Blair's poisoned legacy of sleaze

They say all is fair in love, war and politics - but am I the only person in the country who feels some sympathy for Gordon Brown over the fact that he is now reaping the whirlwind of a Labour Party funding scandal which was absolutely not of his own making?

Brown has been party leader and Prime Minister for five months. Yet everyone acknowledges that the origins of the David Abrahams affair go back four years.

There is one very important difference between this and both Northern Rock and Discgate. While both of those happened on Mr Brown's watch - and hence are things for which he has to take ultimate responsibility - the vast majority of the dodgy donations were made on his predecessor's.

So for David Cameron to suggest on the back of the affair today that the Prime Minister is not up to the job - without a shred of evidence directly linking him to it - is in my view deeply opportunistic.

It is true that Harriet Harman has been a fool not to check more closely where her deputy leadership campaign funds were coming from, but she was never the sharpest tool in the box.

Someone on another blog compared her to John Prescott the other day. Wrong. Prescott was a highly intelligent guy who was regarded as a bit thick because of his syntactical difficulties. When it comes to the density of porcine ordure, Harman is actually the genuine article.

People are saying there is much more of this story to come out, and I agree with Guido that the key to it probably lies in the government's sudden decision to lift its objections to Mr Abrahams' plans for a business park near Durham in October 2006.

Would it be uncharitable to point out that this decision was also taken under the stewardship of Mr Blair, at whose leaving party in Sedgefield Mr Abrahams was subsequently given a place of such honour?

Could we have another deputy leadership election?

I suspect that "God forbid!" would be the answer of most Labour Party members to that question, but the current pressure on Harriet Harman over the dodgy donations affair means the possibility cannot be ruled out.

So of the half-dozen candidates who stood last time round, who would risk throwing their hats into the ring again? Possibly only one or two, in my view.

Harman, of course, would automatically be ruled out. So too would Hazel Blears, Hilary Benn and Peter Hain on the grounds of their disappointing performances in June.

The only candidates from this summer's race I can see fancying another run round that particular block are Alan Johnson, pipped at the post by Harman after being widely tipped as the victor, and Jon Cruddas, who came a good third on the back of a strong grassroots campaign.

Cruddas turned down the offer of a job by Gordon Brown - there is some dispute as to whether it was a party vice-chairmanship or a junior ministerial post - and so is untainted by association with any of the disasters to strike the government over recent weeks. He could well win.

Johnson would also find it hard not to stand, having come so close before. But there would, I think, be other candidates.

The demographics of the Labour Party make it almost certain there would be a woman, with Caroline Flint, Ruth Kelly and Jacqui Smith among the possible contenders in the enforced absense of Harman and Blears.

I think Jack Straw would also fancy it. He expected to be made Deputy Prime Minister, or at the very least First Secretary of State, in Brown's first reshuffle, but the Prime Minister foolishly denied him both titles. He could not deny them were Straw to become deputy leader.

The big question, though, is whether one of the disgruntled Blairites would throw their hats into the ring - Charles Clarke, perhaps, or Alan Milburn, or even Foreign Secretary David Miliband?

If so, the media would very quickly try to turn it into a leadership election at one remove, and the attractions of Straw as a "unity candidate" would become even more apparent,

Could this be Jack's big moment? Although Brown will do all he can to save Harman, I fancy the Government would actually look stronger without her, with Straw officially installed as DPM and someone else entirely - Cruddas? - in the role of Party Chair.

Then again, Michael Heseltine's appointment to the same role in 1995 was supposed to strengthen John Major. And look how that ended.

Should Tony Blair have talked about his faith?

Alastair Campbell famously said he didn't do God. The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, thinks he should have done. The former Prime Minister himself, in Part Three of The Blair Years to be screened next Sunday, explains that while there is no point pretending he doesn't have a personal faith, he didn't want to come over as a "nutter."

This raises a difficult question for me. As a Christian, I not only approve of politicians who are influenced by Jesus's teaching, I would have difficulty voting for one who wasn't. The main reason I could never bring myself to vote for Neil Kinnock even though he made possibly the greatest speech of the last 30 years was that he was a self-confessed atheist.

But at the same time, I also dislike politicians who claim, or appear to claim, that they have some sort of "hotline" to God that influences not just their general political thinking, but individual political decisions. Mr Blair has clearly implied this in the past in relation to Iraq, for instance.

Whether or not this made him look like a "nutter," it certainly brought Christianity into disrepute by making it appear as if the Christian "viewpoint" on Iraq was pro-war, when in fact the question of whether the Biblical commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill extends to military conflict has always been a hotly-disputed theologically issue.

So I am not entirely sure I agree with Dr Nazir-Ali on this, although it doesn't entirely surprise me to see him criticising Mr Blair. He was, after all, George Carey's chosen successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, but the former Prime Minister went for Dr Rowan Williams instead.

The problem with Tony Blair was not that he was a Christian, nor even that he occasionally made references to the fact, but that he too often allowed himself to sound as if he, alone, had the mind of Christ. The truth is none of us can claim that - at least, not this side of Heaven.