By-election will settle Brown's fate

Will Gordon Brown's determined fightback over the course of the past week be enough to save Labour in Crewe and Nantwich? And why is the contest beginning to resmeble another by-election battle in an old railway town some 25 years ago? Here's today's column in the Newcastle Journal.

***

The Queen’s Speech and the Budget are the pivotal moments of the parliamentary year, the points at which the government sets out its law-making programme on the one hand and its spending priorities on the other.

Traditionally, they have been held at opposite ends of the year – the Budget in early spring, the Queen’s Speech in late autumn.

This week, however, we had the almost certainly unique spectacle of a Budget and a Queen’s Speech effectively being unveiled within 24 hours of eachother.

It was perhaps a reflection of the strangeness of the political times we are living in, and the fact that, for Gordon Brown’s government, desperate times require desperate measures.

There are two ways of looking at Alistair Darling’s announcement on Tuesday of a
rise in tax thresholds to compensate most of those who lost out through the abolition of the 10p starting rate.

One is that for a Chancellor to have to come back to the Commons with what amounted to an emergency Budget within ten weeks of the original one is a fair old humiliation.

Furthermore, if the government now accepts that scrapping the 10p was a mistake, it has to go down as one of the most expensive mistakes in recent political history.

Raising the threshold by £600 for all taxpayers is costing the Treasury £2.7bn, all of which will have to be funded out of increased borrowing.

That said, there is a sense in which the government may have accidentally arrived at the right decision even if it was probably for the wrong reasons.

Pumping more money back into the economy via tax cuts is a fairly classical policy response to the sort of slowdown in economic growth which we are now experiencing.

From the point of view of family finances, the additional £120 a year for all those earning up to £40,835 a year will certainly help weather the rise in food and fuel costs.

Of course, the more sensible thing to have done would have been to put 1p on the top rate of tax to pay for all this, but that’s forbidden territory for New Labour.

So much for the emergency Budget – what, then, of the draft legislative programme – a Queen’s Speech by any other name?

Well, again, this may just be a case of serendipity - of a government almost accidentally rediscovering its sense of purpose in its desperation to avoid a shattering by-election loss.

The most damning accusation made against Mr Brown during the course of the 10p tax row was that it seemed emblematic of a government which had lost touch with people’s everyday concerns.

But ideas such as the new savings scheme for eight million low earners, more flexible working rights for parents and action to tackle underperforming schools seem to suggest the government has started listening again.

Meanwhile the plans to allow local communities to elect police chiefs and enable parents’ councils to help run schools show New Labour at last breaking free of control-freakery.

Both are nods in the direction of the local decentralising agenda which Darlington MP Alan Milburn has again hailed this week as the new “big idea” of 21st century politics.

Okay, so some of these ideas have previously been proposed by the Conservatives, but that's politics.

Given that the Conservatives have ditched most of the policies they fought the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections on in order to be more like New Labour, it’s not an accusation that can be easily sustained.

So where now for Mr Brown? Well, his dream scenario would be that this week’s “relaunch” will be followed by victory in Crewe and Nantwich, enabling Labour to claim that the worst is now behind them.

It will give Mr Brown the vital breathing space he needs to get through the summer and into the conference season without facing endless speculation about his leadership.

But the problems will come if, in spite of the fact that he thrown virtually the kitchen sink at it this week, next Thursday’s by-election is still lost.

Having fired off the two biggest shots in his armoury in the shape of this week’s announcements, it is unclear what ammunition Mr Brown would have left to turn the situation round.

The Crewe and Nantwich excuses are already lined up. If Labour loses, the government will seek to pass it off as part and parcel of the local election debacle rather than as a separate crisis.

That, however, will only work if Labour’s share of the vote remains broadly in line with what happened on May 1.

If the result suggests that the crisis has actually worsened since Mr Brown launched his “fightback,” then the pressure will really be on the Prime Minister.

In those circumstances, it is entirely possible that he may shortly be receiving a visit from the men in grey suits – or whatever Labour’s equivalent of them may be.

Indeed, Thursday’s by-election is rapidly assuming the same degree of importance as the one that took place a quarter of a century ago in another old railway town, Darlington.

On that occasion, Labour went into the contest beset by internal divisions and with serious question marks over the leadership of Michael Foot.

Had Labour lost, it is likely Foot would have been replaced by Denis Healey, but university lecturer Ossie O’Brien pulled off a shock win and saved his leadership, albeit only temporarily.

Can Tamsin Dunwoody pull off the same trick for Brown? This time next week, we’ll know the answer.

Four out of five readers back leadership change

For the past fortnight since the local election debacle I have been running a Poll on who should lead the Labour Party into the next general election. Gordon Brown was of course included in the shortlist, but the results show that, however much support he retains among Labour Party members, readers of this blog at any rate are less than enthused by his leadership.

Although Brown topped the poll with 20pc of the vote, four out of five of those who took part backed other candidates, with Jack Straw and Jon Cruddas the next most favoured. Furthermore there are strong suggestions that some of those who want to keep Brown in place were Tories - there was a surge of votes for the Prime Minister after my commentary piece last weekend was linked to by Guido Fawkes, sending traffic temporarily through the roof.

The full results were:

Gordon Brown 20%
Jack Straw 15%
Jon Cruddas 14%
David Miliband 13%
Alan Johnson 11%
John McDonnell 7%
Ed Balls 6%
Hilary Benn 6%
John Denham 5%
Alan Milburn 2%

Since the poll began Gordon has obviously launched a fairly determined fightback with this week's emergency Budget and draft Queen's Speech, and I'll be saying a bit more about the potential impact of this in my weekly column which will be on here from tomorrow morning.

One name I didn't include in the list was James Purnell, mainly because I view him as an incurable lightweight. However Fraser Nelson of the Spectator, who knows more about these things than I do, has since penned this piece arguing that Purnell, not David Miliband, is now the great hope of the Blairite faction.

I was in London yesterday and read a scandalous piece in the Standard's Londoner's Diary suggesting the Speccie has turned against Miliband because its editor Matthew d'Ancona's wife Sarah, who is Miliband's special adviser, has left him. This is so outrageous that it either has to be (a) true or (b) a particularly unfortunate case of a journalist putting two and two together and making seventeen.

Gordon listens

I'll have more to say on it later in the week no doubt, but first impressions of today's Draft Queen's Speech are fairly positive.

More help for first-time buyers, a savings scheme for eight million low earners, more flexible working rights for parents, action to tackle underperforming schools - you cannot say that the government is not listening to peoples' everyday concerns in bringing forward such ideas.

Okay, so some of the ideas have previously been proposed by the Conservatives, but that's politics. You could argue that the Conservatives have been not exactly been shy of emulating Labour policies over recent years, particularly since David Cameron became leader.

Media reaction tommorrow morning will be interesting. Will the papers treat these proposals on their own merit, or will they just decide that everything that comes out of the Brown government is thereby automatically damned? Watch this space....

Farewell Justine?

If it's true that Justine Henin is to retire from tennis as reported in two Belgian newspapers earlier today (4pm update: it is) it will be a very sad loss to the sport. Having followed the game since I was about seven or eight, I can safely say that she is the most watchable player I have ever seen on court. Her backhand in particular is a thing of beauty.

She has been runner-up in two Wimbledon finals, in 2001 and 2006. If Ken Rosewall is by common consent the greatest men's player never to win the trophy, Henin will go down in my view as the finest woman player never to lift the crown.

Is Prescott rewriting history?

Gordon Brown has not been a particularly lucky Prime Minister so far - while some of his mistakes have been of his own making, others, such as "discgate" and the David Abrahams affair were down to others' incompetence. But looking at the headlines of the last couple of days, I wonder whether the Prime Minister is perhaps more fortunate in his enemies.

Who are these people who are currently twisting the knife? An ex deputy leader who was very lucky not to be sacked himself by Tony Blair, a failed ex welfare minister who has borne a deeply personal grudge against him for the past decade, and a sleazy fundraiser whose activities did more than anyone else to bring disgrace on the party.

The activities of Lord Cashpoint in persistently seeking to link Brown with the cash for honours affair on the strength of absolutely no evidence are simply beneath contempt. It's the kind of thing you expect from Tory bloggers, not people who are allegedly supporters of the Labour Party.

As for Frank Field, he has been seeking to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of Labour MPs by spearheading the rebellion over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, but such is the depth of his hatred for Gordon that anything he says about him is worthless.

John Prescott is a different case altogether. His loyalty to the party and determination to hold it together at all costs has been the hallmark of his long career, which is what makes the revelations about the Blair-Brown feud in his memoirs all the more surprising.

I wonder if he is re-writing history somewhat. Either that, or else his words are being rather badly edited.

In truth, I don't think for a moment he actually wanted Tony to sack Gordon or for Gordon to resign and attack Tony from the backbenches. Prescott knows perfectly well that both of those scenarios would have led to civil war in the party, and that is not something which he would ever have wanted.

I think his comments have more the air of exasperation about them. If he did indeed urge Blair to sack Brown, it was probably said more as a reductio ad absurdam than anything else.

Contrary to the impression given in the book, I am in fact as certain as I can be that he wanted Brown to succeed Blair, saw him as the best guarantor of the Labour Party's core values, and was working quietly to ensure his succession from a fairly early stage.

Indeed I was told all of this by one of Prescott's very closest ministerial colleagues shortly after the 2001 election.

The same source made clear that Prescott envisaged continuing as Brown's deputy for a while, presumably on the assumption that the handover would come sometime in the 2001-2005 Parliament.

Blair's decision to stay on until 2007, coupled with the Tracey Temple affair, evidently put paid to that ambition.

Sands of time running out for Gordon

How much longer has Gordon Brown got to turn things around for Labour? And if he fails, who might replace him? Here's my column from today's Newcastle Journal.

***

Last Saturday, I wrote in this column that despite Labour’s abysmal performance in the local election, I did not detect any appetite in the party for another change of leadership.

For now, I am sticking to that. In spite of Labour’s current dreadful plight, the party as a whole remains overwhelmingly loyal to Gordon Brown and desperately wants to see him succeed.

At the same time, however, there is a growing awareness that things cannot go on like this indefinitely, and that there may come a point where a change has, however reluctantly, to be made.

Mr Brown, in other words, is now on notice. Unless he can demonstrate that he is still the one to turn things around, the pressure on him to do the decent thing will become insurmountable.

The past week has brought no respite for the government. Last Thursday’s local election carnage was followed by Boris Johnson’s totemic victory over Ken Livingstone in London in the early hours of Saturday morning.

More damaging still was Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander’s decision to back a referendum on Scottish independence, almost certainly without Mr Brown’s approval.

The potential longer-term consequences of that announcement are worthy of a column in itself, but the short-term impact was to make it look like the Prime Minister had lost control of his own party.

Yesterday, the polling organisation You Gov piled yet deeper humiliation on Mr Brown as its latest survey showed the Tories 26 points in front, with Labour on its lowest rating ever at 23pc.

Estimates vary as to how much time Mr Brown has left in which to turn the situation around. Some say a year, some say as little as three or four months.

My own take on the matter is that there will need to be evidence that the crisis has bottomed out and the situation begun to move back in Labour’s favour by the time of the autumn conferences.

Furthermore, by next May’s local elections, there will need to be proof that Labour is at least on the road to recovery, back within touching distance of the Tories in terms of overall share of the vote.

If neither of those things happen, I think it entirely plausible that Mr Brown will fall on his own sword. The one thing he has always been is a party man.
So who might take over? Well, the one consolation for Gordon in yesterday’s You Gov poll is that it showed that any other leader – including South Shields MP David Miliband – would do even worse.

This bears out my own view that this crisis is not primarily about personalities, but about Labour’s collective failure to articulate a new vision capable of re-enthusing the electorate.

It follows from what I have said thus far that in my view, replacing Mr Brown with another old-stager from the Cabinet would be a completely pointless exercise.

The name most mentioned in this regard is Jack Straw, but he would carry all of the baggage of having served in the Blair-Brown Cabinet since the start, as well having been Foreign Secretary at the time of the Iraq invasion.

Skipping a generation has a far greater potential appeal, and overwhelmingly the name on people’s lips in this context is Mr Miliband.

The other young hopefuls, James Purnell, Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband, fall into the next-leaders-but-one category, while Ed Balls would simply be Mr Brown without the gravitas.

The main advantage of having a leader from the thirty- and forty-something age-band is that it would indicate that the party was looking ahead and moving on from the now seemingly discredited Blair-Brown era.

That said, none of the “next generation” candidates are exactly over-endowed with charisma, and if they do have any fresh ideas, they have not exactly been much in evidence thus far.

What, then, about a backbench heavyweight - someone who could combine experience with the appearance of change, by virtue of not having been party to the debacle of the Brown premiership.

Of the obvious contenders, Charles Clarke has made too many foolish outbursts and hence too many enemies, while David Blunkett has made too many personal errors of judgement.

Potentially the most promising “change candidate” is Darlington MP Alan Milburn, whose still-youthful appearance belies his five years’ Cabinet experience.

More importantly, he alone among Labour’s big-hitters has demonstrated an appetite for thinking outside the box. Whether he actually wants the job is unclear, but in my view, this could be his time.

But while the election of Mr Milburn would represent a shift back towards a more “Blairite” agenda, another, riskier option would be to make a conscious shift to the left.

The man for that task would be Jon Cruddas, whose thoughtful campaign for the deputy leadership last year now appears prophetic in its attacks on the intellectual emptiness of New Labour.

There is also a case to be made for a woman, given that Mr Brown has been criticised for his inability to “empathise” with voters in the way that David Cameron appears to be able to do.

The difficulty is that none of the available women seem particularly empathetic. Indeed the likes of Harriet Harman and Yvette Cooper are even more prone to New Labour-style hectoring than their male counterparts.

After reading this far, you might think that, with no single candidate entirely free from drawbacks, the party would be better off sticking with the devil they know.

But politics doesn’t really work like that. Unless Mr Brown can recover, there will come a point when Labour MPs start to take the view that it’s his neck on the line or theirs.

Some argue that no-one really wants the job any more, that it is too much of a poisoned chalice – but politics doesn’t work like that either, and there will be someone, somewhere prepared to grasp the opportunity.

All is not quite lost for Mr Brown. But he knows that the sands of time are now fast running out on him.

Could Geoff Hoon or Tessa Jowell really be the next PM?

The weeks between the start of the summer Parliamentary recess in July and the party conference season in September have traditionally been known in the "silly season" in political and journalistic circles. With the MPs off on their holidays, it is a time of long, slow news days at Westminster, with the result that any small thing that happens tends to get rather blown out of proportion.

Perhaps the greatest silly season story of my time in the Lobby came in August 1997, when John Prescott's throwaway remark about naming a baby crab after Peter Mandelson made headlines the length and breadth of Fleet Street.

But if the past couple of days are anything to go by, the silly season has arrived early this year. Two of my favourite bloggers have come out with what can only be described as outlandish theories about the post-Brown Labour leadership.

Mike Smithson of PoliticalBetting.com is one of the most insightful political commentators in the country - inside and outside the MSM. Yet incredibly, he decided to devote an entire blog post yesterday to the idea that Tessa Jowell could become Prime Minister.

Now I do realise that the raison d'etre of PB.com is political betting, as it says on the tin, and that one aspect of this is the seeking-out of unlikely scenarios from which the site's aficionados can thereby profit at long odds, but even so....

Leaving aside the fact that Jowell is the absolute personification of nannny-knows-best New Labourism, has Mike totally forgotten about the David Mills-Silvio Berlusconi affair, which nearly brought about Jowell's resignation from the Blair Cabinet?

The Daily Pundit is a less serious blog. Indeed at times, I have openly wondered whether it is a spoof on the entire political punditry industry. Today, for instance, it carries a delightful story speculating whether Guto Harri will shortly replace Michael Cole as spokesman for Mohamed-al-Fayed.

If so, it would explain why the Pundit's current hot tip for Labour leader is Geoff "Buff" Hoon, although in his defence, there is at least a literary precedent for a Chief Whip becoming party leader, namely Francis Urquhart in House of Cards.

In a recent comment on this blog, the Pundit takes me to task for failing to include Hoon in my current poll on the Labour leadership, still being headed by Jack Straw.

In my reply, I own up to the fact that I myself once tipped Hoon to be Tony Blair's successor over a few pints with a couple of Labour researchers in Bellamy's, only to be laughed out of the room.

Well, you may say, it's all very well me dissing others' efforts to make sense of the current political crisis - who do I think should become Labour leader if Brown were to be forced out?

Tomorrow, in my weekly column which will be available on this blog, I will give my answer.

Local history site unearths oldest ever England team photo

Anyone who has heard the news today or read any of the nationals will be aware of the discovery of what is believed to be the oldest ever photograph of an England football team. It dates from 1876 and was taken in Glasgow on the day England played Scotland in what was only the fifth ever international football match.

What you may not be aware of - because none of the nationals actually mention it - is that this was actually a world exclusive for a Derbyshire local history site with which I am currently involved called You and Yesterday.

The picture was uploaded to the site last weekend by one of its regular contributors, Peter Seddon, who unearthed it during a search of old newspapers on microfilm at the Derby Local Studies Library.

To its credit, the FA website's write-up includes a link enabling users to click straight through to the picture on You and Yesterday. Readers of this blog can do the same by clicking HERE.

Derby points record under threat

"Fortunately for Derby fans, their record for having the lowest Premiership points total will only last one season thanks to Stoke. Stoke are probably the weakest team to have ever been automatically promoted to the Premiership."

- Spotted on a Yahoo forum entitled "What do you think Stoke City will do now they're in the Premier League?"

Who should lead Labour into the next election?

In my weekend column (see previous post), I wrote that I don’t detect any appetite in the Labour Party for another leadership change, and that I don’t as yet detect any such stirrings in the political undergrowth.

I am sticking by that, in spite of certain Sunday newspapers' attempts to persuade their readers that David Miliband was about to announce his candidacy for the leadership.

That said, two years is a long time in politics and things could easily change between now and the date of the next general election. Indeed, it would be mildly surprising if they didn't.

To my mind, Phil Webster has it about right in today's Times, arguing that ministers are giving Gordon Brown a year to turn things round. There is a clear logic to the assertion that if next year's local election results are as bad as this year's, even he himself would question whether it was worth continuing.

It's all very sad. I continue to believe Brown would have resoundingly won an election in his own right had Tony Blair made good his promise to stand down mid-way through the second term, as he should have done in any case in view of his administration's culpability in the death of Dr David Kelly and its use of dodgy intelligence to support the case for war in Iraq.

His tragedy was to become leader at a time when New Labour's hold on the public was beginning to wane and the Tories were making themselves electable again.

Should he decide to soldier on until 2010, he could do a lot worse than to take the advice of Sunday's Observer editorial, and seek to lay down some solid achievements which will ensure he is treated more kindly by the historians than by his contemporaries.

Either way, blog readers can have their say in my current poll below which asks whether Brown or any one of nine other leading Labour figures (sadly all men) should take the party into battle in 2009/10.

So far, Jack Straw appears to have streaked into an early lead with Alan Johnson second and other votes spread evenly between Brown, Hilary Benn, Jon Cruddas, John Denham, John McDonnell and Alan Milburn, with no votes for Ed Balls as yet.

Oh, and for the benefit of the annoyingmong who keeps asking me about the sample size every time I run a poll, it's not an attempt to be "scientific," it's primarily a bit of fun for me and for readers of this blog. Got that?

Who should lead the Labour Party into the next General Election?
	Gordon Brown
	Ed Balls
	Hilary Benn
	Jon Cruddas
	John Denham
	Alan Johnson
	John McDonnell
	Alan Milburn
	David Miliband
	Jack Straw

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.

The shame of Derbyshire

The town of Heanor is an otherwise fairly unremarkable little place in the old East Derbyshire mining belt about seven or eight miles away from where I live, but today is has earned itself the dubious distinction of boasting not one, but two British National Party councillors after they were elected to Amber Valley Borough Council in yesterday's poll.

This would be almost excusable if their election actually represented the democratic will of the people of the town, but it does not. Thanks to the workings of the first past the post system, the pair have managed to be elected despite less than 40pc of the vote in both cases.

In Heanor West ward, the BNP candidate Lewis Allsebrook won with 727 out of 1,836 total votes cast, or 39.6pc, while in Heanor East, Cliff Roper emerged victorious on the strength of 36.4pc of the poll, or 537 out 1,473 votes cast.

It's the rest of the townsfolk I feel sorry for. Most people in Heanor either didn't vote BNP or didn't vote at all, but they are now going to have to put up with their town being treated as the racism capital of the Midlands for the next four years. Shame.

Big bloggers call it for Boris

Right from the outset of the London Mayoral contest, I have had great difficulty believing in any other outcome than a victory for Ken Livingstone. To my mind, London is a Labour city, and despite his many personal foibles, Ken's overall political record as London Mayor is a strong one.

Furthermore, he is up against a principal opponent in Boris Johnson who, for all his wit and charm, is regarded as a buffoon by many voters and whose track record of offending minorities hardly seems to fit him for the mayoral role.

Yet, as someone who has followed this contest from a distinct distance, it's impossible to ignore the growing consensus among those bloggers who have followed it much more closely.

Both Mike Smithson, of Political Betting and Guido Fawkes have already called the election for Boris, Mike arguing that the core Tory vote is much more solid for Johnson than the Labour vote for Livingstone.

Smithson rarely if ever gets these things wrong, but admittedly Guido's record is mixed. He wrongly called the Labour deputy leadership election for Alan Johnson last year, but correctly called both Lib Dem leadership contests in 2006 and 2007.

My head tells me they must both be right, but my heart still tells me they are wrong. We'll know the answer soon enough.

White on Brown

Donnish Times commentator Tim Hames caused a stir earlier this week by nominating the Guardian's Michael White for a political fixer's job at No 10.

White's response to this remarkable suggestion is contained in a Guardian podcast on today's local elections and is well worth hearing.

Fellow UCL alumnus Michael reveals: "Gordon has barely exchanged six words with me for several years. I don't know what I did to upset him."

Reflections on Arizona...and on what I've been missing

Okay, so leaving aside being mistaken for Phil Collins and nearly getting septicaemia, what else did I do on my holidays - and what do I make of what's been happening politically in my absense? Well, I'll come to that in a bit.

Each of my three trips to Arizona have been laden with emotion. My first, in 2003, was for my sister's wedding when I stood in my late father's place - one of the proudest days of my life. Unfortunately she got married right in the middle of the party conference season, and I was only able to stay a couple of days before dashing back to England in time to hear Duncan Smith turning up the frigging volume.

My second trip, for my brother-in-law Mitch's memorial service, has already been previously documented on this blog. The ten-and-a-half-hour flight to Phoenix that weekend was the saddest journey I have ever had to make, and I spent most of it listening to Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head. That line "God gave you style and gave you grace, and put a smile upon your face," will always remind me of Mitch.

So this, my third visit, was the first which my wife Gill and I have undertaken which didn't involve taking part in a rite of passage, and also the first we have undertaken with our two small children. It was certainly more relaxing than the first two, yet the place has such meaning for me now that it was impossible again not to be touched with emotion at being there.

Part of this is down to the sheer grandeur of the scenery. My sister lives in what are called the "desert foothills" and her garden, framed by panoramic mountain views all round, is a special place, populated only by cacti, mesquites, paloverdes, lizards and the odd tarantula.

It is at its very best in the early morning, before the heat of the day, and I loved to settle down there with a good book and put all the cares of the world behind me. As previously mentioned, my main choice of reading on this trip was Piers Morgan's Don't You Know Who I Am but I found this a rather odd mixture to be honest.

Although it has its funny bits - such as Morgan telling Charles Clarke to "stick it up your big fat arse" during a Labour conference reception - I found Morgan's obsession with becoming a celebrity slightly disconcerting and I think on the whole I preferred him in his tabloid editor incarnation, when he had a healthy contempt for the whole business.

Aside from chilling out, we found time for a trip to the Grand Canyon - my first time and Gill's second. It's certainly awesome but I suspect you would only get a true idea of its sheer scale by walking down into it and back up the other side. That's definitely one for another year.

***

I purposefully didn't blog while on holiday because I wanted to take some time for reflection on the current state of British politics. I have to confess to being somewhat depressed by this, and to be honest I have been for some time.

Like a lot of people of a naturally progressive bent, I did have very high hopes for the Gordon Brown administration, above all that he could impart some fresh moral purpose to Labour after more than a decade in power. Not only has he not done this, he has done the cause of the left terrible damage by appearing to surrender Labour's hard-won reputation for competence.

I still believe Gordon to be a good and decent man. I will continue to vigorously oppose those in the blogosphere who seek to attack him on the grounds of his so-called "psychological flaws," as if they themselves somehow have none.

But what I can no longer defend is the failure to set out some higher purpose for his administration other than simply remaining in power - a failure which risks handing the next election to David Cameron on a plate.

During my time away there has been mounting speculation about "civil war" breaking out inside the Labour Party if this Thursday's local election results are as bad as currently expected.

In my view, the suggestion that Brown should make way for a new leader remains fanciful without a very much clearer idea of what alternative his critics intend to put in his place. Simply substituting him with Jack Straw or even David Miliband will have zero impact unless other things change too.

Nevertheless, it is already clear that a leadership challenge this summer would have a very much better chance of success than one last summer would have done.

Maybe, just maybe, that was the Blairites' game plan all along....

Aren't you that guy out of Genesis?

I promised some reflections on the Arizona holiday, and this was probably the funniest thing that happened to me during the course of it - although it actually happened on the plane from Phoenix to Chicago at the start of our return trip.

As I am fetching something from the overhead compartment, a middle-aged American guy in the seat behind (who actually looked a little like Danny De Vito though I didn't tell him so) taps me on the shoulder and goes: "Aren't you that guy out of Genesis, Phil wotsisname, Phil Collins?"

I politely assure him I am not although I do confess to being a bit of fan and to having seen the great men on their reunion tour in Manchester last summer.

I have actually been mistaken for Mr Collins once before, but that was over 25 years ago, when we both had hair. Perhaps the question I really should have asked my De Vito-lookalike was whether he really thought Phil Collins would be travelling economy class?

The aftermath of fever

Just a quick update for anyone who's wondering where I've been for the last fortnight - I got back from the US on Wednesday morning, and headed immediately for the doctor's surgery, having spent the flight back with a temperature of about 104 and feeling like death warmed up.

It turned out that a minor accident last Saturday involving a brush with a prickly pear cactus had led to some infection which had set off an adverse reaction. Apparently this is the sort of thing people died from before Mr Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, so on the whole I'm quite grateful to still be here!

Apart from that rather grisly ending, it was a great holiday, and some fuller reflections will follow soon.

Meanwhile, a prize for anyone (apart from Dave Gladwin) who can tell me which 22-minute album track the title of this post is taken from.

Hors de combat - updated

I'm off to the States shortly to spend a bit of time with my sister out in sun-kissed Arizona, so blogging will be light in the time-honoured phrase. I may manage the odd book review - currently reading Piers Morgan's Don't you know who I am which is entertaining if not quite as instructive about the modern-day relationship between politics and journalism as his previous tome, The Insider. There will also be the odd update on Twitter, hopefully (see Sidebar.)

April 13 update: I see the Sunday papers back home today are full of speculation about a Labour leadership contest if the party does badly on May 1, with Jack Straw touted as the proverbial safe pair of hands to take over from Gordon. What no-one has bothered to explain is how this would actually improve Labour's election chances, but they've got to find something to write about I guess.

I had been hoping that by the time I get back, the blog wars might have toned down a notch....but with Tim having opened a new front I'm not holding my breath. Guys, guys.

A few lines on Politics Home

As most with a passing interest in political bloggery will know by now, Politics Home launched this week with the aim of creating a "Bloomberg" for politics. The leading personalities involved on the editorial side are Nick Assinder, Andrew Rawnsley and Martin Bright who are all fine journos and good chaps to boot, so I wish them well.

Meanwhile Freddie Sayers from the site has kindly emailed me with the results of their most recent Phi100 panel, an online focus group of cross-party MPs, senior political editors, commentators and campaign strategists.

The panel were asked: "How much do the following issues in the private lives of politicians influence the view voters have on them?" The results are listed below, with the percentage who thought it did have a negative influence on voters' perceptions of them in brackets.

1. Has a problem with alcohol (88.3% believe it has an influence)

2. Claims above average amounts from the taxpayer for meals and travel (77.4%)

3. Talks about green issues but is shown to use air travel much more than average (71.8%)

4. Has left his wife for another woman (55.8%)

5. Sends their children to private schools (51.1%)

6. Used cocaine when they were at university (48.8%)

7. Violates traffic laws (36.1%)

Politics Home is drawing the headline conclusion from this that "Cocaine is near the bottom of the seven deadly political sins." Fair enough - but I wonder if this is an issue on which the Westminster cognoscenti are ever so slightly divorced from the public at large?

For my part - and I'm speaking as a private individual here rather than attempting to second-guess the electorate - I would regard the use of cocaine at any stage of someone's life as leaving a very serious question mark over their fitness for public office.

For one thing, it indicates a lack of respect for the law of the land, which however much we might disagree with it, is something we are called on to follow. For another, it indicates to me a quite staggering degree of emotional immaturity.

Coke is bascially a drug used by social inadequates to maintain a self-confident facade and to make themselves "interesting." Of course most users end up talking complete bollocks but in a roomful of other cokeheads, that is unlikely to be noticed.

So I think the PHI panel are wrong on this one - but that is not to say I don't think Politics Home is potentially a great site.

The nauseating hypocrisy of Peter Kilfoyle

I used to have a lot of time for Peter Kilfoyle. He should in my view have been made Chief Whip after Nick Brown was moved from the post in 1998 and after his resignation from the government the following year he played a valuable role in speaking up for the interests of Labour's forgotten heartlands, although such was Tony Blair's obsession with Middle England it didn't ultimately achieve much in terms in of the overall direction of government policy.

So I was even more amazed to read his early day motion tabled last Wednesday which has so far obtained nine signatures from MPs of all three parties, at least one of whom should have known better.

It reads:

That this House notes recent media commentary on the rolling programme of maintenance involving the Speaker's rooms; notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery; also notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls; is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster; is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000; and therefore calls upon members of the Press Gallery to apply to themselves the same standards that they would demand of others.

This edm is so mendacious and misleading, so full of half-truths and innuendo that it deserves a damned good fisking, so here goes.

Half-truth: "This House....notes that £8.2 million has been spent on the renovation of the Press Gallery"

Fact: The Press Gallery essentially had the refurbishments forced on them. Back in 2003, when I was a member of the Gallery Committee, it was told that its offices no longer complied with Health and Safety Legislation, and would therefore have to be upgraded. This being the case, the Committee reluctantly went along with the refurbishment plan and tried to shape it as best it could, although it was abundantly clear from the start that the House authorities were working to a particular agenda, namely removing as many of the Gallery's communal facilities as possible and maximising the amount of office space.

This, in the end, is precisely what happened. The Press Gallery dining room was lost, the gallery library was moved to a much smaller area, and the gallery bar was infamously combined with the cafeteria. In the words of the syncretistic lobby hack Bill Blanko it now has all the atmosphere of an airport terminal.

Half-truth: "This House...notes that the media pays nothing for the use of the premises, nor for London telephone calls."

Fact: Kilfoyle knows perfectly well that if the media were to be charged market rates for the use of office accommodation in Westminster, the regional press, including Kilfoyle's own Liverpool Echo, would cease to have a presence in the Commons altogether. It is frankly unbelievable to see a man who has previously posed as an advocate for the interests of the English regions making this argument.

Half-truth: "This House....is bemused that 10 male members of the lobby have a car parking pass for the Palace of Westminster

Fact: What Kilfoyle doesn't mention is that many MPs now have two car park passes. This enables them to park their second cars in the Palace underground car park permanently. The Commons authorities actually stopped handing out new car park passes to journalists several years ago. The ten that remain are held by extremely long-serving lobby men. Each time a journalist passholder leaves or retires, their pass is now reallocated as an additional pass for an MP.

Half-truth: "This House.....is conscious of the annual subsidy to the Press Bar of £210,000."

Fact: Peter Kilfoyle has regularly benefited from the availability of subsidised ale in the Press Bar. By my reckoning only John Spellar and Phil Woolas (whose job it was to patrol the Bar and find out what hacks were writing about the next day) were more regular attenders than Kilfoyle in the years 1997-2004. Maybe he's sobered up a bit since then.