been but an hors d'oeuvre. The main course of this election campaign will be the three TV debates between the three leaders which are due to begin next week.

Mr Brown only agreed to take part in the debates because he is the underdog, and they are clearly crucial to his hopes of a comeback.

The Prime Minister has to do what Tony Blair predicted he would do long ago - and land a "big clunking fist" on his Tory opponent.

If he can, he is back in the game. If not, short of a Tory scandal or implosion, it is hard to see where else a Labour revival is going to come from.

Will Vince Cable be the next Chancellor?

IN an election where the state of the economy is likely to be more central than ever to the outcome, it is not surprising that the identity of the next Chancellor is almost as burning an issue as that of the next Prime Minister.

From being seen at one time as a weak link in Labour’s armoury – not least by Gordon Brown himself who wanted to replace him with Ed Balls – Alastair Darling has unexpectedly emerged as one of the government’s few genuine assets.

Okay, so his third Budget ten days ago contained no new ideas and few positive reasons to vote Labour on May 6 save that of ‘better the devil you know.’

But that was not the point. Somehow, Mr Darling seems to have established himself in the public’s mind as that rare thing in 21st Century Britain – a politician who tells it like it is.

So the TV confrontation this week between Mr Darling and his opposition shadows Vince Cable and George Osborne was one of the more eagerly awaited events of the seemingly interminable pre-election countdown.

It was given added spice by the fact that Mr Osborne’s political trajectory has been almost the diametric opposite of Mr Darling’s over the past two and a half years.

Back in the autumn of 2007, he was the Tory hero whose bold promise to raise inheritance tax thresholds was seen as largely responsible for putting the frighteners on Mr Brown’s election plans.

But just as that IT pledge has become something of a millstone around the Tories’ necks in these more straitened times, so Mr Osborne has become increasingly perceived as their ‘weakest link.’

It was very clear from the Tory Shadow Chancellor’s performance in Monday night’s debate that he had been reading the findings of Labour’s focus groups which called him “shrill, immature and lightweight.”

But in his efforts to appear statesmanlike, he rather over-compensated, leading one pundit to describe he and Mr Darling as “the bland leading the bland.”

Instead, it was Mr Cable who earned the lion’s share of the audience applause on the night, for instance over his refusal to indulge in impossible promises on NHS spending.

So which one of them, if any, will be Chancellor? It’s not necessarily as straightforward a question as it may seem.

Sure, if Labour wins outright, Mr Darling will stay on. Mr Brown has already been forced to say as much, putting his old ally Mr Balls’ ambitions on hold once more.

But in the event of a Tory victory, or a hung Parliament, the situation becomes much less clear cut.

There have long been rumours in Tory circles that Mr Osborne won’t go to 11 Downing Street even if they win outright.

The talk is that David Cameron could give the job of sorting out the economic mess either to old-hand Ken Clarke, or to right-wing axe-man Philip Hammond.

Most intriguing is the fate of Mr Cable. Clearly he will not be Chancellor in a Lib Dem government – but could he hold the role in a Labour or Tory-led coalition?

The short answer to that is yes. For all Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s refusal to play the ‘kingmaker,’ securing the Treasury for Mr Cable is likely to be central to any post-election deal in a hung Parliament.

The opinion polls continue to point to this as the likeliest election outcome, with the Tory lead still insufficient to give them an outright majority.

The race for Number 10 clearly lies between Mr Cameron and Mr Brown. But in the race for Number 11, it is the Liberal Democrat contender who is in pole position.

So just what do the Lib Dems stand for?

Nick Clegg scored 10 out of 10 for ambition in Bournemouth, and top marks for avoiding the trap set by David Cameron. But he needs to learn a thing or two about party management. Here's today's Journal column.

---

And so we come again to the conference season, and not just any old conference season, but the one which will see the race to govern Britain for the next five years effectively begin in earnest.

Most of the country will see it as a two-horse race between Labour and the Tories, but once a year, at their annual conference, the Liberal Democrats get the opportunity to explain why this cosy consensus should be broken up.

Whether Nick Clegg and his party made the most of that opportunity, amid a week of bickering and backbiting in Bournemouth, must be very much open to question.

But one thing you certainly can’t fault is the scope of his ambition. “I want to be Prime Minister because I have spent half my lifetime imagining a better society, and I want to spend the next half making it happen,” he told the gathering on Wednesday.

Lib Dem leaders have been somewhat wary of talking too openly about the prospects of power ever since David Steel’s infamous “go back to you constituencies and prepare for government” speech at his party’s 1981 conference in Llandudno.

The best they’ve been able to hope for since those heady days has been to hold the balance of power, although as yet, it has never actually happened.

But Mr Clegg, to give him his due, was not going to be bounced by Tory leader David Cameron into talking about which of the two main parties he would back in the event of a hung Parliament.

If the Lib Dem conference represents his one chance a year to say what he would do I the unlikely event of him actually becoming Prime Minister, he was going to make sure he took it.

Mr Cameron’s eve-of-conference “love bomb” urging the Lib Dems to team up with the Tories in a grand anti-Labour coalition was an extremely mischievous intervention by the Tory leader on a number of levels.

For one thing, his claim that there is “not a cigarette paper” between the two parties on key issues of policy is about as mendacious and misleading a claim as he has ever made – and that’s saying something.

As the Lib Dems’ chief of staff Danny Alexander swiftly pointed out, while the Tories want to reduce inheritance tax for the richest 1pc of people in the country, the Lib Dems want to take the poorest out of income tax altogether.

And for all Mr Cameron’s supposed “greenery,” his party’s representatives in Europe have allied themselves with a bunch of climate change deniers in the European Parliament.

But Mr Cameron’s suggestion was mischievous on another level too, because he knows perfectly well that there is only one thing the Lib Dems actually could do in the event of a hung Parliament – and that is support the Tories.

This is not just because it would be political suicide for Mr Clegg to be propping up a Labour government that had just lost its majority. It is about simple electoral arithmetic.

Such is the inbuilt bias of the electoral system towards Labour, that so long as Labour achieves the largest share of the vote, it is bound to have an absolute majority in the next House of Commons.

Therefore the only way in which a hung Parliament can actually occur is if the Tories are ahead on share of the vote, but by not quite enough to form a government on their own.

In those circumstances, the Liberal Democrats would really have only course of action consistent with their advocacy of a “fair” voting system – and that would be to support the Tories as the party with the biggest share of the vote.

Mr Cameron knows this, and so does Mr Clegg – which is why he is all the more determined not to admit it. To do so would remove any reason for voting Lib Dem at all

That said, post-Bournemouth, the country is really no clearer on what the reasons for voting Lib Dem actually are.

The arguments over university tuition fees and the proposed imposition of a “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £1m have hardly served to clarify the party’s message.

Charles Kennedy’s strategy in his time as Lib Dem leader was to have two or three distinctive policies that would separate his party from the common herd – for instance, abolishing tuition fees.

It was not surprising to see the man who led the Lib Dems to the best performance by a third party since the 1920s bemoaning the loss of some of those policies this week

Mr Clegg may be right that different times demand different solutions – but his problem he has yet to find anything as distinctive to put in their place.

As for his talk of “savage cuts” or “progressive austerity” - yet another abuse of the p-word – this is hardly a very different agenda from that being put forward by the two main parties.

Nor surprisingly, media attention has already shifted towards Labour’s conference in Brighton beginning tomorrow.

Yesterday’s revelations that the mole behind the MPs’ expenses scandal was motivated by the lack of resources for British troops in Afghanistan links two of the three big running political stories of the year.

Meanwhile the third big story – the future of Gordon Brown – will continue to rumble on in the background at Brighton, with the party hoping against hope that their leader will manage to spell out some sort of compelling vision for a Labour fourth term.

If Mr Clegg’s task last week was to explain why he should become Prime Minister, Mr Brown’s even harder one this week will be to explain why on earth he should remain so.

Who will clean up Parliament?

Who will be the one to clean-up politics in the wake of the MPs expenses scandal? David Cameron? Gordon Brown? Or perhaps new Speaker John Bercow? Here's today's Journal column.

---

So was it a petty act of revenge by Labour MPs who know they are going to lose their seats and want to leave as poisoned a legacy as they can for David Cameron and the Tories?

Or was it a long-overdue attempt to provide a fresh start for a House of Commons tarnished almost beyond redemption by the MPs’ expenses scandal?

If the truth be told, the election of one-time Thatcherite radical John Bercow as the 157th Commons Speaker this week was probably a bit of both.

While some of the MPs who voted for him on Monday undoubtedly did so to make life uncomfortable for the Tories, who by and large detest their former colleague, others genuinely saw him as the candidate best-placed to provide a “clean break” with recent events.

Okay, so I wanted Sir Alan Beith to win, and I thought Margaret Beckett would win, but it is clear the former Foreign Secretary suffered from a backlash in the final days against what were seen as government attempts to install her.

As one sketch-writer who wrote a delightful account of the election using horseracing metaphors put it: “Mrs Beckett was deemed to have made excessive use of the whips.”

I was right about one thing, and that was that the election would be determined by whether Labour MPs decided to swing en bloc behind a single candidate

In the end they did, but that candidate was not Mrs Beckett, but Mr Bercow, who at 46 becomes the youngest Speaker since the 19th century and the first person of the Jewish faith to hold the post.

Already the new Speaker has made his mark. Indeed, anyone watching his first Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday might have concluded that he, not Gordon Brown or Mr Cameron, was the real star of the show.

Ticking off braying MPs for making too much noise during the weekly half-hour joust, he told them: “The public doesn't like it and neither do I."

On another occasion, he told the Tory backbencher Michael Fabricant to calm down as "it is not good for your health".

And he cut short a rambling question by the Labour backbencher Patrick Hall on housing, telling him he had “got the gist” of what he was saying.

I suspect Mr Bercow is right in thinking that the public will be generally sympathetic to his attempts to bring what he calls “an atmosphere of calm, reasoned debate” to the parliamentary bear-pit.

But he is walking a difficult tightrope. Just as spin doctors are not supposed to become the story, neither are House of Commons Speakers.

Although it is understandable that he wanted to make a splash with his first PMQs, he will need to learn to fade into the background if he is to avoid becoming a political football like Michael Martin.

To paraphrase Dr W.G. Grace, if he starts to believe that the public have come to watch him umpiring rather than the MPs performing, then his days in the Chair will be numbered.

The central conundrum facing Mr Bercow is ultimately the one that did for Mr Martin – is the Speaker merely the servant of the House, or should he or she in some way seek to be its master?

The truth is that Mr Bercow will somehow have to be both – seeking to nudge the House in the direction of reform, while ultimately reflecting its wishes.

Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Brown, at least, do not have that dilemma. Each of them is seeking to persuade the public that he is the man to “clean up politics” in the wake of the expenses scandal.

Sadly for the Prime Minister, it is a contest which currently he is decisively losing.

From the start of the expenses row, Mr Cameron has led the way in taking action against his own recalcitrant MPs, and this week he ordered them to pay back another £125,000 to the taxpayer.

The Tory leader seems to be preparing the ground for a large-scale clearout which could see up to half of the current crop of Conservative MPs stand down at the election.

In a speech this week, he also sought to link the need for reform with the need for people to regain power over their own lives, highlighting the drift towards the “surveillance state” under Labour.

Mr Brown has concentrated more on wider constitutional reforms, but has been predictably outflanked on this score by Mr Clegg, who has the advantage of leading a party that genuinely believes in it.

In a speech this week, the Prime Minister said voters wanted to see his government clean-up politics, help people through the recession, and – wait for it – “put forward our vision.”

But the fact that Mr Brown is still talking about setting out his “vision” two years after coming to power is surely emblematic of the failure of his administration.

Nowhere has this failure been more acute than in the field of restoring trust in politics, which was supposed to be the big theme of his premiership in the wake of the loans for lordships scandal and the general moral decay of the Blair years.

If cleaning-up Parliament had been part of Mr Brown’s confounded “vision” in the first place, Parliament would probably not be in the mess it is in now.

The big, unanswered questions

Who will be the next Speaker? Will there be an October election? And will we get proportional representation? Just some of the many unanswered questions that have arisen from the MPs expenses scandal. Here's today's Journal column.

---

For most of the past two years, the biggest unanswered question in politics has been whether Gordon Brown will survive to lead Labour into the next election, and it is a question that is still awaiting an answer.

But seldom can any week in politics have thrown up as many unanswered questions as the last one, a week which has seen the first defenestration of a House of Commons Speaker for 300 years and talk of a “quiet revolution” in our political system.

Several careers besides those of Michael Martin have already ended. Several more are hanging by a thread. And the pressure for a wholesale electoral clear-out of the "Duck Island Parliament" is growing.

We now know the true, appalling extent of the scandal over MPs' expenses. What we can still only guess at at this stage is its longer-term impact.

First, there are the small-to-middling questions, mainly concerning individuals. How many more MPs will be forced to stand down at the next election? Who will lose their jobs in the next reshuffle? Who will be the next Speaker?

Then there are the slightly broader questions. How will the public’s anger at the behaviour of the political classes feed through into voting habits? Will the “incumbency factor” that has always favoured sitting MP go into reverse? And will the next election herald a new wave of independents?

Then of course there is the question of when that election will finally be held, and whether Mr Brown will pay the political price for failing to reform the system until it was too late.

Finally, perhaps the most far-reaching question of all. Will the expenses scandal ultimately result in an historic reshaping of our parliamentary democracy, or alternatively bring about its final demise?

In terms of the questions around the futures of individual MPs, the North-East is as good a place as any to start.

Will Tyne Bridge MP David Clelland, controversially reselected in preference to neighbouring MP Sharon Hodgson, now fund himself deselected after claiming for the cost of buying out his partner’s £45,000 stake in his London flat, despite his very full and frank explanations of the reasons behind the move?

Will Durham North’s Kevan Jones and other “squeaky clean” MPs who voluntarily laid bare their expense claims be rewarded for their candour, or will they find themselves tar-brushed along with their sleazier counterparts?

And will Sir Alan Beith crown a notable career of public service by achieving his ambition of the Speakership - or will the fact that both he and his wife, Baroness Maddock, claimed second home allowances on the same property ultimately count against him?

On that last point, I have to say it would give me great pleasure to see the long-serving Berwick MP in the Speaker’s chair, although if he were not standing down from Parliament, Sunderland South’s Chris Mullin would be an equally admirable choice.

If the truth be told, the North-East should have had the Speakership last time round. The region had three candidates in Mr Beith, David Clark, and John McWilliam, all of whom would have done a better job than Michael Martin – though some would argue that is not saying much.

Ultimately Mr Martin fell not because of shaky grasp of Commons procedure or even last week's ill-judged attacks on backbench MPs, but because his continual attempts to block the freedom of information request over MPs expenses caused this whole debacle.

Just imagine for a moment that Dr Clark had got the job. Would he have fought the provisions of the freedom of information legislation that he himself pioneered? Of course not, and our Parliament would now be much the better for it.

But enough of the ancient history. What on earth will happen to the House of Commons now?

One oft-heard prediction this week is that we will end up with a chamber full of Esther Rantzens, Martin Bells and toast of the Gurkhas Joanna Lumley, and it's certainly one possibility.

We are living through such an extraordinary period of “anti-politics” that there could even be a return to the situation that existed before the rise of the party system in the 19th century – the “golden age of the independent House of Commons man” as one historian called it.

But while celebrity politicians may well play a part, I think the next election is just as likely to throw up more “local heroes” like Dr Richard Taylor, who defeated an unpopular Labour MP over hospital closures and is now himself even being mentioned as a possible Speaker.

Should that election now take place sooner than spring 2010? Well, there has to be a very strong argument for saying that, just as the Speaker who resisted reform for so long has had to go, so too should the Prime Minister who failed to grasp the nettle.

When a Parliament has lost moral authority to the extent that this one has, a clear-out becomes almost a democratic necessity, and Cromwell’s words to the Rump Parliament – “In the name of God, go!” - once more have a certain resonance.

Against that, there is a case for allowing passions to cool. In the words of one commentator: "If an election were called next week, Britain might well end up with a Parliament for the next five years that is defined entirely by its views on claiming for bath plugs, rather than on how to get the country out of the worst recession in 70 years."

Mr Brown will no doubt still try to hang on until next May, but in my view an autumn 2009 election has become significantly more likely in recent days.

As far as the longer-term implications of the scandal are concerned, there is already talk of radical constitutional reforms including an elected second chamber, fixed-term Parliaments, more powerful select committees, and even proportional representation.

I'll believe it when I see it....but if a consensus does emerge that radical parliamentary reform is the way out of this mess, it stands to reason that the party that will most benefit will be the one that has consistently advocated such reform for the past 40 years.

The Liberal Democrats have long been the recipients of the "anti-politics" vote, and on this issue as well as that of the Gurkhas, their leader Nick Clegg has looked over the past fortnight like a man whose time has come.

Sir Alan Beith is not the only Lib Dem for whom this crisis may prove an historic opportunity.

Clegg in the spotlight

In my Preview of the Year at the previous post I briefly alluded to the fact that Nick Clegg is likely to become the most sought-after man in politics in 2009 as thr two main parties seek to insure themselves against the possibility of a hung Parliament at the next general election.

But Peter Oborne in today's Daily Mail goes much further. He says Brown won't wait until after the election to put together a Lib-Lab coalition, but will actually try to stitch one together this year, with Vince Cable as Chancellor, Lord Pantsdown as Defence Sec and Sir Menzies Campbell eased into the Speakership.

I can't really see the political advantage for Mr Clegg in being seen to prop up what many floating voters still view as a failed and discredited regime despite Mr Brown's recent recovery in the polls, but the prospect of ministerial jags and bums on seats round the Cabinet table no doubt does strange things to some people.

One person who might have a wry smile on his face though is Tony Blair. He planned from the start to bring Lib Dems into the government as part of his grand project to reunite the liberal-left and keep the Tories out of power for 100 years, but was prevented from doing so by an unholy of alliance of Jack Straw, John Prescott and, you've guessed it, Gordon Brown.

How the Prawn Cocktail Offensive skewered New Labour

What with global economic meltdown and the ongoing crisis over Gordon Brown's leadership, poor Nick Clegg found himself struggling for attention this week. Here's today's column from the Newcastle Journal.

***

There is an old and venerable tradition in this column, going back a decade or more, that each September the Liberal Democrats get an annual opportunity to bask in the Linford, er, spotlight.

It’s only fair, after all, that a party that is invariably subjected to the third-party squeeze should have at least once chance each year to get its message across.

They certainly need it, with one poll this week showing the party’s share of the vote down to 12pc – its lowest standing since the early days of Paddy Ashdown’s leadership.

Two changes of leader since 2005 have not altered the party’s fundamental problem: that the Tory revival under David Cameron looks set to deprive it of most of its MPs in the South and West, with few corresponding gains from Labour in the North.

New-ish leader Nick Clegg did at least demonstrate this week that, like Mr Cameron, he too can make a speech without notes, even if he needed the help of a set of giant autocues all around the conference hall in Bournemouth.

And he did demonstrate a determination to reach out to voters on both right and left, in a tactically clever speech that managed to be both redistributionist and tax-cutting.

But sorry chaps, it is impossible, for this year at least, for me to devote to your conference the level of attention to which you have become accustomed in previous years.

In a week which saw both continuing global economic meltdown and the beginnings of a concrete challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership, the events in Bournemouth were no more than a sideshow.

It was a desperate, desperate week for the Prime Minister. As he battles to save his premiership, the one thing he needed above all was a trouble-free run-in to his party’s conference.

But his hopes of presiding over a moreorless united gathering in Manchester were shot to pieces last Friday evening when junior whip Siobhain McDonough went public with her call for a leadership challenge.

Ms McDonough was followed out of the door by party vice-chair Joan Ryan and special envoy Barry Gardiner, while another 12 MPs put their name to a barely-coded call for leadership change.

Finally, on Tuesday, came the resignation of David Cairns, Minister of State at the Scotland Office and the most senior figure so far to put his head above the parapet.

The rebels are as yet small in number. But it’s not about numbers so much as momentum, and the momentum is with the rebels.
Thus far, the revolt has spread from a couple of obscure backbenchers to former cabinet ministers to the whips office to the parliamentary private secretaries and finally to a minister of state.

It is surely now only a matter of time before it spreads to the Cabinet, with Barrow MP and Business Secretary John Hutton the overwhelming favourite to wield the knife.

The fact that Mr Hutton could not bring himself to condemn those MPs who have called for a leadership challenge this week was surely significant.

I myself have thought it likely for some time that Mr Brown would face a challenge this autumn, and before the recess, I argued on these pages that he probably should face one.

That said, it would have made a certain amount of sense for the rebels to hear what Mr Brown had to say in his conference speech before rushing to judgement about his prospects.

What the rebels are effectively saying is that there is nothing he can possibly say in his speech on Monday that can make any difference to his public standing – which is a somewhat crass position to adopt.

They may well be right – but if so, why not wait until after the speech before speaking out? It would, after all, only serve to make their argument that much stronger.

The one thing, it seems, that might rescue Mr Brown, is the continuing economic turmoil resulting from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of HBOS.

It certainly seems to have removed the immediate threat. As Harriet Harman said on Question Time, holding a leadership contest while people are worried about their jobs and savings would make little sense to the public.

It is a seductively persuasive argument, but the events of the past week have not removed the Prime Minister’s underlying political weakness. Indeed, if anything, they have intensified it.

What we are actually seeing is the old argument about Mr Brown being the “best person” to deal with economic turmoil being turned on its head. Increasingly, people are in fact blaming him for the mess.

The Prime Minister’s announcement on Thursday about “cleaning up the city” is a case in point. If it needs “cleaning up” now, what on earth was Mr Brown doing as Chancellor for 10 years to allow it get in such a state?

The truth is, New Labour made a strategic decision a decade and a half ago that it needed to win the support of big business in order to demonstrate its credibility as a party of government.

It was once known as the Prawn Cocktail offensive - in the days when City executives still ate the stuff. Nowadays it would probably be called the Seared Scallops offensive instead.

Either way, the upshot was that when Labour came to power, it proceeded to apply a light-touch regulatory framework that was never likely to prevent a credit-fuelled boom getting out of hand.

To my mind, Mr Brown will now forever be haunted by the phrase which, during the early years of his Chancellorship, he made his own: “No return to Tory boom and bust.”

Back in the days when “Prudence” ruled the roost at No 11, he was as good as his word – but eventually, he allowed his vanity – or was it just ambition? – to get the better of him.

Like Anthony Barber and Nigel Lawson before him, Mr Brown found the temptation to bask in the reflected glory of economic good times too hard to resist.

Now, as Prime Minister, he is reaping the whirlwind – and how.

Clegg "to back election winner" shock

God forbid that I ever turn into one of those gnarled old ex-lobby hacks who continually lament that political reporting is not what is was in their day....but the latest breathless revelations from Rosa Prince of the Telegraph's new-look political team had me shaking my head.

Writing on the usually excellent and informative Three Line Whip blog, she informs us that Nick Clegg will back David Cameron to become Prime Minister in the event of the Tories being the largest single party in a hung Parliament at the next General Election.

"Before now, it had been thought likely that Mr Clegg would wait until after an election to embark on negotiations with both of the main parties in the event of a hung Parliament. But The Daily Telegraph understands that he has decided that the public would not forgive him if he propped up a Labour administration that they had voted to throw out."

Well, blow me down. How long did it take The Daily Telegraph to "understand" that one, I wonder? I mean, it's not exactly rocket science, is it, to suggest that there would not be many votes for Cleggover in propping up a defeated Brown administration? With a second General Election likely to follow within the space of a year, he knows perfectly well it would be electoral suicide for him and his party.

The real dilemma for Clegg will come if Labour is the largest single party and the Tories are sufficiently far behind that they cannot form a government even with Lib Dem support - still a possible if currently rather unlikely scenario. In those circumstances the Lib Dem leader might be obliged to prop-up Labour in order to avert constitutional chaos.

Avid election speculators may like to take part in my Poll on the election outcome which I will be running between now and whenever the election comes. I plan to tot up the results each month and track the changes to see how opinion among blog readers is moving.

What now for Brown?

Martin Kettle thinks Labour MPs should tell him: "In the name of God, go." The Observer, slightly more charitably, thinks he should now focus on trying to devote himself to one or two core policy areas, in the hope that, should he lose in 2010, he will still be remembered for something other than being one of the shortest serving Prime Ministers in modern history.

So what's my take on it? Here's what I wrote in my weekly column in yesterday's Newcastle Journal.

***

Amidst the long list of disasters to hit Gordon Brown and New Labour during the course of local election night and after, it is hard to say which will have hurt the party the most.

Was it, perhaps, the loss of more than 300 councillors, or the Labour national share of the vote plunging to its lowest level since the days of Harold Wilson’s premiership?

Was it the party’s dismal performance in its so-called Northern “heartlands,” including the loss of Hartlepool, the continuing erosion of its position in Newcastle, and the Tory victory in North Tyneside?

Or was it possibly the humiliation of having your newly-appointed General Secretary resign before he has even taken up his post?

To my mind, it will have been none of those things, so much as the realisation that all the hopes of revival under a new leader that the sustained the party faithful during the latter years of Tony Blair have now been blown out of the water.

Make no mistake, this is as bad as it gets for Mr Brown, short of being dragged out of Downing Street feet first by David Cameron in May 2010.

As the pundits have not been slow to remind us, the last time Labour did this badly in a set of local elections was in 1968 when The Beatles were at No 1 and Flower Power was all the rage.

A more recent and more ominous historical parallel for Mr Brown is the 24pc share of the vote secured by John Major in 1995, two years before Mr Blair turfed him out of Number 10.

Is it bad enough for the Prime Minister to lose his job over? Well, it would be very easy for me to sit here and churn out a speculative piece about the potential runners and riders in a Labour leadership contest.

But in truth, it would be somewhat disingenuous. The fact is, I don’t detect any appetite in the party for another leadership change, and I don’t as yet detect any such stirrings in the political undergrowth.

Sure, some people are once again attempting to talk up the leadership chances of South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband - just as they were doing this time last year.

But he will have none of it, and neither will leading backbench Blairites such as Darlington MP Alan Milburn, although it has to be said he would have little to lose by trying.

As an aside, it is now clear that the Brownites made a serious strategic error in “hoovering-up” the votes of so many MPs last June that the left-winger John McDonnell was unable to get his name on the ballot paper.

Had Mr McDonnell been allowed to stand, Mr Brown would have won an easy victory and been able to swot away all those jibes about being an “unelected” Prime Minister.

Even better would have been a serious challenge, from the likes of John Reid or Charles Clarke, if only for the fact that it would have forced Mr Brown to set out his confounded “vision.”

I can only imagine they concluded it would have been a waste of their energies to take part in a contest that ultimately would only have strengthened the hated Gordon.

So there is, at least, the consolation for Mr Brown this weekend that, for good or ill, the party remains committed to going into the next election under his leadership.

But the continuing support of his party will be of little use to the Prime Minister in the longer term if the country has already decided that he is a liability.

In the wake of the credit crunch, there has been much talk of the need for an experienced economic helmsman to steer us through the choppy waters, but on Thursday night’s evidence, that argument is wearing thin.

It seems to me there are now just as many people who blame Mr Brown for the economic mess than there are people who think he is the best person to get us out of it.

And it’s not all about rising fuel bills and collapsing house prices. What is really harming Labour, in my view, is the feeling that they have run out of steam, that there is no longer any good reason to vote for them.

Less than a year ago, Mr Brown stood on the steps of Downing Street and used the word “change” 27 times as he set out his personal manifesto for power – but what has it actually amounted to?

Essentially, it has meant a greater emphasis on constitutional reform, the scrapping of the Manchester supercasino plan, tougher talk on cannabis, and a hospital deep clean.

They are all good things in themselves, in my view. But a programmme for government they do not make.

It is this paucity of vision, above all, that Mr Brown needs to address in the “relaunch” that he is now apparently preparing in the wake of Thursday’s election carnage.

Key to it will be the draft Queen’s Speech, which is set to be unveiled at the end of the month and which is expected to include measures on welfare, education reforms and involving the community in tackling crime.

But whatever its contents, it must demonstrate some innovative fresh thinking which captures the public’s imagination and which gives the government a new raison d’etre.

Above all, it must be authentically Labour, something which the public will see as fair and just and not simply as another piece of political posturing designed to out-tough the Tories.

This week, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg taunted Mr Brown by quoting Neil Kinnock’s “grotesque chaos” speech at him, in relation to the closure of thousands of post offices up and down the land.

Mr Clegg is right. Real Labour governments do not close the post offices on which deprived and isolated communities depend, any more than real Labour governments put up taxes on the poor.

That New Labour has tried to do both these things is symptomatic of a government which lost its moral compass a long time ago and, despite Mr Brown’s pretensions to the contrary, has failed to recover it.

Unless it can do so, and fast, then Thursday 1 May 2008 will come to be seen as the beginning of the end of the long Labour hegemony.

Openness, but only up to a point

Yesterday I ran a rather light-hearted post on the "Nick Clegg Superstud" revelations and other true stories that should have been April Fools. Judging by the lack of comments this attempt at sardonic humour obviously completely bombed, so it's back to serious today.

As the sage of Shropshire Jonathan Calder has already pointed out, releasing Clegg's GQ interview yesterday was a fiendishly clever piece of news management by the Lib Dems. The fact that it came out on April 1 would have led many people who read the story to assume it was a spoof, thereby lessening its impact.

But spoof it isn't and those Lib Dems of a sensitive disposition now have to get used to the fact that they now have a reformed serial shagger and teenage arsonist for a leader.

In what looks like something of a damage-limitation exercise, some of Clegg's colleagues have today praised his openness in being prepared to talk about such things, but they are missing one very vital point.

For me, the really interesting thing about Clegg is that while he is happy for us to know he was rather promiscuous in his younger days, happy for us to know he was an arsonist, happy for us to know he was a binge-drinker, even happy for us to know that he doesn't believe in God, he is still not prepared to say whether or not he has ever taken illegal drugs.

Once again, it begs the question just what is it about the drugs question that puts the willies up our political leaders, that causes the likes of Clegg to switch instantly from heart-on-the-sleeve mode to we're-entitled-to-a-private-life mode?

David Cameron famously refused to answer the same question after he became his party's leader, but even he owned up in the end, although the revelation that he had enjoyed a few spliffs at uni was a bit of a let-down to those who assumed his initial reticence must have meant the entire family fortune had disappeared up his nose.

If Clegg really does believe in "openness," he should bury this last taboo.