In the name of Gord, go

The pressure on Tony Blair is cranking up again following last weekend's Compass conference and continuing dismal opinion poll ratings for Labour.

This morning's Guardian leader renews the paper's call for the Prime Minister to stand down this year in the interests of the party, and even fellow blogger Skipper, who has hitherto been notable for giving the PM the benefit of the doubt, has now joined the growing chorus.

It seems to me so self-evident that Blair's continuance in office is badly damaging his party that only someone who was completely self-deluded could fail to see the truth of it. That would be our Prime Minister, then.

As the Guardian piece puts it: "Mr Blair's continuation at the top of his party increasingly appears like an act of vanity."

Blair-must-go watch update:

This is the current list of Labour MPs, newspapers, political commentators, bloggers and pollsters who have publicly called on Tony Blair to stand down this year.

Andrew Smith
Frank Dobson
Michael Meacher
Ashok Kumar
Glenda Jackson
The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
The Economist
The New Statesman
Tribune
Polly Toynbee
Matthew Parris
Jonathan Freedland
Stephen Pollard
Paul Linford
Bloggerheads
Skipper
BBC Newsnight poll
Times Populus poll
YouGov poll of Labour members

Top blogging 2 (and some MainStream Media too!)

Does that rhyme? Anyway, here's the second of my occasional round-ups of things I appreciated on the blogosphere and beyond over the past week or so.

Stalin's Gran reveals John Prescott's taste in Indian-Italian cuisine...Tim Ireland and Justin McKeating leave some unwanted comments on Alastair Campbell's World Cup blog...Femme de Resistance gives her inimitable take on David Cameron's "Happiness Agenda,"....Iain Dale explains why the right rules the blogosphere...Madeleine Bunting takes her leave of the Grauniad...Stephen Pollard does his best to puncture the absurd media hype surrounding Nick Clegg...The Press Gazette reveals that most senior journalists are public school educated toffs... and A Dutchman comes up with what is surely the daftest blog of 2006 so far!

Labour contest would be "meaningless" - Ken

A few weeks back, a propos of Ken Livingstone's comments about the Barnett Formula, I speculated that he might be positioning himself as a potential "English Candididate" in a future Labour leadership contest.

Well, I'm wrong apparently. According to the BBC today, he's endorsed Gordon.

Furthermore, he reckons Brown's first act as PM should be to call a General Election, in order to give himself a clear and distinct mandate and forestall any cries of "Tony wouldn't have done this..."

There's only one problem with Ken's analysis, seducitve though it is. It is that no Prime Minister - let alone one as cautious as Mr Brown - is going to call an election while ten points behind in the opinion polls.

Blog of the Week!

As if Iain Dale has not been generous enough towards this blog over recent days, he has now named it as Blog of the Week in his slot on Channel 4's podcast, The Morning Report.

You can listen to it in full HERE but if you want to hear it, make sure you do so today because the podcast is updated each morning. Iain's bit starts about three quarters of the way through.

In case you miss it - and because I think it's worth preserving! - here's what Iain had to say about me:

"I still can't work out who he votes for, but his blog carries the sort of insight into the political scene you would expect from a former lobby hack but without the baggage of working for one of the major newspaper groups like the Guardian or Rupert Murdoch. I don't drink, but his blog conjures up the image of drinking a rather fine wine: like a good vintage, some of his writing is to be savoured."

Some may not be aware that Iain is the proprietor of Politicos, the online bookseller and publisher. So when someone who has published as many books as he has says something like that about my writing, it really means something, I can tell you.

Incidentally, as Iain is at pains to point out on his own blog, the piece was recorded well before I named his blog at No 1 in my Top 10 published here on Tuesday!

The rest of his C4 piece, which focuses on the reasons behind the current proponderance of the right-wing blogosphere and the relative lack of prominent left-of-centre blogs, is also well worth listening to.

Interestingly, he doesn't appear to class this as a "left-of-centre" blog in the context of that debate, but I guess that's because he can't work out who I vote for!