Power is the great aphrodisiac

Today's revelation that Gordon Brown has been voted one of the World's 100 Sexiest Men calls to mind a notorious episode in the recent history of political journalism when a couple of female ITN lobby hacks drew up a list of the "20 most shaggable men in the Lobby."

It was topped by the then Sun Political Editor Trevor Kavanagh (pictured), who may or may not have been the sexiest man in the Lobby (I wouldn't know, dearie) but who was certainly, at the time, the most powerful.

The list later became bitterly controversial after the New Statesman columnist Paul Routledge wrongly attributed it to Julia Hartley-Brewer, now of the Sunday Express, who fashioned the memorable retort: "I didn't know there were any shaggable men in the Lobby."

For the record, I came 17th, a fact that, for some reason, Routledge seemed to find a great deal more interesting than who came 2nd or 3rd.

Political Heroes (Again!)

Paul Burgin of Mars Hill has tagged me to name my six political heroes. I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave a few months ago.

Paul and I share two heroes - Winston Churchill and Denis Healey (pictured). The others are Tony Crosland, David Lloyd George, Mikhail Gorbachev and Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I. Martin Luther King, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Lord Palmerston and Michael Heseltine were also named in my original Top 10.

Stop Thatcher!

The BBC's Daily Politics show is currently running a poll to find Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister. At least that makes for a relatively objective criterion for inclusion on the shortlist, in contrast with the recent Politics Show poll on political heroes which included the likes of Alex Salmond and Clare Short while leaving out genuine greats like Denis Healey.

Margaret Thatcher, who is being championed by her old Fleet Street cheerleader Kelvin Mackenzie, has predictably already built up a big lead, but that may have something to do with the fact that the Labour vote appears to be splitting fairly evenly between Clem Attlee, Tony Blair and Harold Wilson. Some tactical voting is clearly called for here!

For what is worth, this is how I would rank the ten Prime Ministers in the BBC's poll. Only the first two, I would contend, left the country overall in a better state than they found it. The rest have left it in varying degrees of messes ranging from industrial chaos to (in the case of the last two) disastrous military escapades.

Anyway, here goes.

1. Clement Attlee. The undisputed No 1 in my book for having fashioned, from the ruins of WW2, a country fit for heroes. The architect of much that was good about the Britain I grew up in.

2. Margaret Thatcher. Yes, she sorted out Britain's industrial anarchy and restored our national self-confidence, but she also left a bitter legacy in social division that continues to this day.

3. James Callaghan. The period of Lib-Lab government from 1977-78 was in my view the most sensible and humane of my lifetime. But Big Jim funked an election in '78 and paid a terrible price.

4. Edward Heath. Another PM brought down by the industrial problems he had failed to solve, he deserves credit for his towering achievement in bringing Britain in from the sidelines of Europe.

5. Harold Wilson. His achievements were primarily political, in making Labour for a time the natural party of government. But like many before and after, failed to arrest our long economic decline.

6. Sir Alec Douglas Home. Considering he had less than a year in the job, he didn't make a bad fist of it really. Took over a party rocked by the Profumo Affair and nearly won the 1964 election.

7. Harold Macmillan. A Blairite before Blair in political style, this consummate poseur told us we'd "never had it so good" while accelerating the post-war decline. Overrated in my view.

8. John Major. Nice chap totally out of his depth after being chosen to succeed Thatch. Promised a nation at ease with itself, but ended up as the hapless fall-guy for his feuding, sleazy party.

9. Tony Blair. Promised to restore trust in politics but ended up sullying it still further as well as embroiling Britain in possibly its most damaging military disaster for more than a century.

10. Anthony Eden. Was kept waiting too long for the top job by Churchill (excluded from the BBC shortlist) and went bonkers, causing him to view Colonel Nasser as a reincarnation of Hitler.

The Restructuring of Government

The apparent confirmation by John Reid of the long-overdue restructuring of the Home Office begs several questions about what is currently going on in the corridors of power, and how if at all it relates to the forthcoming Blair-Brown handover. Dr Reid's proposal to split the creaking monolith into a Department of Homeland Security and a Ministry of Justice - a re-working of an old Number 10 initiative that was blocked by David Blunkett in 2003 - apparently has both Blair and Brown's backing.

It's an eminently sensible idea, and although it's been round the block a few times, Dr Reid's recent admission that the Home Office is "not fit for purpose" makes this a logical point at which to implement it. But that, to my mind, does not fully explain why an internal reordering of the structures of Whitehall has suddenly leaped to the top of the political agenda.

As anyone who has ever tried to draw up an organisation structure for a business will know, no discussion such as this can ever be divorced from consideration of who might fill the resulting posts. I suggest that, in the context of national politics, this is even more likely to be the case.

Reid's plan, then, and the Prime Minister-in-waiting's approval of them, has to be seen as part of a much bigger power game that is being played out within New Labour and across Whitehall.

Splitting the Home Office in the way that has been mooted will have some interesting knock-on effects. For starters, the creation of a standalone Ministry of Justice in charge of prisons, probation and the criminal justice system, will necessitate a break-up of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which is currently responsible for the courts.

That will leave the DCA as much more what was originally envisaged when it was first created in 2003 - a "department for devolution" subsuming the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices, perhaps with added responsibility for issues such as Lords Reform.

So who might fill some of these roles? Is Dr Reid, for instance, eyeing up the job of being Gordon's Homeland Security supremo in return for not running against him for leader? Could the new Min of Justice create an interesting new career opportunity for Brown ally Jack Straw?

And would not the DCA's transformation into a department concerned more with political reform and devolved administrations provide a natural berth for another of Mr Brown's key allies, Peter Hain?

Allied to all this are the suggestions that Mr Brown plans to split the Treasury into a Finance Department and an Economic Department, the latter of which would subsume most of the DTI.

Once again, this change will create two senior Cabinet posts from one - perhaps enabling Brown to let Alastair Darling down gently while simultaneously buying-off his most dangerous potential rival for the leadership, David Miliband?

All in all, it will give the new Prime Minister more room for manoeuvre at a time when he is going to be anxious to appease some of the big players, while also bringing fresh talent into the Cabinet.

As Mr Blunkett has not been slow to point out, it will also give him much more power. And power is what this is really all about.

Is No 10 playing the expectations game?

When dealing with stories emanating from "Senior Ministers," "Downing Street sources", "Friends of the Prime Minister" and the like, it is never particularly advisable to take things at face value. Such, I think, is the case with today's Guardian story asserting that Tony Blair will "go early" if anyone at No 10 is charged over the cash-for-honours affair.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't doubt for a moment that Patrick Wintour's story is accurate, in the sense that (i) someone fairly senior said this to him, and (ii) that Blair would indeed quit if one of his key aides faced charges. He could hardly do otherwise.

But what I am questioning is why someone close to Blair - and Wintour's contacts are pretty good in that sort of area - would want this information out in the open now, and specifically why a story speculating about the circumstances in which he could be forced to quit would be considered helpful.

It's just a thought - but I wonder if No 10 is playing the expectations game, deliberately setting the bar at "charges" so that, for instance, any further "arrests" involving his inner circle can be brushed aside.

My reason for asking this is that while I suspect that the cash-for-honours probe will eventually result in charges - the claims on Guido and elsewhere that they've found the smoking gun ring true to me - I also suspect that no charges will actually be brought until Blair has left No 10.

Why do I think that? Well, for no reason other than that if the Police and the CPS can somehow avoid embroiling themselves in the unedifying spectacle of unseating a democratically-elected leader, with all the inevitable constitutional flak that will entail, then what have they really got to lose by a few months' delay?

But let's just say for the sake of argument that Blair's people actually know, rather than just suspect, that this is the case. Well, if so, they know they can pretty safely promise that Blair will go early if charges are brought, without any fear of being made to deliver on the pledge.

As I said, it's just a thought....

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

State of the Union podcast

The Union between England and Scotland was 300 years old last Tuesday - but how much longer can it last in the face of the growing demands for independence north of the border and growing resentment south of it at the lack of an equivalent English voice?

Plenty of subject-matter there for my latest Week in Politics podcast which can now be heard HERE

Ten years of my Newcastle Journal column

Okay, so they won't be letting off fireworks over the Tyne Bridge, but today is a celebration of sorts for me as it marks ten years of my Saturday Column in the Newcastle Journal.

I was given the column shortly after starting work as the paper's political editor in 1997, and retained it despite standing down from that role in 2004 to spend more time with my family - yes, that really was the reason in my case!

I will always be grateful to The Journal for giving me this break. I had written light-hearted Diary columns before, but it was The Journal which gave me my first chance to do a serious, big picture commentary on the week's political events and I would like to think I found a bit of a niche there.

You can read this week's column in full on the Companion Blog HERE

Whose sock-puppet is Bill Blanko?

As a former Lobby hack, I had to laugh at the appearance in today's Guardian of this sparkling new column about Lobby life written by someone calling himself "Bill Blanko." I think that's what we in the blogosphere know these days as a sock-puppet.

So which Guardian political hack is it? Is it a Guardian hack at all? Suspicion will undoubtedly fall on veteran former Pol Ed "Sir" Michael White, if only for the fact that whoever it is has obviously been around long enough to remember the infamous Lobby Bad Taste competition which used to be held annually at whichever party conference happened to be in Blackpool.

As "Blanko" points out, the winner was whoever managed to purchase the tackiest souvenir from the resort's many tacky souvenir shops. The last contest I recall was won by Jon Craig (now of Sky News) for an imitation penis which you strapped to your ankle so that it protruded from the bottom of your trouser-leg.

Presenting the award in the Press Room at the end of the conference, the Tory MP Alan Duncan announced: "And first prize goes to Jon Craig for confirming what we always knew about him."

Hain rediscovers his balls. A pity he mislaid them in 2003

There was a time when Peter Hain and the late Robin Cook were close allies, soft-left political soulmates who had essentially reached an accommodation with Blairism without ever really becoming "New" Labour.

By and large, Cook maintained this position throughout his six-year ministerial career, pursuing such non-Blairite enthusiasms as proportional representation and an "ethical foreign policy" before finally deciding that supporting the Iraq War would be an accommodation too far.

Unfortunately, Hain failed to resign with him, at a point where such a joint resignation might have brought down this lying Prime Minister and his pathetic excuse for a Labour Government.

Now, belatedly, Hain has rediscovered his principles, arguing in the New Statesman that the neocon experiment has failed and branding George Bush "the most rightwing American administration in living memory."

Why has Hain waited till now to say this? The answer, as at least one Jon Cruddas-supporting blog has pointed out, is that he is standing for Labour's deputy leadership and is trying to reposition himself as an anti-war critic within the Cabinet.

But in my view, he could have had himself a much bigger prize had he joined Cook in opposing the invasion from the start, putting himself in the frame as a credible, sensible left candidate for the leadership.

As it is, I might still back Hain in the deputy leadership election, as I think his views are probably the closest to my own on a range of issues from Iraq to devolution to personal taxation.

But he will only have himself to blame if people who should have been his natural supporters end up backing Mr Cruddas instead.

The lone voice

I expect most bloggers will disagree or even laugh at this, but there is a certain, magnificent stubbornness about John Prescott which I can't help but admire. While the New Labour project as a whole has been all about shifting with the political wind, that is one thing you can't lay at Big John's door.

Two years and three months ago, the people of the North-East dealt a death-blow to the prospects for English regional government by voting 4-1 against plans for an elected North-East Assembly. It immediately became clear that the idea was dead in the water as far as other regions were concerned and it swiftly disappeared off the political agenda.

Those of us, amongst whom I include myself, who initially supported the idea as a way of rebalancing our lopsided constitution, were forced to reappraise our position. I eventually concluded that an English Parliament represented a more promising way forward for English devolution, and recent polls seem to have borne that out.

Yet, to listen to his speech to the New Local Government Network yesterday, none of it seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr Prescott's belief in the inevitability of his regionalist dream.

"A regional level of administration is necessary alongside the need for the new localism. Regional planning is an essential part of the accountability that is needed from elected representatives rather than appointed regional civil servants," he said.

"I'm sad that regional government was rejected in the North East, but I believe that England will eventually move to elected regional government - just as Scotland and Wales originally rejected devolution and then voted for it."

Some might call it contempt for the electorate. Others might call it losing touch with reality. Both would be justifiable accusations, but for me there is still something admirable about a politician who is prepared to say what he thinks in defiance of the conventional wisdom.

He may be wrong, he may even be stupid - but at least he's genuine.

Did Blair really say Brown was psychologically flawed?

Blogger Iain Dale has been setting the political agenda again today following his 18 Doughty Street interview with former No 10 spin doctor Lance Price. In the interview, Price questioned the assumption that it was Alastair Campbell who first called Gordon Brown "psychologically flawed," suggesting that the phrase might actually have come from the Prime Minister himself.

It's a great scoop, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Blair was asked about it at Prime Minister's Questions earlier today.

But is Price telling the truth? Well, several things cause me to doubt that, I'm afraid, not least the fact that Price appears to be making a fine living at the moment out of the dishing dirt on his former employers.

Entertaining as this sort of thing may be for the press, and for the publishing industry generally, I can't help thinking it is bad for British government.

In his interview with Dale, Price also subtly misquotes the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley, who was the journalist originally on the receiving end of the "psychological flaws" comment and who wrote about it in his masterwork on early New Labour, Servants of the People.

Price says that Rawsnley described his source as "somebody with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister’s mind. Well, the only person with a better claim to know the Prime Minister’s mind than Alistair Campbell is, possibly Cherie, is the Prime Minister himself."

This is factually incorrect. The words Rawnsley actually used in Servants of the People were "someone who has an extremely good claim to know the mind of the Prime Minister."

Splitting hairs? Well, not really. Someone with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister's mind could only be Blair. Someone with merely an extremely good claim could be three or four people - Cherie, Campbell, Peter Mandelson, maybe even Jonathan Powell except that he doesn't often speak to journalists.

As it is, Blair has now denied it in the House, and loath as I am to admit that the Prime Minister might, for once, be telling the truth, this, for me, seems to settle the matter.

Why? Well, because if Blair is not telling the truth, he has just handed Andrew Rawnsley the golden bullet with which to put a fairly immediate end to his premiership.

If Rawnsley were now to reveal that it was indeed Blair who said it, then the Prime Minister will have lied to Parliament and he will be forced to resign.

Would Blair take such a risk with his political career even at this late stage? On balance, I think not.

A story of great importance, but nobody to know what it is

I both like and respect my fellow leftie Christian blogger Paul Burgin, but this post on his Mars Hill blog earlier today really is the blogging equivalent of the South Sea Bubble (depicted by Hogarth, left.)


To quote Tom Hamilton on Fisking Central, "give that man a newspaper column now!"

The Union: Will it last another 300 years?

Well, the answer to that is sadly not, unless the growing pressure from English voters for a distinctive political voice of their own is finally acknowledged and acted upon in the shape of an English Parliament.

Indeed, if our political leaders continue to place their heads in the sand on this issue in the way that our esteemed Prime Minister is currently doing, it will be surprising if it lasts another ten.