Monday, September 18, 2006

That List: My Verdict

Iain Dale has published his long awaited booklet listing the Top 100 Political Blogs. He's ranked me at No 10 so, before I say anything else, thanks Iain for the accolade. At the start of this year, when my blog had only a few hundred visitors a month, I'd have more than settled for a Top Ten placing. And to finish one ahead of Boris Johnson and two ahead of Adam Boulton was particularly satisfying!

Dale describes me as a "Regional Lobby Journalist based in Derbyshire whose writing is like fine wine." Tim Worstall has had a bit of fun at my expense with the "fine wine" bit, but I don't mind that. What I do mind (though only slightly) is being called a regional lobby journalist. I am, of course, ex-lobby.

Anyway, it's a truly Stakhanovite effort from the great man. He not only lists the Top 100 blogs overall, but the Top 100 in the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and non-aligned categories. I am fourth in the non-aligned group behind Guido, Political Betting, and Dr Crippen, aka the NHS Blog Doctor. Can't complain about any of that.

To my mind, however, Iain's complex ranking system has thrown up one or two rather glaring anomalies in the list which I feel it is my duty to point out.

First, he rates the new Lib Dem version of Conservative Home, Liberal Democrat Voice at No 4 in the list, despite the fact that it has only been existence for about a fortnight. Meanwhile Political Betting is placed no higher than No 6.

This is simply silly. PB.com is a Top Four blog by anyone's standards and as high an authority as Guido - who doesn't dish out the compliments readily - once described Mike Smithson as having "more insight than the whole of the Lobby put together."

The most glaring omission however is Labour Watch, which makes only No 89 in the non-aligned list. This is very unfair on Lib Dem blogger Inamicus who, in compiling tales of Labour misdeeds from local and regional papers around the country, is doing something no other blog is currently doing.

Finally, Dale is way too modest about his own standing in the blogosphere. He rates his blog as the 3rd best overall and the 2nd best Tory blog, but most people would rate it No 1 in both categories.

Guido is frequently more amusing and his stories more politically damaging, Conservative Home is more comprehensive in its breadth of coverage of Tory politics, and PB.com generates easily the best online debates, but none is consistently as good as Dale's Diary.

Apparently his career is about to go in a new direction. I wonder what we are going to do without him?

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Friday, September 15, 2006

The Johnson-for-PM plot: Where are the mainstream media?

I won't bore you with the technical details. Suffice to say that if you are really interested in how registering domain names works, and how an Alan Johnson 4 Leader website came into being, you can read it all in detail on Dizzy Thinks and Bloggerheads.

But the point is not how they did it, but the fact that it was done at all. And it seems to me that, between them, Dizzy and Tim Ireland have established beyond reasonable doubt that - in Tim's words - before there was an alleged plot by Brownites to depose Blair, there was an actual plot by Blairites to undermine the Chancellor and push Alan Johnson as the next PM!

The key figure in the plot is a character called David Taylor who will already be well known to readers of Tim's blog. He is the absurd loyalist behind the Keeping the Faith website set up to proclaim the Prime Minister's "achievements" in the aftermath of last week's "Brownite coup."

But inquiries have now revealed that prior to that, on 5 September in fact, he registered four new domain names for a Johnson leadership campaign: johnson4leader.org.uk, johnson4leader.co.uk, johnson4leader.org, and johnson4leader.com.

This story has now been on Dizzy's blog since Monday. It has even been on Iain Dale, the blog which not inaccurately boasts that it is read by virtually every political journalist in Westminster. So why hasn't it been in the papers?

Eleven years ago, when I first started out in the Lobby, some friends of Michael Portillo were caught installing some phone lines in a house near Westminster which was to have been used in a leadership campaign. There was an almighty furore and Portillo's leadership chances were sunk, as it turned out, for ever.

The technology may have moved on - but is what Taylor is now doing on behalf of Alan Johnson really any different to this?

Could it possibly be that the papers have ignored the story because they hate the thought of the leadership contest turning into a foregone conclusion, and are themselves desperate to promote Johnson as a credible alternative?

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

Clare Short - the woman who saved Bliar

Doubtless Tony Blair will be glad to see the back of Clare Short, who today confirmed that she would be standing down as an MP at the next General Election.

In reality, though, Blair has cause to be extremely grateful to the former International Development Secretary, whose failure to resign along with Robin Cook prior to the Iraq War in 2003 arguably saved his premiership.

In the run-up to the crucial Parliamentary vote on the conflict early that year, all the speculation had been about whether Cook, or Short, or both, would quit - and whether that in turn might cause the Government itself to implode.

However a North-East MP who was once a close ally of Cook's told me at the time that under no circumstances would the two of them resign together. "If he goes, she won't, and if he doesn't, she will," he said.

In the event, this turned out to be spot-on. Apparently the enmity between the two went back to some arcane split on the left in the early 1980s, and though the subject of Iraq was close to both their hearts, they never even discussed it between them.

Short did of course resign after the war, and the content of her resignation speech about Mr Blair's obsession with his place in history was devastating, but by then, the PM had seen off the immediate threat to his leadership, and its political impact was greatly reduced.

I still believe that if she had delivered that speech immediately before or after Cook's at the start of the Commons debate, Blair could not have recovered.

In the end, Short's ego and desire not to be outshone by Cook was more important to her than getting rid of this lying Prime Minister and saving this country from a disastrous war.

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Beta Blogger is here!

Finally got around to switching over to the new Beta-Blogger service today although I've decided to resist the temptation to go for a big re-design because I really like the "clean" look and feel of the Rounders 3 Template I've been using since it started up.

Most of the improvements are for my own benefit - it's now much easier to install new links and move bits of text around - but hopefully it will also result in a better service to readers.

The two main changes from an end-user point of view are the much-improved Archive section which now enables you to drill down to the exact post you are looking for, and the installation of a politics news feed from the BBC for the benefit of anyone who might want to use the site as a first port-of-call when looking up the day's political developments.

Needless to say I'm continuing to enjoy doing the blog and was particularly chuffed to read on PB.com today that Mike Smithson rates it "the best blog for Labour matters." High praise indeed!

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Wednesday, September 13, 2006

So when will the next election take place?

Conventional wisdom has it that the next General Election will take place in 2009. Indeed Jack Straw seemed to suggest this last week when he said Tony Blair would be stepping down at the "mid-point" of the current Parliament.

But I think there is, to say the least, room for doubt over whether this will in fact turn out to be case.

The convention of four-year Parliaments has grown up largely since 1979. Both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair clearly favoured a four-year electoral cycle, and when John Major opted instead for five years, much good did it do him.

But is this purely a matter of Prime Ministerial preference, or is there something inherent in the political cycle that makes four years an optimum time to seek re-election, as opposed to, say, three or five?

For my part, I think that if Gordon Brown wins the Labour leadership election - and I would certainly interpret today's "Real Labour" speech by Alan Johnson as a rival bid - he will be sorely tempted to call a General Election straight away.

There are some compelling arguments in favour of such a course of action. It would enable him to extract maximum political impact from the poll bounce from which all new leaders benefit, and also to exploit to the full his experience against David Cameron's lack of it.

Victory would give Brown his own mandate independent of Tony Blair and hence release him from any obligation to follow Blair's policies. It would also nip the Cameron revival in the bud, condemning the Tories to another four or five years of opposition in which they may well self-destruct again.

What might get in the way of all this, however, is Brown's natural caution, and desire to avoid going down in history as the shortest-serving Premier since Andrew Bonar Law.

By that token, if he does not hold an election in 2007, or perhaps early in 2008, I think there is just as much chance he will go on till 2010, particularly if he wants to be able to point to a solid record of achievement as premier when he eventually goes to the country.

Is there a betting market on this? If so, maybe this would be a good discussion point for Political Betting.com to take up.

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Hain's debt to Ron Davies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Gordon is still the hot favourite

Amid all the speculation about possible Labour leadership contenders over recent days, some things are steadily becoming clearer.

There has inevitably been much excitement in the ultra-Blairite "Anyone But Gordon" camp at the prospects of Education Secretary Alan Johnson (pictured.) This always struck me as rather odd, however, as in no way could former trade union leader Johnson could be described as an ultra-Blairite.

Polly Toynbee makes the same point in today's Guardian. Johnson might well be a candidate, but will not be the candidate of the ultra-Blairite right. Furthermore, he is more interested in the deputy leadership than the leadership, although he will have Peter Hain for a rival.

Toynbee writes of Johnson: "He is too wise a politician to have this unsavoury, wrecking role thrust upon him. In fact, those who know him best say he will have none of it. So it seems certain he will only stand if some Blairite candidate stands first. In other words, he will not be their champion. But he might enter the race as a third force, intent on keeping the election clean, stopping it descending into internecine abuse. What's more, he would not enter the lists expecting to emerge as leader, but as a marker for his deputy leadership bid."

In a further blow for the ultras, David Miliband has again confirmed today that he will not be a candidate for either position, for the benefit of those who didn't believe him on the previous occasions on which he's said it.

So if Johnson won't be their candidate, and Miliband won't be a candidate at all, where does that leave the Blairites? With the somewhat unappetising choice of Reid (too much of a Scottish bruiser), Milburn (no support among MPs), Hutton (ditto, and lacks charisma) or Clarke (too prone to ill-considered outbursts after lunch.)

In other words, while Gordon undoubtedly did not help his chances during last week's shenanigans, I think the people who are predicting that he has blown it are getting slightly carried away.

As I said on PB.com last week, there is a fairly settled will among Labour Party members and the unions that it has got to be Gordon, and it would take an astonishing turnaround in mainstream party opinion for him to be denied the leadership at this late stage.

There is another point worth considering, and that is the fact that throughout Labour history, the party has almost always chosen the front-runner when electing a new leader.

In all but one of the Labour leadsership contests since the Second World War, the man who started out favourite has ended up winning comfortably: Hugh Gaitskell in 1955, Harold Wilson in 1963, James Callaghan in 1976, Neil Kinnock in 1983, John Smith in 1992, and Tony Blair in 1994.

The sole exception was in 1980 when Labour MPs, by a tiny margin of 139 votes to 129, chose the hapless Michael Foot over the greatest leader they never had, Denis Healey.

And that, with all due respect to Footie, is hardly a precedent that the party will want to repeat.

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Monday, September 11, 2006

A day for remembrance

I guess everyone remembers where they were when 9/11 happened. I was working in the House of Commons at the time, just the length of a corridor away from Big Ben, while my wife and I were living in Docklands, a stone's throw away from another potential terrorist target, Canary Wharf.

A colleague hurried back from lunch to say a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Centre. We switched over to Sky News in our room in the Press Gallery and watched as the plumes of smoke rose from the first tower, convinced we were watching the aftermath of a terrible accident.

Then the second plane appeared. "Look, there's another one!" exclaimed a regional newspaper colleague. Almost as he said it, the other plane smashed into the second tower.

I don't think any of us could quite believe what was happening. For a moment, there was silence in the room, then someone said slowly "That was deliberate," and we all hit the phones to our head offices.

Of course it went without saying that the world had changed in an instant, but what I don't think we all fully appreciated at the time was how much British politics had changed too, kicking off the chain of events that was to destroy Tony Blair's once-promising premiership.

Mr Blair had been due to give a speech to the TUC that day in which he would mount a vigourous defence of the Government's public service reforms. Of course the speech was never delivered, and somehow the raison d'etre of a government that had come into power to improve the public services got lost along the way too.

But personal reminiscences and political consequences aside, it is right that, above all today, we remember those who lost their lives.

Here is one of many sites that aims to commemorate the victims of 9/11, including those that died in the other hijacks.

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Friday, September 08, 2006

So who the f*** said it?

As the Blairites start to take their revenge on Gordon Brown for the week's shenangigans, Guido has asked his legions of readers for their help in identifying the Cabinet minister who told Nick Robinson that Brown "would be a fucking dreadful Prime Minister and I will do all in my power to stop him."

Well, I'm happy to lend a hand as it's a question that's been buzzing round in my mind too.

Going through the Cabinet list one-by-one, the following can be ruled out because they are bascially friends or supporters of Gordon: Prescott, Straw, Beckett, Darling, Hain, Alexander, Browne, Hewitt and Timms.

Meanwhile the following can be ruled out because they are too nice to use words like fuck - at least in public: Kelly, Miliband, Armstrong, Jowell, Amos, Benn and Smith.

Which to my mind leaves five prime suspects in the frame: Reid, Johnson, Falconer, Blears and Hutton.

Taking these in turn, Reid would seem to be the hot favourite, both on account of his well-documented views on Gordon and occasionally belligerent nature. But there's one problem - he was out of the country yesterday, and this exchange with Robinson has the air of something uttered to his face rather than over the phone.

What about Johnson, then? Well, it's the kind of thing he might have said, but he has been playing his cards very close to his chest with regard to the leadership, and I find it unlikely he would have used words to Robinson which would effectively confirm his candidature.

Blears? I'll say this much - she's the only Cabinet woman you can imagine making such a remark, and she's no fan of the Chancellor either. But it still sounds like a blokey comment to me, and Blears, as party chairman, will be aware of the need for her to remain publicly above the fray.

What about Falconer? Now I think we're possibly getting warmer. Some would say he's too urbane to use the f-word, but in my experience posh lawyers are just as foul-mouthed as their more humble counterparts. And with his Cabinet career at an end if Brown takes over, he certainly has the motive.

Finally, Hutton. He's often thought of as Mr Geniality but he sounded pretty tetchy to me on the Today Programme yesterday, especially when asked about whether he endorsed Gordon for leader. Maybe he's picked up some bad habits from his former flatmate Alan Milburn who swears like a trouper. Particularly about Gordon.

So there it is. But there's a serious point here too, in that if this the kind of thing the Blairites are saying about Gordon, then it is clear he is now facing a concerted attempt to block him, with all the consequential risks of a lasting split in the party if that effort succeeds.

You can be sure of one other thing, too. That Gordon's people will also be doing their damnedest to find out who said it.

****

To round off a hectic week's blogging, here's a couple of other things that caught my eye today.

First, Times Political Editor Philip Webster's front page story on the crisis, which contains the intriguing paragraph: "But Mr Brown appeared to be the unassailable favourite to succeed Mr Blair as one minister after another offered support to the Chancellor."

As any fule kno, at least at Westminster, the word "unassailable" has long been a political code-word for someone who is about to be sacked - after Margaret Thatcher used it about her soon-to-be-departing Chancellor Nigel Lawson in 1989.

Was this just Webster's little joke? Or was it possibly something more sinister, a warning to Brown delivered via one of the Blair camp's most trusted scribes that he is riding for an almighty fall?

Finally, the Blair fightback continues with the establishment of a new website, Keeping the Faith, dedicated to defending the PM against the "minority" of MPs who are trying to dethrone him.

Among those who have signed the online petition are Adrian McMenamin, the combative former Labour press officer whose job used to involve infiltrating the opposition parties' conferences and instantly rebutting any attack on New Labour, and Darren Murphy, the former Milburn SPAD who went on to become Mr Blair's political secretary.

But for a brilliant deconstruction of the site and the people behind it, I hereby direct you to this piece on Bloggerheads.

Tim "Manic" Ireland's twisted humour is quite frequently beyond me. But he has played an absolute blinder on this one.

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Thursday, September 07, 2006

It's not enough

Tony Blair has confirmed what we already knew and said he will stand down within the next year. Gordon Brown has said the timing is his decision and warned there can be no more private agreements or pacts.

But is it enough? Will Tony Blair now get his 10 years after all? And will Gordon Brown really just sit back and wait for him to go, in the certain knowledge that each day that goes by gives his enemies more chance of finding an alternative?

No, I don't think so. The heart of the issue - the political dynamic which is really driving this crisis and which has caused it come to a head now - remains unresolved.

That is quite simply the desire among Labour MPs for a new leader to be in place by the time of the local and devolved elections in May so they can begin the fightback against David Cameron's resurgent Tories.

On my blog earlier, I set out an way in which that could happen, with a new party leader taking over in March, but Blair remaining PM until May - the "Aznar Option" as it has been termed.

This to me is the only way in which both sides can salvage something from this, but there is no indication that it is even on the agenda. Indeed Mr Brown, in his statement, seemed to go out of his way to stress there can be no more deals.

The only Blairite minister who has really been seeking to pour oil on the party's troubled waters has been David Miliband, who I must say has gone hugely up in my estimation today.

In his interview with the New Statesman, he not only ruled himself out of contention for the leadership - a sensible move at his age - but made clear that he wanted a stable transition to Mr Brown - and no-one else.

By contrast, some of the Blairites seem determined to try to goad Mr Brown beyond endurance, with John Hutton the new flavour-of-the-month among the ranks of the "Anyone But Gordon" faction.

One Cabinet ally of Mr Blair is reported to have told the BBC's Nick Robinson tonight: "He would be a fucking dreadful Prime Minister and I will do everything in my power to stop him."

Mike Smithson has a theory that this is what the row has really been about - that Brown has realised Blair intends to make a real contest of it by stringing out his departure and endorsing other candidates' right to put themselves forward.

If that proves to be the case, then this week's shenangigans will prove only to have been the opening skirmishes in a bitter and protracted civil war.

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Okay, here's The Deal (III)

Tony Blair is due to set out later today the plans for his departure, but unless he agrees to go before the Scottish and Welsh elections in May, I can't see it resolving the current crisis.

As I wrote yesterday, it is these elections that now lie at the heart of the issue, and the very real fear among MPs that Labour will lose control of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly unless Blair is gone by then.

Blair and Brown are reported to have had a furious bust-up, with the Chancellor demanding that the PM go before Christmas, and Blair continuing to dig his heels in.

As both the Times and Guardian have argued in their leader columns this morning, some sort of deal is now urgently necessary to stop the Government imploding. Here's what I think such a deal would need to say in order for it to stick.

* Brown publicly disassociates himself from the current attempts to force Blair out of office now and endorses the need for him to be allowed to make a "dignified exit."

* Blair announces that he will leave 10 Downing Street on May 4, 2007, immediately after the local and devolved elections, and three days after the 10th anniversary of his coming to power.

* Labour convenes a special conference in January to trigger an election for a new leader of the party, to be in place by March.

* A two-month dual premiership then ensues, with the new Labour leader heading up the party's campaign for the local and devolved elections while Blair remains a "caretaker" Prime Minister.

* Blair makes clear that he continues to endorse Brown as his successor and disowns the comments by Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers which appear to suggest the need for a different direction.

* Brown continues to make clear that his Government will be New Labour to the core -which to be fair he always has done.

If this scenario appears slightly to favour Brown, it is because it is the Chancellor who is in the stronger political position at the moment.

But there needs to be compromise on both sides now. If there isn't, Blair is going to end up being dragged kicking and screaming from power, and the only winners will be the Tories.

Update: Obviously the essence of my proposed deal is that Blair gives up being party leader in March before he gives up being Prime Minister in May. Guido has a post in which he refers to this solution as "the Aznar," after a similar arrangement in Spain before Jose Maria Aznar stepped down.

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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

So is it a coup?

The public intervention of arch-Brownite former Europe Minister Doug Henderson (pictured) into the Labour leadership wrangle this afternoon will doubtless be construed by the Blairites as evidence that the long-awaited Brownite putsch is under way. Indeed, long-time Blair admirer Martin Kettle has already rushed into print on Comment is Free to denounce the "plot."

I'm not so sure myself. I think what we are now seeing is not so much a conspiracy but the outworkings of the natural laws of political dynamics.

Dougie H is not an objective witness. He hates Blair's guts for having sacked him from the Government in 1999, purely on the grounds of his association with Brown rather than his performance as a minister, and he justifiably expects to return to office, though perhaps not at Cabinet level, in a Gordon adminstration.

But to me his comment about why Blair should go now, and what is to be gained from him hanging around for another year, hits the nail on the head.

Newcastle North MP Mr Henderson said today: "There should be a new leader in place by the end of March in time for the local elections and mid-term polls in Scotland and Wales."

In my previous post I discussed the various ways in which Blair might yet be forced out, most probably by a rebellion in the Cabinet or the PLP. These elections seem to me to be the key to the whole affair.

If Scottish and Welsh MPs decide collectively, as many of them already seem to have done, that Labour faces disaster in next May's devolved elections as long as Blair remains in post, then I think it is going to be incredibly hard for him to resist the pressure to depart soooner.

In other words, he's not going to get his 10 years after all.

Anyway, enough of the serious stuff. Here's a couple of light-hearted takes on the Blair departure story which I really appreciated today.

Tim Dowling in the Guardian imagines a possible Blue Peter interview with Mr Blair as he embarks on his "legacy tour," while Blairwatch suggests some possible tour venues, culminating in a grand finale in the Millenium Dome whilst the Women's Institute sing Jerusalem.

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Ten ways in which Blair could go before May 31, 2007

So it is apparently official. Tony Blair's closest allies confirm he will be gone in less than a year. George Pascoe Watson in the Sun goes further and names May 31, 2007 as the actual resignation date, possibly by the clever journalistic device of working eight weeks back from the end of the 2007 Parliamentary session. For Junior Defence Minister and fellow blogger Tom Watson it is not soon enough, and he quits.

Having long taken the view that Blair would try to hang around for his 10th anniversary, I concluded yesterday that it was no longer possible. Here's ten factors and forces which could intervene in his plans, ranging from a change of heart by the man himself to Harold Macmillan's fabled "events, dear boy, events...."

1. Himself. Blair might just decide he's had enough of all this, and announce a surprise departure. For as long as the process remained in Blair's hands, I thought this was quite a likely option, but the announcement of a "timetable" has made it less likely, as it would now look like he was succumbing to pressure. Chances: 2/10.

2. Gordon Brown. The Chancellor might finally cotton-on to the fact that Blair is determined to stitch him up, and launch a pre-emptive strike. It would be an incredible gamble and might bring the curse of the regicide down on his head, but that might be better than hanging around for Reid/Johnson/Miliband to emerge as serious alternatives. Chances: 4/10.

3. John Prescott. The Deputy Leader might once have been a plausible conveyor of the silver bullet, but his credibility is shot. He could however still bring down Blair in another way - by falling on his own sword. Since Blair has already said he is going, there would then be pressure for the leadership and deputy leadership to be resolved at the same time. Chances: 6/10.

4. The Cabinet. Despite the decline of "Cabinet Government," it was the Cabinet that did for Thatcher in the end and I now think this is the likeliest denouement for Blair. They know it will almost certainly put Brown in No 10, and that will mean the end of a good few Cabinet careers. But better that than another year of drift and division. Chances: 7/10.

5. The PLP. Blair's support within the PLP is visibly waning and unless the political situation improves for Labour - hard to see while Blair remains in place - it is entirely plausible that he could fall victim to the kind of internal MPs revolt that did for both Iain Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy. If so, expect the Scots and the Welsh to be to the fore. Chances: 6/10.

6. The House of Commons. Alternatively, Blair's dwindling support in the PLP may lead to his defeat on a major piece of Government legislation and a vote of no confidence. This would however require David Cameron's acquiescance, and it is in Cameron's interests to keep Blair in power as long as possible. Chances: 3/10.

7. Conference. There is still a theoretical possbility that someone could bring forward a motion to the party conference, or demand the connvening of a special conference, that could in turn trigger a leadership election. It's a remote possibility, but I include it here as it is the only formal procesure that actually exists. Chances 1/10.

8. The public. Elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Asesembly and English local authorities take place next May. Blair will be gone soon after that anyway so the results won't have a direct impact on the date. But what about by-elections? There are bound to be some, and they could easily turn into referendums on whether Blair should stay or go. Chances: 5/10.

9. The police. The most intriguing possibility, and the one which could yet bring the Blair years to the most ignominious end imaginable. Inspector John Yates is currently investigating the award of peerages in return for donations to Labour funds or towards setting up City Academies. If Blair has his collar felt, he is toast. Chances: 4/10.

10. "Events." These are by their very nature always beyond a politician's control, but invariably have greater impact when that politician is already weakened. In the early days, Blair's popularity enabled him to brush such setbacks aside. Not now. Some new scandal affecting a Labour minister, or some new catastrophe in Iraq could easily tip him over the edge. Chances: 7/10.

Chances of none of these things happening, and Blair surviving until next summer: 0/10.

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