So what was it all about, Dave?

He doesn't want to make a big song and dance about it, apparently, but fellow blogger Iain Dale is today quietly celebrating his elevation to the Tories' "A-list" of Parliamentary candidates.

Whether or not you agree with him, Iain is clearly a highly effective advocate for the Conservative Party and I'm sure will go on to play a significant role in national politics in years to come.

But now that this glaring injustice has been righted, it is perhaps timely to ask what on earth was achieved by leaving Dale off the list in the first place, other than to make the debate over the introduction of the A-list much more rancourous than it otherwise would have been?

All it did was foster a doubtless wrong impression among grassroots Tories that supporters of David Davis, or outspoken bloggers, or middle-aged men - or possibly even all three - were being victimised.

Now Marina socks it to Lampard

Latest to feel the razor sharp pen of Guardian writer Marina "Snide" Hyde is England footballer Frank Lampard, who is publishing a new autobiography entitled "Totally Frank."

And though Chelsea and West Ham fans will doubtless disagree, I have to say that never was a target more deserving.

"Having failed to deliver in Germany, the honourable thing for any of these three fabulously rich gentlemen might have been to return their advance to the publishers, and to have been self-aware enough to realise that a period of silence from them would be most welcome" writes Marina, referring also to the recent autobiog from Wayne Rooney and a forthcoming one from Ashley Cole.

The full article can be read HERE.

Kennedy could still be a contender, says White

I am not sure whether this piece by Mike White is entirely helpful to Charles Kennedy, but it does show there are other, more respectable commentators than me who think he could plausibly lead the Lib Dems again one day.

Is political cross-dressing really here to stay?

"The era of tribal political leadership is over," said Tony Blair in his keynote speech to the Murdoch Corporation on Sunday. Not surprisingly it has already provoked some lively debate, not least on Labour Home.

I can see three very good reasons why he would say such a thing. First, because he believes it, though he is wrong about that. Second, because he would like to be able to claim that ridding the British Left of ideology is part of his precious legacy, though he is wrong about that too.

But the main reason he said it was simply an attempt to guarantee Labour's future relationship with Murdoch, reassuring him that socialism really isn't going to make a comeback under his successors and that the Labour Party is now just as apt to end up to the right of the Tories as to the left.

In his analysis of the Tories, and David Cameron at least, he is correct, as I have previously discussed. Where Blair falls down - not for the first time in his career - is in his understanding of the Labour Party.

For of course, the two beasts are not the same. There are plenty of people out there - as any brief visit to Iain Dale will confirm - who think that David Cameron is destroying the ideological base of the Conservative Party in much the way Blair destroyed Labour's.

They are wrong as it happens, because although belief in a right-wing ideology (low taxation, small government etc) is undoubtedly one of Conservatism's distinguishing characteristics, it has not, historically speaking, been the party's underlying raison d'etre.

At different times in its history, the "clothes" that most would nowadays associate with the Tory Party have regularly been worn by others, notably Gladstone's liberals in the 19th century and Joe Chamberlain's imperialists in the early 20th.

What the Conservative Party is really about - and this is why the Hague-IDS-Howard years were such a surprising aberration - is the pursuit and retention of power, allied to an underlying belief that, in a small-c conservative country, it is invariably the party best qualified to exercise it.

This has never been true of the Labour Party, in that the pursuit of power for its own sake has never been its underlying raison d'etre. As Harold Wilson said: "The Labour Party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing."

Let's face it, even Tony Blair has had to pay lip service to that, although his pre-1997 talk of governing in the interests of "the many not the few" now sound increasingly hollow.

Either way, such is the degree of anger felt by many Labour members at Mr Blair's abandonment of its historic principles that it is inconceivable that, under its next leader, the party will not seek to reconnect with those roots.

Whatever the Tories do, it is my belief that the Labour Party will remain the party of fairness, justice, tolerance, internationalism and all those old ideals - owing much more to Jesus than Marx - with which it has always been associated.

Update: Just spotted an excellent post by Shaphan - one of the most underrated political bloggers around - which highlights another aspect of Mr Blair's attitude to ideology, namely the way he pronounces the word.

In my view, his pronunciation of it to rhyme with idiocy as opposed to idealism has always been quite deliberate.

Ming's Dynasty: Where are you when we need you?

The late, lamented satirical blog Ming's Dynasty, formed in the aftermath of the Lib Dem leadership election earlier this year, would have had a field day with the current goings-on in the party.

Welsh Assembly Member Peter Black kicked it all off last week with a well-argued piece on his blog saying that Ming Campbell needed to shape up by the time of September's party conference - or ship out.

Then the News of the Screws claimed on Sunday that Charles Kennedy planned to challenge Ming in an audacious bid to regain the party leadership, leading to a spate of denial stories in this morning's papers.

Meanwhile, over at Conservative Home, they are once again talking up the leadership chances of their favourite Lib Dem Nick Clegg - the one they hope will split his party by leading the Orange Bookers into a coalition with the Chameleon.

To make matters worse, Lib Dem blogger Jonathan Calder has written a piece in today's Guardian which, while attempting to defend Ming, actually serves to highlight his real problem.

In his piece, Jonathan argues that Lib Dem image-makers should stop trying to turn Ming into something he isn't and just "let Ming be Ming."

Well, I have a fair amount of respect for Jonathan whose blog is by some way the best of the bunch as far as Lib Dem blogs are concerned, but this argument is so manifestly ludicrous that it needs to be countered.

The problem is in fact diametrically the opposite - not that Ming isn't being allowed to be Ming, but that Ming is Ming.

Chris Huhne on the English Question

Thanks to Tom Griffin of the Green Ribbon blog for drawing to my attention some interesting stuff on the English Question in the current edition of Prospect magazine.

It features four differing viewpoints on the Tories' "English votes for English laws" initiative, the most interesting of which from my point of view is from the former - and future? - Lib Dem leadership contender, Chris Huhne.

"If the Tories do decide to campaign to end Scottish votes on English laws, they will be on fertile ground. Scotland receives far more public spending per head than England, and there is a sense of injustice in poorer English regions," he writes.

Quite so. But Huhne does not go on to advocate English votes for English laws, suggesting instead the issue can be dealt with simply by creating a new Parliamentary convention.

"There is another way the problem could be dealt with without creating two classes of MP: a new convention that prevented purely English legislation going forward unless it had not only a majority of the House of Commons voting for it but also a majority of MPs from English constituencies.

"Labour would not like this approach, as it might prevent the party getting legislation through. Too bad. Those who promote devolution must live with its consequences," adds Huhne.

For my part, I would still like to see one or both of the Opposition parties really putting Gordon Brown on the spot over the English Question by backing an English Parliament - or even better, for Brown to outflank his critics in the Anglosphere by coming out in favour of one himself.

But even though he stresses he is writing in a "personal capacity," Huhne's piece in my view shows the kind of innovative thinking we should be looking for in our future political leaders.

Brown v McDonnell: Is there a third way?

I promised last week that I would be having a closer look at the question of whether there is a viable alternative to what, for some on the left, is the increasingly unappetising choice of Gordon Brown or John McDonnell for the Labour leadership when the Great Pretender finally stands down.

I duly made this the main topic of discussion in my weekly Saturday columns and accompanying Podcast this weekend, a copy of which has also been posted on my new Labour Home blog HERE.

In it, I discuss the prospects of Margaret Beckett, Peter Hain and John Denham as potential soft-left candidates, while also arguing that Gordon the Leader will prove to be much more progressive than Gordon the Candidate is allowing himself to be.

One thing of which I am certain is that Gordon could not have made yesterday's speech by Blair to the Murdoch Corporation on political cross-dressing, even if it costs him the support of the Dirty Digger at the next election.

Led Zep is MPs' music of choice

A suitably light-hearted subject on which to end another week's blogging - unlike the indefatigable Iain Dale I tend to avoid computer screens at weekends, at least in summer, so no need to bother coming here again until Monday.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. A poll has revealed that Led Zeppelin II is the most popular British No 1 album of all time with MPs.

Led Zep were a bit before my time, to be honest - I was still listening to Mungo Jerry in those days - but it was good to see nominations for Human League's Dare (Mark Oaten) and Swing Out Sister's It's Better to Travel (Tory MP Mark Field), both of which would be in my Top 30.

My own favourite? It depends which day you ask me, but it would be between Steve McQueen by Prefab Sprout, Screamadelica by Primal Scream, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, by Genesis, and Programmed to Love, by Bent.

McDonnell's challenge is not enough

There's a good piece currently running on Labour Home on why the left needs a different challenger from John McDonnell in the leadership election, when it happens.

I broadly agree with this premise, and have posted a comment accordingly, but I may well return to this subject in more detail shortly.

More bad news for Ming

I don't want to become a prophet of doom for the Liberal Democrats, but today's ICM poll putting the Tories on 39pc, Labour on 35pc and the LDs on 17pc makes very grim reading.

As political betting guru Mike Smithson points out, there is now evidence that we are returning to an old-style two-party battle as the prospect of a tight election race in 2009/10 draws closer.

"For the first time in a decade and a half there is just the prospect of a Tory General Election win and it is this that might be keeping Labour stable and squeezing the Lib Dems," says Mike.

Furthermore, things could get worse before they get better. The Guardian's piece on the poll outlines a "nightmare scenario" in which Ming's conference speech bombs, new left-right splits emerge over "Orange Book II," and Charles Kennedy pops up to remind us all he ain't finished yet.

The sole silver lining to all is that Cameron is only four points ahead of Labour whereas he will need to be eight or nine points ahead to win a parliamentary majority under the current system.

Cameron is therefore likely to need to bring Campbell into a Tory-Lib Dem coalition - which would be fine if it wasn't for that the fact that Campbell would much rather go into a coalition with Gordon Brown.

I don't want to harp on - honest - but in the difficult electoral circumstances in which the Lib Dems now find themselves, it seems vital to me that the party has both a clear, distinctive message and a popular, charistmatic leader.

Currently, it has neither.

Oaten makes a wise move

A curious reticence seems to have descended on the Lib Dem blogosphere over the long-overdue announcement by Mark Oaten that he is standing down as an MP at the next election.

Doubtless it stems from that very British desire not to kick a man when he is down, and in some senses I sympathise with that.

In others, though, I think this has been a deeply unsatisfactory episode in terms of the relationship between politicians and the public, and the role of the media in maintaining that relationship.

It was regularly alleged that "the media establishment," or "the Lobby" had kept Charles Kennedy's drinking a secret. Well, likewise, the News of the Screws decided the great British public didn't really need to know the details of what Oaten had been getting up to with rent boys, saying only that it was "too revolting to describe."

I understand their reasons, of course, but in a case such as this, what you then end up with is a situation where the public only gets half the story and is hence not able to make an informed judgement about whether they want someone to represent them.

In this instance, the nature of the "revolting" act is and always was the story, because it is this, rather than the fact that Oaten used rent boys, which would persuade most normal people not to vote for him.

As it is, thanks in part to the blogosphere and its ability to disemminate material such as this, Oaten probably concluded in the end that enough people knew the truth to make his position untenable.

Amidst all the self-delusion that has characterised his career in recent months, including thinking that he could be leader of the Liberal Democrats, he at least deserves to be congratulated for finally recognising the reality of this.

Whither the Lobby?

Guido Fawkes and myself are debating the future of the Lobby System over at the Press Gazette's excellent Discuss Journalism site today.

Basically, Guido thinks it's undemocratic and elitist and should be abolished, while I think that abolishing it would lead to its replacement by something even more elitist and undemocratic. Further contributions, either on this site or the Press Gazette's, are of course very welcome.

Brown to axe Blair's "city regions" project?

A few weeks back, I wrote in the North West Enquirer, Newcastle Journal and elsewhere about Ruth Kelly's plans to roll-out the "London model" of devolution to cities like Manchester and Newcastle as the latest move in the Government's regional agenda.

According to old regional lobby mucker Jon Walker in yesterday's Birmingham Post, however, this will be one of the first things to go once Gordy gets his hands on the levers of power. Interesting.