Labour contest: How is the Cabinet shaping up?

I began this week's postings on the Labour Conference by posing the question who is backing Gordon Brown for PM among the Press. I end it by looking at how much support he - or any other candidate - can expect from within the Cabinet.

For this purpose I have divided Labour's 23-strong top team into four groups ranging from Gordon's most public and enthusiastic supporters to the small faction who seem determined to stop him at any price.

It will immediately be seen that the Chancellor is in a very strong position, and that's reckoning without the cash for honours affair bundling Mr Blair out of office early after all.....

I will be updating this list regularly as the contest draws nearer and if and when the public positions of any Cabinet members change. I have a slight hunch that Alan Johnson might well be the next one to endorse him.

Cabinet members explicitly and publicly backing Gordon Brown for the leadership

John Prescott
Margaret Beckett
Peter Hain
David Miliband

Cabinet members who have not expressed a public preference but who are known allies of Mr Brown

Jack Straw
Alistair Darling
Douglas Alexander
Des Browne
Ruth Kelly
Stephen Timms

Cabinet members who are currently remaining neutral, including those required to do so by virtue of their position

Tony Blair
Alan Johnson
Patricia Hewitt
Hazel Blears
Hilary Benn
Hilary Armstrong
Jacqui Smith
Valerie Amos

Cabinet members who have privately expressed doubts about Mr Brown and who can reliably be expected to support "Anyone but Gordon"

John Reid
John Hutton
Charles Falconer
Tessa Jowell

Have we all misinterpreted John Reid?

Virtually everybody is interpreting John Reid's speech to the Labour Conference yesterday as the opening salvo in a leadership bid, and they may very well be right. It is not the only interpretation however, and Reid deliberately left things a bit ambiguous so that any of these interpretations can be retrospectively applied.

They are:

1. Reid has no intention of standing for the leadership. Yesterday's speech was purely the speech of a Home Secretary and any suggestion to the contrary is just media "froth." When Reid used the L-word, he was simply talking about the need for strong leadership in confronting crime and terrorism.

2. He hasn't made up his mind. The speech was a toe-in-the-water exercise, more than likely prompted by the Frank Luntz survey on Newsnight on Monday evening showing him as potentially the most popular leader among floating voters. If this interpretation is correct, JR would have been heartened by the response in the hall.

3. He is leaving open the option of running for the leadership, but the primary purpose of yesterday's speech was to keep up the pressure on Gordon Brown. This view rests on the theory that what happens next depends on whether Gordon behaves himself. If he does, he gets the endorsement. If not, he gets challenged.

4. His purpose was not to put down a marker for the leadership at all, but to reinforce his own position against the possibility of dismissal by Prime Minister Brown. The phrase "I intend to play my full part" could be translated: "I mean to extract a firm promise from the bastard to keep me in my current job. Or else."

5. He is definitely a candidate for the leadership, although he will not actually announce it formally until Tony Blair names the date for his departure. The remarks about others not being diminished when one shines could be read as an appeal for Brown to accept a position in his Cabinet.

If I have to take a view, I'm going with a combination of Nos 3 and 4 for now, as I genuinely do believe that Reid hasn't decided and that Blair is still keeping open the option of endorsing Brown at the last minute.

I think it was telling that Trevor Kavanagh, who must know Reid fairly well, said on Newsnight this week that he didn't think Reid really wanted the job. Against that, he is a politician, and somebody who doesn't want to be PM probably has no business being in the Cabinet in the first place.

So where does it all leave us?

So as Labour bids farewell to Manchester, as well as John Prescott, what conclusions can we draw from the week's events? I would draw the following:

1. By dint of his conference tour-de-force on Tuesday, Tony Blair has earned the right to stay on into the summer of 2007.

2. Gordon Brown has largely recovered the ground lost in the aftermath of the abortive "coup," but remains on probation.

3. Provided there are no further attempts to hustle him out of the door, Mr Blair will continue to hold out the possiblity of endorsing Brown, while making him sweat for it until the very last minute.

4. If however the infighting erupts again, and the polls show they can win, the Blairites will run John Reid against the Chancellor.

That's my objective assessment of the situation. My personal view remains however that to challenge Brown would be a mistake that will only help the Tories, and that the Blairites should stop threatening an alternative candidate and accept this.

Of all the punditry I have read about the conference, the piece that made the most sense to me was the piece by David Clark in today's Guardian.

"Parties that spurn leadership favourites for internal reasons unrelated to merit tend to regret such decisions. Labour passed over Denis Healey for Michael Foot in 1980 even though he was far better qualified for the job. The Tories did the same to Michael Heseltine 10 years later in revenge for his role in deposing Margaret Thatcher.

"Labour can avoid that fate, but only if it is willing to put the spite merchants in their place and choose the only candidate with the substance and experience to govern successfully and win the next election. That means uniting behind Gordon Brown."