My Top 10 Political Heroes

I've done books, speeches, gaffes, journalists and blogs, so as a logical conclusion to the political Top 10s series, here's my list of the politicians I most admire from home and abroad.

1. Sir Winston Churchill. Okay, so he was a Conservative and an imperialist, and I am neither. But maybe you don't choose your political heroes, maybe they choose you, and try as I might, I can't put the man who saved the country from Nazi tyranny anywhere other than at Number One. Yes, he had his faults. For a start, he was pissed for most of the Second World War, which puts Charles Kennedy's problems into their proper perspective. But sentimental old sod that I am, hearing those "fight them on the beaches" speeches still brings tears to my eyes. "We will never surrender."

2. Denis Healey. A theme of lost leaders run through this Top 10, and if Churchill was the greatest Prime Minister we ever had, Denis was surely the greatest we never had. It is the enduring tragedy of the British left that he didn't get the top job instead of James Callaghan in 1976. Had he done so, he might have taken on and beaten the unions himself instead of waiting for Mrs Thatcher to do it, and thereby relegated her to a footnote in Tory history. The man with the legendary hinterland, his autobiography, "The Time of My Life" is the best political book of the last 30 years.

3. Anthony Crosland. If Healey was the left's lost leader, then Crosland was its greatest thinker. He was never a realistic candidate for the leadership, but he is regarded by many Whitehall mandarins as the best departmental minister of all time. His seminal work "The Future of Socialism" in 1956 became the creed of the so-called "revisionists" who aimed to adapt socialism to modern circumstances and was cited by Tony Blair as an inspiration behind New Labour. Personally, I think the entire Blair project would have made this great egalitarian turn sharply in his grave.

4. David Lloyd George. One of three genuine radicals to occupy 10 Downing Street in the 20th century - Attlee and Thatcher, in their different ways, were the others - the "Welsh Wizard" turned on Britain's antiquated class system with unparalleled ferocity. As possibly the greatest reforming Chancellor of all time, his Budgets did as much to lay the foundations of the welfare state as Beveridge's famous report thirty years later. The first PM from a genuinely working-class background, he sadly fell prey to the corruptions of office and a cash-for-honours scandal. Plus ca change...

5. Mikhail Gorbachev. I was a bit of Kremlinologist in my younger days, deriving endless fascination from the machinations of the Soviet Politburo. Mikhail Gorbachev was at least 10 years younger than the rest of the Russian gerontocracy, but he sliced through them like a knife through butter to succeed Konstantin Chernenko in 1983. He then proceded to revolutionise the Soviet Union and with it world politics. Admirers of Reagan and Thatcher like to claim they won the Cold War. Wrong. It was Gorbachev's political courage that really brought down the Berlin Wall.

6. Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I. Okay, so the Vatican City State is not really a country, and the Pope is not really a political leader, but I had to get him in somewhere. This was the man who was pontiff for 33 days before he was murdered by an unholy alliance of freemasons, mafiosi and corrupt cardinals. The church lost a humble, holy man who might well have abandoned the Vatican Palace and lived in a Roman slum as a genuinely prophetic Christian witness to the world. Instead, Catholicism fell into the clutches of the hardliners Wojtyla and Ratzinger. It has not recovered.

7. Bishop Abel Muzorewa. Most people would think of Bishop Desmond Tutu as the greatest African churchman of recent times but I had tremendous sympathy for this brave little bishop who briefly led "Zimbabwe-Rhodesia" in 1978-79. Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo resfused to accept the so-called "internal settlement," and the British staged a conference to find a political solution that included them. When Mugabe won the resulting election we congratulated ourselves on a smooth handover to black majority rule. White Zimbabweans who knew Mugabe better disagreed, and they were right.

8. Martin Luther King Jnr. Second only to Churchill among the ranks of 20th century orators, his speeches inspired a generation not just within the American civil rights movement but around the world. I love the analogy he drew between arbitrary musical categorisations and the artificial divisions within humanity. "Today on this program you will hear gospel, and rhythm, and blues, and jazz - but all those are just labels. We know that music is music." Died a hero's death, but like Lloyd George, his personal life did not always reflect his high Christian ideals.

9. Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston. My favourite 19th century Prime Minister, his famous last words were "die, my dear doctor - that's the last thing I will do!" But as well as this memorable quote he also made the definitive statement of British foreign policy in the 19th century: "We have no perpetual allies and no eternal enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal and these we support." His words still have resonance today. Would that Tony Blair could have approached the Iraq issue on the basis of whether British interests, rather than perpetual alliances, were at stake.

10. Michael Heseltine. The second of two names on my list who should have been Prime Minister but weren't, the Tories made a catastrophic error in overlooking Tarzan. He'd have been a great Prime Minister and would have weaned his party off the absurd Little Englander mentality that contributed to its three successive election defeats. Should have been rewarded for his political courage in getting rid of Thatcher when it was clear she had become an electoral liability. Instead, his fate was to be largely vilified by a party still hopelessly in thrall to its defeated heroine.

And that's it. If I could have chosen my Prime Ministers of the past 30 years, they would have read something like: Healey 1976-1983. Heseltine 1983-1992. Smith 1992-94. Brown 1994-to date. We would now be a much more civilised, social democratic country, instead of one where so-called Labour governments dance to the increasingly shrill tones of the Murdoch press. But for Gordon, at least, it is not too late.....

Charles Clarke is a Kinnockite to the last

Much discussion in the mainstream media today on whether Charles Clarke is set to do a Geoffrey Howe and take revenge on Tony Blair over his sacking from the Cabinet last month by demanding that the Prime Minister set a date for his departure.

If so, it is odd that he is choosing to do it in a Newsnight interview which hardly anyone will watch rather than in a Personal Statement on the floor of the House of Commons, but his decision to speak out is significant none the less.

After all, it is not so very long ago that Clarke was still publicly maintaining that the Prime Minister would stay on until summer 2008 before standing down.

Perhaps the key to it is to remember that Charles Clarke was never really a fully paid-up Blairite. He was a Kinnockite, and Kinnock himself made clear as long ago as April 2004 his view that Blair probably ought to go soon after winning a third term.

June 27 Update: The story was not quite as billed. Despite the trenchant criticisms of Reid and the implied criticism of the reshuffle, Clarke apparently still wants Blair to stay on until 2008. Moral: Don't believe everything you read in the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail...

Politics or football - take your pick!

My two latest podcasts are now live online, one focusing on the World Cup and the other on the past seven days in politics.

The World Cup podcast, put together with colleagues on the thisis network of regional websites, focuses not unnaturally on England's efforts against Ecuador yesterday and their prospects for next weekend's Quarter Final encounter with a weakened Portugal team.

My colleagues are very upbeat about England's chances of making the Final but I remain cautious - I don't really think the experiment of playing Rooney on his own upfront is the best use of the player, and I still maintain a choice will eventually have to be made between Gerrard and Lampard in midfield if we are to get the best out of either.

Anyway to hear the podcast in full, click HERE.

Meanwhile the weekly politics podcast, acompanying my weekly Saturday column, focused on Gordon Brown's nuclear bombshell, and what it could mean for the chances of an "orderly transition."

It can be listened to HERE with the text version available HERE.

The lost leader returns

I watched Charles Kennedy on Question Time last night, his first appearance on national television since his resignation. And he was brilliant, just brilliant.

Given by the audience reaction to him, his rapport with the public remains as strong as ever and his answers were invariably both sensible and judicious, including one to a question from Dimbleby about whether he was now teetotal.

When he was asked about a possible return to the leadership in future, Charles made clear he was not ruling it out, bringing further cheers from an audience that clearly thought he should never have lost the job in the first place.

Bring it on, I say. Besides mumbling Ming and over-hyped political teenager Nick Clegg, Kennedy remains a class act.

Labour leadership contest is now a certainty

The BBC leads most of its bulletins this morning with the story that Gordon Brown has committed himself to a replacement for Trident if he becomes Prime Minister.

Some appear to be wondering why this is a story at all. Surely it's just a senior Government minister making clear that he supports existing Government policy?

Well, I reckon they're missing the point. The reason this is a story is because there are quite a few people out there in the Labour Party who thought, perhaps naively, that Prime Minister Brown might turn out to take a different view on the replacement of Trident and other nuclear-related matters.

What I think is really interesting about this story - and no-one really seems to have picked up on this yet - is that it makes a Labour leadership challenge from the anti-nuclear, Meacherite left an absolute racing certainty.

Now here's the rub. Until now, it has been generally assumed that Mr Brown wanted an uncontested election, or an "orderly transition" as it is usually described.

I reckon that's wrong, and that the Chancellor has decided he would benefit much more from a contest in which he can define himself as the natural inheritor of the New Labour mantle in opposition to a challenge from the old left.

By making clear his views on Trident at this early stage, he has given the left the perfect cause on which to mount such a challenge - perfect both in the sense that their feelings about nuclear weapons make it inevitable that they will take it up, and in the sense that it portrays Brown as in touch with mainstream opinion in the country.

All Gordon has to worry about now is whether the Blairites will be convinced by this display of loyalty, or whether they will, in the end, decide to run Alan Johnson against him.

Update 1: Clare Short has now made my point for me, by saying she will no longer support Gordon Brown for the leadership, and that there should be a contest.

Update 2: My most recent column looking at the Labour leadership issue, written earlier this week, is published today in the North West Enquirer.

Update 3: Ben Rooney has included this post in today's Guardian round-up of what's on the web - the second time this blog has been featured!

Barnett back on national agenda?

I seem to have got a bit of a reputation over the years for having an interest in the Barnett Formula, the obscure Treasury funding rules which currently award Scotland £1,473 more per head in public spending than England.

So it's always nice to see other journalists occasionally taking up the issue, such as Alice Thomson in today's Telegraph.

"It must be obvious to the Chancellor that this handout is increasingly unacceptable to the English. It has allowed the Scottish Parliament to bring in free care for the elderly, free nursery places and free tuition at universities, as well as enabling them to build a £431 million parliament building. If Mr Brown wants to put a stop to claims that a Scottish MP cannot be prime minister, this is the way to do it," she writes.

Thomson is known for her closeness to Tory leader David Cameron, so it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the Tory frontbench do about this. For the past two elections, the Lib Dems have been the only party committed to scrapping this monstrously unfair system.