Are city regions a runner for Labour?

In my newspaper columns at the weekend I focused on the Government's plans for "city regions" as outlined by Ruth Kelly in a speech last week.

The idea is to use the "London model" of an elected mayor with powers cutting across local authority areas to streamline accountability and galvanise economic development across eight major conurbations.

It's a good idea in theory, but to my mind, it raises different issues for different cities.

Manchester and Birmingham are already city regions and the plan makes a good deal of sense there. I am less sure whether it makes sense for Newcastle, and I am absolutely damned sure it makes no sense for Nottingham. Derby and Leicester, which was ludicrously labelled a potential "city region" by one of Ms Kelly's spokespeople, even though no-one in either city has actually suggested it.

Accordingly, the issue was given different treatment in each of the different columns I wrote about it.

The Newcastle Journal column can be read HEREwhile the North West Enquirer version can be viewed HERE. Unfortunately the other two are not online yet.

England: The inquest

What to say about England's elimination from the World Cup by Portugal in a penalty shoot-out after having their star player sent off? Well, in one sense, you really couldn't make it up, in that if you had done, everyone would have gone: "Nah, that couldn't possibly happen again now, could it?"

But lightning does, it seems, strike twice in the same place, in that what happened on Saturday was precisely what happened against Argentina in 1998 when Beckham was sent-off and then David Batty missed in the shoot-out to condemn England to defeat.

All the national newspaper pundits have had their say, and there's no point me linking out to them all. But for me the best summing-up of the selectorial and tactical mistakes by which Sven-Goran Eriksson blighted England's challenge came from the Observer's Paul Wilson.

"By the time Eriksson had taken a blind leap of faith over Walcott and decided four strikers would be plenty even if two of them were injured, he appeared to be behaving as if distracted...his entire philosophy now seemed to be based on the premise that you might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb, and so the cautious, studied approach disappeared in favour of bizarre selections and a new formation every week. And still England played terribly."

Quite. But I think that, collectively, the national media - and I'm not singling out Paul Wilson or any other individual here - can sometimes be guilty of 20/20 hindsight in relation to such issues.

To me, it was obvious from the start that this squad had been poorly selected, and that as a result of that, the team was performing poorly and Eriksson failing to make the best use of the available talents at his disposal.

Yet the papers, for quite understandable reasons, seem to see it as their patriotic duty to get behind our boys and not question too closely either the validity of the team selections of the effectiveness of the performances, even if these things are staring them in the face.

Take Theo Walcott, for instance. There should have been a press campaign against this crazy selection, ahead of Jermaine Defoe. Instead they simply took it on trust that Eriksson knew what he was doing, and that the untested 17-year-old really could become England's latest World Cup hero. In fact, Eriksson himself didn't even believe in him.

Similarly, the media have been muted in their criticisms of Frank Lampard who was, to put it bluntly, not worth his place in the team in this tournament. He was obviously trying too hard to score and his presence in central midfield inhibited Steven Gerrard, the one player apart from Rooney who could have won the thing for us.

Eriksson's reluctance to drop one of his stars distorted the team formation throughout the campaign, forcing him into playing a negative 4-5-1 when we would have been far better off with Rooney and Crouch up front and Gerrard at the head of a midfield diamond.

World Cups are often about discovering your best formation. That's what happened in Italia '90. If England had not switched to 3-5-2 in that tournament when Bryan Robson went home injured, we'd never have got near the semi finals. And of course we only discovered Geoff Hurst in '66 as a result of an injury to Jimmy Greaves.

For my part, I never believed England could win this World Cup. Yes, we had the players to do it, but not the management capable of getting them to play together as a team. I am far more shocked by the elimination of Argentina, whom I am happy to admit I tipped for glory at the outset and who possessed, in Juan Roman Riquelme, the player of this tournament

At the start of this World Cup, I listed my Top 10 World Cup memories, and reminiscences of Italia '90 inevitably loomed large in that. Sadly, there is nothing from the 2006 tournament that I will be adding to that list.

What was so memorable about the challenge by Bobby Robson's men was that it was so unexpected, in contrast to this over-hyped side and their over-hyped manager who somehow managed to convince a nation that we had a genuine chance of the world's greatest prize.

It's not all doom and gloom. In 2010, Rooney will be in his prime. Robinson, Terry, Gerrard, Hargreaves (a star yesterday), Joe Cole and Aaron Lennon could still be around to form the nucleus of a new team. It's not a bad basis on which to build.

But as for Sven, it really is goodbye...and good riddance.

Update: Throughout the World Cup, I have helped produce a series of podcasts with colleagues on the this is...network of websites. Now England have packed their bags, we're hanging up our mikes, but our final verdict on England's campaign can be heard HERE.

That's enough by-election baloney

You could draw all sorts of conclusions from last night's by-election results in which Labour failed to regain Blaenau Gwent and the Tories held onto Bromley by a whisker. To take just three examples:

* Labour cannot win either in Middle England or its heartlands, given its defeat in Wales and fourth place in Bromley.

* The Tories' modernisation agenda has been a failure, given that the party's vote in Bromley dropped by 11,000.

* The Lib Dems' strong performance in Bromley, coming within 633 votes of victory, means Ming Campbell's leadership is now secure.

And it's all complete baloney.

Although by-elections do have an impact on national politics and party morale, they tell us very little about the overall mood of the nation.

A classic example was the Darlington by-election in 1983. The SDP-Liberal Alliance went into it with high hopes, but Labour's Ossie O'Brien won with the Tories in second place.

The result had a profound political impact. It secured Michael Foot in his leadership of the Labour Party, foiling an NEC plot to replace him with Denis Healey, and that in turn convinced Mrs Thatcher to call a General Election, certain that she could not lose to the veteran leftie.

She was right of course - but what happened at Darlington? The Tories' Michael Fallon won the seat, with O'Brien in second place and the Alliance a distant third.

Similarly, I don't think the results in eiother Blaenau Gwent or Bromley tell us anything at all about how voters would behave nationally if there were to be a General Election tomorrow.

The Welsh Labour Party has got itself into a characteristic pickle in Blaenau Gwent, but it is effectively a little local difficulty, as Macmillan might have put it.

And Bromley? Well, there seems to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Tory blogosphere today about their narrow squeeze, but they should relax.

As I have written on Mr Dale's blog - and as I am sure all England fans will agree - a win is a win is a win.

Yet another Dead Tree Press diatribe against the political blogosphere

With 114,000 hits a month he doesn't need any publicity from me, but this exchange between Iain Dale and a rather ill-informed Independent leader-writer has to be seen to be believed.

It comes hard on the heels of the Catherine Bennett episode earlier this month in which the Guardian columnist bemoaned the male domination of the blogosphere.

I don't think this is really about gender politics at all. As I said on that occasion, it has much more to do with the strange mixture of fascination and contempt that the mainstream media appears to hold towards the world of blogging.

In fact it strikes me that the relationship is becoming not unlike that which exists between the Lobby and politicians - both needing eachother while simultanesouly despising the other.

For Labour, all roads lead to Manchester

The Daily Telegraph believes he's now ready to go next year. Meanwhile the Grauniad says he wants to thrash out a new private understanding with Gordon Brown over the timing of the handover. Nick Robinson ain't convinced, and reckons "events" might yet come to his rescue.

So does all this tell us anything new about Tony Blair's political future? Well, the triple by-lines on the two broadsheet tales suggest to me a slight hedging of bets, perhaps...?

The one thing most pundits seem to agree on though is that the thing needs to be sorted out by the time of Labour's conference in Manchester this September, or risk that event turning into a media shambles dominated by speculation about the succession.

Here's what I wrote on this particular issue in the Manchester-based North-West Enquirer a week ago

"For the Labour Party now, it seems all roads are pointing to Manchester, where this year’s annual conference will take place - the first to be held at a non-seaside venue for many years.

"The pattern of Labour conferences in recent years has been a big speech by Brown on the Monday, setting out his vision and leadership credentials, followed by a defiant message from Blair on the Tuesday that he’s here to stay.

"It won’t work this time round. Everyone knows Blair is going, and Brown has made too many leader-in-waiting speeches for another one to be taken seriously.

"Hence it is my hunch that the Prime Minister will not be able to leave Manchester without being forced to do the one thing he most wants to avoid: to name the date for his departure."

The Guardian story suggests that Blair still wants to avoid giving a public commitment by reaching a private understanding with Brown. But once it is obvious that such a private understanding has been reached, it will also be obvious that Blair is going next year.

In this context, Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home has set up this site where visitors can log their predictions of the Prime Minister's exact departure date, with the chance to win £500.

I won't be entering myself because, as a journalist, I don't believe in betting on political outcomes which you might have to write about and which you might thereby be in a position to influence in some small way.

That said, I'm happy to accede to Tim's request to add the link for anyone else who wants to try their luck.

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.....