Blair - Brown handover: the latest

I reckon this story by Paddy Hennessy in yesterday's Sunday Tel predicting a handover by "next summer" is about right, though my money would still be on May 2007 - technically next spring if we're being pedantic.

Hennessy also reckons Blair will sack Hilary Armstrong and try to bring back Stephen Byers in the reshuffle, both of which were also predicted in my Column published the previous day and Podcast available from today.

Other reshuffle tips I've heard: Hilary Benn to go to the Home Office and Charles Clarke to Leader of the House; David Miliband Education Secretary with Ruth Kelly moving to International Development, and Prescott man Dick Caborn to become Chief Whip - possibly as a pay-off for the DPM's rescue act on school reform.

There's also speculation about Margaret Beckett but she will not leave the Cabinet unless it's of her own volition. Blair rates her extremely highly as one of his safest pairs of hands and she is also extremely close to Brown. I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that she would want to stay around for the handover.

Hilary's Finest Hour

Those of us who think Hilary Armstrong has outlived her usefulness may like to recall this famous encounter between New Labour's Chief Whip and the rebel MP Paul Marsden at the height of the controversy over the war in Afghanistan, in which La Armstrong (1) denies the existence of spin doctors, (2) claims that war is not a matter of conscience, and (3) compares opponents of the war to appeasers of Adolf Hitler.

Here's the full transcript in all its glory.

Armstrong: "Look, Paul, those that aren't with us are against us."

Marsden: "You won't even give us a free vote on whether we go to war - it is a matter of conscience."

Armstrong: "War is not a matter of conscience. Abortion and embryo research are matters of conscience, but not wars."

Marsden: "Are you seriously saying blowing people up and killing people is not a moral issue?"

Armstrong: "It is government policy that we are at war. You astound me. We can't have a trusting relationship if you keep talking to the media without permission. You must stop using the media."

Marsden: "That's a bit rich coming from people like you and Downing Street when Stephen Byers' spin doctor Jo Moore says September 11 is a good day to bury bad news."

Armstrong: "We don't have spin doctors in Number 10 - or anywhere else."

Marsden: "You aren't seriously telling me that you don't have spin doctors. You are losing it, Hilary."

Armstrong: "You wait until I really do lose it. I am not going to have a dialogue with you about that. It was people like you who appeased Hitler in 1938."

Marsden: "That's the official line now is it? We are all appeasers if we don't agree with everything you say?"

Huhne right to reject Campbell coronation

What are we to make of the story in today's Times that Chris Huhne welched on a deal not to stand against Sir Menzies Campbell in the Lib Dem leadership contest?

I've no idea whether it's true, though I note that the author is not the impeccably well-informed journalist (I won't embarrass him by using his name) who usually covers Lib Dem matters for the Thunderer...

But whether or not there was such a deal, I think in retrospect it is clear that Chris Huhne made the right decision in asking Sir Menzies to release him from it.

The implosion of Mark Oaten's campaign, and the subsequent revelations about Simon Hughes, have left Huhne as the only credible alternative and a Campbell coronation would only have served the interests of Nick Clegg and Co, not the interests of the party.

As Huhne himself has said, appointing a "caretaker" leader who would stand down after the next election would effectively be like appointing "the chairman of an ongoing leadership campaign among the younger candidates."

The Lib Dems deserve a bit better than that, in my view.