Conspiracy theories

I see another blogger has picked up on my piece of a few weeks back about Press Gallery Freemasonry, adding some new information of his own.

The same blog also has an interesting and rather alarming piece on some of the unanswered questions concerning the death of Robin Cook last August, together with a separate post on some official secrets he was alleged to have revealed before his death.

Spooky.

Jury still out on Ming

Differing opinions on the blogosphere today on whether Ming Campbell's problems have worsened or eased following this afternoon's PMQs.

Iain Dale: Ming Bombs Again at Question Time
Guido: Ming Doesn't Mess Up PMQs
Recess Monkey: Ming the Mindless
Skipper: Reading the Clues at PMQs

Unfortunately I didn't see it, so am unable to add my two penn'orth on this occasion, but I doubt there's much he could do to alter my view that the Lib Dems have made a big mistake.

Ace punter bets against Brown

Hat tip to Guido for drawing this to my attention, but Mike Smithson at the influential Politicalbetting.com site has today called the Labour leadership election against Gordon Brown.

This may of course reflect the fact that Gordon is currently very poor value at around 1-3 on compared with more attractive bets like 13-1 on Alan Johnson and John Reid, but nevertheless given the impact that political punters can have (remember the Chris Huhne betting ramp?) I think this is significant.

Smithson's case is that Brown is not a natural campaigner, and that if the election becomes contested, he will find it hard actually asking for votes he believes should come to him by right. He touts the most likely alternative as Johnson, arguing that he has the killer instinct Brown lacks.

I don't happen to agree with this - in my view Brown has enough of the unions and MPs' votes sewn up to be defeated in the constituency ballot and still win comfortably overall - but the fact that such a possibility is even being canvassed will doutbless add succour to his enemies - of which there are many.

Normal service resumed (again)

I'm now back online following a very relaxing long weekend in Jersey - luckily they had the Cup Final on in the hotel bar - so without further ado here's this week's Saturday Column and accompanying Podcast, about how Blair and Brown stepped back from the brink, together with my North West Enquirer column which focused among other things on how the North-West's MPs fared in the reshuffle.

In terms of other things that have been happening while I was away....the disquiet surrounding Ming Campbell has now reached the point where he feels obliged to deny that anything is wrong...Paddy Hennessy reckons John Reid is planning a Labour leadership bid, which may just be an attempt by the Brownites to flush him out...and there's some utter drivel from Stalin's Gran and others on Guido about how Labour would have lost the 1997 election under John Smith. Enjoy.

The other leadership crisis

What with all the current media focus on Blair and Brown, little attention has been paid thus far to the other unresolved leadership issue in British politics: whether Ming Campbell should be quietly pensioned off as leader of the Liberal Democrats.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I didn't support him as leader, but when he won I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Ming is a decent man, of that there is no question, but my suspicions that he would prove ill-suited to the demands of modern politics have proved sadly correct, and it is not just Tory MPs and part-time bloggers who think he cannot take the party through the glass ceiling.

He has failed to give the Liberal Democrats the distinctive branding and youthful appeal they had under Ashdown and Kennedy and even his House of Commons performances, which were expected to be his strong suit, have been stumbling.

Sir Ming's official explanation for last Thursday's underwhelming local election performance has been to say that it was a "night of consolidation."

But consolidation is not good enough for an opposition party when a Government is this unpopular. They must be making gains.

Party loyalty being what it is, there has been very little debate thus far in the Lib Dem blogosphere about this issue - where is the sadly-now-defunct Ming's Dynasty when we need you?

Perhaps the most thoughtful contributions, while stopping short of outright criticism of Sir Ming, have come from Quaequam and Jonathan Calder.

Jonathan writes: "It is hard to resist the conclusion that we Liberal Democrats are close to exhausting the incremental strategy we have followed so far. Local campaigning will continue to win us the odd sear. But in order to make a further breakthrough we shall have to develop policies that appeal to voters outside our current areas of strength.

"The questions then become whether we agree on enough as a party to be able to do that and whether we have the skills to put them across in the national media when we have done so."

Back from the brink

After a couple of days in which it looked like New Labour could genuinely implode, Messrs Blair and Brown appear to have stepped back from the brink once more.

Blair has done the sensible thing and, instead of seeking to provoke Brown beyond endurance, has acknowledged (a) that he probably will end up stepping down well before the end of his third term, (b) that he will organise an orderly handover, and (c) that Gordon remains, publicly at least, his chosen successor.

Inevitably this has been interpreted as meaning he will go next year, but as I have said before, I always thought that was the likelist scenario.

As Nick Robinson has noted, Brown has very little alternative but to go along with this, unless he wants to inherit a fatally divided party.

Of all the punditry that has appeared on this over recent days, quite the most ludicrous came from Robert Harris, who argued that Blair should in fact sack Brown unless he publicly commits to allow him to serve a full third term.

And what do you suppose Gordon would then do next, Mr Harris? Say: "Okay Tony, you win," and slink off to the backbenches to make the occasional speech on neo-endogenous growth theory? No, he would be straight down the Strangers' Bar with Nicky Brown and Dougie Henderson to organise a leadership contest.

By contrast, the most sensible piece of advice was yesterday's Guardian leader pointing out the huge responsibilities now lying on both men to avoid a civil war.

I think they may have just about managed it - for now.

Blair-must-go watch update:

Calling for Blair to go now/this year

Andrew Smith
Frank Dobson
Ashok Kumar
Glenda Jackson
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
The Economist
The New Statesman
Polly Toynbee
Matthew Parris
Jonathan Freedland
Stephen Pollard
Paul Linford
Bloggerheads
BBC Newsnight poll
Times Populus poll

Demanding a timetable for leadership handover

Neal Lawson/Compass
Nick Raynsford
Martin Salter

Calling for Blair to go next year

The Times
Rhodri Morgan

Calling for Blair to serve "full third term."

Robert Harris
Janet Anderson

Reshuffle gives new legs to English Parliament campaign

Tony Blair's decision to make John Reid Home Secretary and promote Douglas Alexander to Transport Secretary has given further impetus to the debate about England's democratic deficit, as witness this letter by former Home Secretary Lord Baker in today's Telegraph.

Of the two, I am less concerned by Dr Reid's appointment. Although Scotland has a separate legal system it is not strictly the case that the Home Office is an "English-only" department, especially now that most of its work consists of dealing with homeland security issues.

Slightly more troubling is the appointment of yet another Scot as Transport Secretary, given that transport is not only an entirely devolved matter but that, under the Barnett Formula, the Scottish transport budget is way in excess of that of England's in terms of spending-per-head.

More reaction at the CEP newsblog.

Ron tires of badger-watching

I see from the Western Mail that my old mucker Ron Davies is considering another political comeback.

Seriously, I hope he makes it. Politics needs its colourful characters, and of all the people forced to resign from Blair's Government, he was possibly the most harshly treated.

The Little Red Book

In the unlikely event that there is anyone who reads my blog who doesn't also read Iain Dale and/or Guido Fawkes, here's a plug for their forthcoming Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze to which I and other bloggers have contributed. You can order a copy online, via Politicos, natch, by clicking here.

So does going bald make you want to go with rent boys?

As a baldy, I was both amused and relieved to read this story by Brendan Carlin in today's Daily Telegraph on the latest Mark Oaten revelations.

“Balding men generally will hardly welcome the link between hair loss and having an affair with a rent boy,” he writes.

I can of course personally attest to the truth of this observation - but what I am sure we're all dying to know is what Nick Robinson thinks.

After the long night, now for the night of the long knives....

It's 6am and I've just finished covering the local elections for our 30 this is websites - a very different kettle of fish from covering for one newspaper as I've done for most of my career.

Anyway, it's clear this has been a terrible night for Labour and that Blair is going to have to do something mighty big in today's reshuffle to knock this off the front pages.

The Labour Party - and even some of its traditional supporters in the media - is finally realising what some of us knew even before the last election - that Blair is now an electoral liability.

He got away with it in 2005 for the simple reason that he was up against Howard. But now the Tories have got themselves a half-decent leader, there's nowhere left to hide.

Surely the most chilling spectacle of the night for Blair will have been seeing Nick Brown, the grim-faced assassin from the North-East whom he sacked three years ago, telling David Dimbleby that something had to be done to halt the drift.

Asked whether there was anything Blair could actually do, Brown replied: "Well, he'll have to try." And if he fails, we all know what "Newky" will do next.

So what of the reshuffle? Well, there has been so much speculation about this over the past couple of days that I sense that literally anything could happen, and I'm not about to make an idiot of myself by making predictions that could look silly by the end of the day.

I reckon there'll be at least one big surprise, but whether it will be enough to save Blair is surely very much in doubt.

The problem isn't Prescott, Clarke or Hewitt - it's Tony Blair

"This Government does not need another relaunch, still less another shifting of the deckchairs on the Titanic. It needs putting out of its misery – and fast."

That's my verdict on the Government's current troubles, as set out in my Saturday Column and accompanying Podcast.

Charles Clarke is clearly on the way out and I doubt that John Prescott will be that far behind him - but I don't think either of these things are going to fundamentally alter the fortunes of this increasingly wretched government.

Only a change at the top will do that.

New Enquirer column goes live

The newly-launched North-West Enquirer has kindly granted me another platform to air my views on national politics, regionalism and other matters in the shape of a weekly column.

My first effort focuses on a question that has surfaced several times on this blog - whether there can be a future for elected regional government in the wake of the North-East referendum defeat in November 2004.

My general take on this is that while it is currently extremely unlikely, the creeping regionalisation of public services such as the police and fire brigades means the issue is eventually likely to recur in some form.

You can read it in full by clicking here.