Where's Bob Woolmer when you need him?

In the wake of another English cricketing humiliation, it's inevitable now that Duncan Fletcher will have to go. Even a relatively establishment figure like BBC cricket correspondent Jon Agnew is saying so.

I have to confess that England's loss against South Africa has left me rather red-faced in the office this morning. I was convinced that the Proteas' notorious flakiness in tense situations would work to our advantage and that everything would come good, but this was clearly something of a triumph of hope over experience.

The real sadness in my view about England's failure is that we, and cricket generally, have been deprived of the one man whose coaching genius could have restored our fortunes. Bob Woolmer should have been made England coach long ago, in my view. Now he will never get the chance.

I suppose the job will now go to Tom Moody, although I find it odd that we would consider appointing an Aussie to run our cricket team when the common consensus around the time of Sven Goran Eriksson's departure was that appointing a German to run our football team was out of the question.

The last monthly presser?

I am too modest to think that the great Nick Assinder might have read this piece before compiling his current column on the BBC website, but needless to say I agree with him.

Will this end the speculation?

Well, it ought to. See Nick Robinson's report HERE.

To be fair to Mr Miliband, it is no different to what he has always said. And he is right that the way Clarke and Co have approached the whole issue has made it very hard for him to enter the race without prolonging the Blair-Brown feud into the next generation and thereby splitting the party.

Cynics will say there's a deal, and that Miliband must have been offered the Foreign Office, or something. Sceptics will say he hasn't uttered the magic words "If nominated I will not accept, if elected I will not serve."

For what it's worth, I think that if he isn't standing, it's probably for the simple reason that he recognises that, at the present time, Gordon will be a better Prime Minister than he would be.

Johnson moves against Miliband

Last week I observed that one person who would be none too pleased if David Miliband threw his hat into the ring for the Labour leadership is Alan Johnson, who, I am sure, sees himself as Gordon Brown's potential heir apparent if the next general election goes belly-up.

Johnson's comments on the prospect of a Miliband candidature yesterday seem to bear this out, and demonstrate that, contrary to what many suppose, the Environment Secretary would NOT get the automatic support of the "Blairite" wing of the Cabinet if he stood - far from it.

Meanwhile the pro-Miliband blog There Is An Alternative seems to have had a redesign, including removing the photograph of the man himself from the site along with the explanatorty paragraph of why the blog has been set up.

Whatever can this mean? Is it possible that the author is having second thoughts about a campaign which is sure to split the Labour Party and hand the 2010 election to David Cameron? I think we should be told.

The Miliblog

Muxh excitement both in the blogosphere and the MSM today about the new pro-David Miliband blog, somewhat bizarrely entitled There is an Alternative.

I think it would benefit their cause if whoever is behind this were to reveal their identity. There is already speculation that it could be the work of a Tory blogger such as Conservative Home supremo Tim Montgomerie, and although I wouldn't have thought it was his style, such is the nature of politics that people will tend to assume the worst in such situations.

Either way, it is certainly looking more and more likely, as I predicted on Budget Day, that there will now be a serious challenge to Gordon Brown.

Brown is pretending to welcome this. He would indeed welcome a challenge from a useful idiot such as Charles Clarke. But Miliband is the one potential contender the Chancellor really fears, perhaps because he knows it could then be transformed into a generational contest he might struggle to win.

Clarke's own role in this is becoming increasingly transparent. His article in yesterday's Mail on Sunday seemed designed to create the ground for a challenge, arguing that once Tony Blair steps down events will assume their own momentum.

His argument that leadership elections always throw up unexpected surprises in these early stages might have been convincing if his article were not so completely historically illiterate - particularly in relation to Labour history.

Clarke claimed that Neil Kinnock emerged as a "surprise" contender following the resignation of Michael Foot in 1983. In fact Kinnock was overwhelming frontrunner from the moment the union leader and fixer Clive Jenkins announced he would be supporting him - before Foot had even formally announced his own resignation.

Similarly, he claimed that Jim Callaghan was an unexpected choice to succeed Harold Wilson, when everyone knows that the centrist Wilson purposely teed up the succession for Jim to scupper the Gaitskellite trio of Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland.

Update: Apparently the person behind it is called "Glass House." Not sure if this takes us any further forward, but apologies to Tim Montgomerie anyway.

Whoever "Glass House" is, what he needs to do is make clear not simply why he thinks Gordon Brown shouldn't be leader - it's fairly easy, though misguided in my view, to make an argument for that position based purely on current opinion polls - but to articulate why on earth he thinks David Miliband should be.

It would be an unprecedented step to elect, not just as party leader, but as Prime Minister someone who has not served in a major office of state. Environment is not even an executive department like health or education, and Miliband's is by and large a policy role, a bit like being head of the IPPR.

Given that Jack Straw is Brown's campaign manager, the only credible challenger to Gordon Brown in terms of experience and gravitas is John Reid. If he wants to prove that there is indeed an "alternative," that's where "Glass House" should be putting his efforts.

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

The new Attlee?

Fellow leftie blogger Skipper and myself had an interesting debate over on his blog this week about whether Gordon Brown could actually make a virtue out of presenting himself as a sort of Clem Attlee type figure along the lines of "I know I'm a fairly dull sort of bloke compared to the last one, but judge me by what I do."

Skip's argument was that this option isn't really open to him in the modern media age, but I think today's Guardian interview in which Brown eschews the celebrity culture is a sure sign that he is going to try.