Blair-must-go watch: Linford beats Guardian to it!

"You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

That was my blunt message to Prime Minister Tony Blair in my columns and accompanying podcast this weekend. After months of toying with the idea of firing Cromwell's Golden Bullet in his direction, I have to confess it gave me immense satisfaction to let him have it at last!

Of course, if it was just me (and Bob Piper!) he'd ignore it - but it isn't just me and a consensus now appears to be developing across the political blogosphere that Blair will be gone by the time of the Labour Conference this autumn.

Most devastatingly of all, the Guardian has now come out and said, in a leader entitled Nine years is enough published this morning, that Blair should go this summer rather than attempt to see out a decade in Number 10.

I don't think the Grauniad has quite the monopoly on progressive/left-of-centre political thought that it thinks it has - it's a fact that this Government is far less concerned about what it thinks than it is about the Sun, for instance - but this editorial will undoubtedly be seen as a further nail in the Prime Minister's political coffin.

I'm just glad I managed to beat them to it...!

March 21 update: A Newsnight poll published last night reveals that
half the population now want Blair to go. This is, surely, the tipping point...

Farewell, Humphrey - you were a reminder of a gentler age

I was very sad to learn from the BBC this morning of the death of Humphrey the Downing Street cat.

Humphrey was a stray who was taken in to Number 10 during the last days of Margaret Thatcher and became almost synomymous with the place during John Major's time as Prime Minister.

He was unceremoniously evicted in 1997 at the behest of Cherie Blair amid all sorts of ghastly rumours she had actually had him done in.

Thankfully those rumours were untrue - but it's a shame poor old Humphrey didn't live to see the Blairs equally unceremoniously evicted from Number 10 as they doubtless will be before too long.

March 21 update: The great Michael White has now penned a full tribute to Humphrey which can be read here.

No to Ming's Dynasty

I see that Iain Dale is mischievously touting me as a contender for the job of Press Secretary to Sir Menzies Campbell as advertised in this week's Press Gazette.

I'm sorry to have disappoint him. Even if I had the slightest inclination to return to London from glorious Derbyshire, going back to the Parliamentary Press Gallery as a spin doctor would be a bit poacher-turned-gamekeeperish for my liking.

But even if I was interested, I think this column published a week or so ago would probably rule me out!

I will however be sure to recommend Iain Dale for the post of Number 10 Press Secretary if and when David Cameron becomes Prime Minister.

March 20 update: Forget No 10 Press Sec - I hereby nominate Iain for the forthcoming vacancy at Folkestone which was announced on Friday night. And unlike me becoming Ming's press spokesman, I reckon he'd be in with a serious chance!

Blair-must-go watch

With Tony Blair's premiership now holed below the waterline, I'm going to be keeping a fairly regular watch on this blog on what the MainStream Media and also other blogs are saying about his survival prospects.

First up is the Economist which says in an editorial that the Prime Minister would be better-off leaving office soon rather than getting into an increasingly destructive scrap with his party over public service reforms.

In today's Guardian, Polly Toynbee argues that the loans-for-peerages affair and Wednesday's schools rebellion should be seen as a warning to Mr Blair to make peace with his party and retire with good grace, although interestingly the paper itself doesn't yet go that far.

Meanwhile king of the tipsters Guido Fawkes is putting his money on an autumn departure, around the time of the Labour Conference, and after his brilliant call on the Lib Dem leadership election, who are we to disagree?

For my part, I first called on Mr Blair to go in the wake of the David Kelly affair in 2003 and he rather disappointingly failed to heed my advice, but I'm going to have another go in my columns and podcast this weekend which as ever will be available here on Monday.

As to what I actually think will happen...while I've always maintained that he will go on or around the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, in May 2007, I am seriously beginning to wonder whether he can hang around till then without doing very serious damage to the Labour Party.

Clarke flies a kite for coalition

The next General Election is still at least three years away...but already Ken Clarke is talking up the prospect of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition in an interview in today's Spectator - helpfully reproduced online at e-politix as the Speccie insists on charging us for visiting its web pages.

The idea is not so fanciful as many will instinctively suppose. As the excellent Electoral Calculus website shows, the Tories will have to be a long way in front of Labour to get an overall majority at the next election, and the best estimate at the moment is that they are likely to fall short of that.

But the issue Clarke is specifically addressing in this interview is the political dynamics which such a result will create in terms of who teams up with who in a hung Parliament. While I have absolutely no doubt that Sir Menzies Campbell would prefer to join a coalition led by Gordon Brown, that may not be an option if the Tories both win the popular vote and comprise the largest single party.

In those circumstances, as I discussed in a recent column entitled Which Way Will Ming Swing?, it would be politically impossible for the Lib Dems to sustain a defeated Labour Government in power, and Sir Ming would have little option but to get into bed with Mr Cameron.

In return, Mr Cameron would of course have to promise electoral reform, but by then he will hopefully have realised how unfair the current system is to the Tories and how they might actually benefit by the introduction of proportional representation.

Mr Cameron will no doubt deny it till he's blue in the face - but I reckon Old Ken might just be flying this kite with his leader's tacit approval.

Minister "pissed at Despatch Box"

Labour Watch has an excellent story that a senior Government minister was having difficulties remaining upright at the Despatch Box during a late-night adjournment debate earlier this week.

The minister in question is an unctuous little toad who regularly used to frequent the Press Gallery Bar of an evening in an attempt to pick up titbits about what people might be writing about the next day, so maybe he got into bad habits.

I don't know why more national newspaper diarists have not picked up on this story, but in my view it's well worth a read!