Burying bad news?

Of course it could just be coincidence. But isn't it just a teensy bit suspicious that the long-awaited interview of Tony Blair by police investigating the cash for peerages affair should take place on the very morning that Sir John Stevens publishes his equally long-awaited report on the death of Diana?

Further, isn't it also a teensy bit suspicious that someone should see fit to leak a damaging story about Gordon Brown's possible involvement in the affair on the very day that Blair is questioned?

I only ask the question....

Update: Iain unearths some more bad news while Guido speculates on the contents of today's "grid."

They will get him for this

This is Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chairman of Labour's National Executive Committee and hitherto one of Tony Blair's most loyal supporters in the party hierarchy. I once had a conversation with him in which I invited him to speak frankly about the Prime Minister, on an off-the-record basis. He replied: "I don't do off-the-record, Paul, I'm a member of the NEC for God's sake."

Well, now Sir Jeremy's loyalty has finally been provoked beyond endurance by the news that Mr Blair plans, as his parting gift to the party, to use the cash for honours affair as a pretext to sever its links with the unions.

On one level, it's a truly breathtaking manoeuvre, an attempt to turn a hugely damaging political scandal to his own advantage by doing something he has dreamed of for years. On another level, though, it's political suicide.

Earlier today, Mike Smithson posed the question on Political Betting whether Blair's union funding plans were a step too far. If he seriously hopes to remain in office until next summer, they are.

Where's Denis?

Hat-tip to Kerron Cross for drawing this to my attention, but the BBC's Politics Show is currently holding an end-of-year poll to find out people's
Greatest Living Political Heroes. A fair enough idea, I thought, until I saw the so-called "Magnificent Seven" shortlist which comprises the following:

Tony Benn
Neil Kinnock
Alex Salmond
Clare Short
Norman Tebbit
Margaret Thatcher
Shirley Williams

Now there can be no disputing the heroic status of three of these names - Margaret Thatcher, Tony Benn and Shirley Williams - while Neil Kinnock might just scrape in for the "grotesque chaos" speech and for generally losing elections in a rather heroic way.

But Norman Tebbit? Alex Salmond? CLARE SHORT?!! Come on, you're having a laugh, surely?

The absense of my own greatest living political hero Denis Healey from this list is a startling omission on the part of the Beeb.

Denis is widely acknowledged to be the greatest Labour Prime Minister we never had and his recent interview with The Observer's Bill Keegan shows he has lost none of his sharpness.

If he had been on the list, I'm willing to bet he would have got many more votes than his old rival Tony Benn.

That is, after all, what happened in the Deputy Leadership Election in 1981, even though the union block vote nearly conspired to turn it into a Benn triumph.