Benn turns the tables on Cruddas

The last time I carried out a Poll on Labour's deputy leadership earlier this year it produced the following result.

Jon Cruddas 35%
Hilary Benn 28%
Alan Johnson 7%
Peter Hain 5%
Harriet Harman 4%
Hazel Blears 3%
Jack Straw 3%
None of the above 15%

A few weeks' back I decided to run the poll again as the contest is now "live," minus Straw who decided against running. After the same length of time, the updated poll produced the following outcome (percentage movement in brackets):

Hilary Benn 48% (+20)
Jon Cruddas 24% (-10)
Alan Johnson 10% (+3)
Hazel Blears 8% (+5)
Harriet Harman 5% (+1)
Peter Hain 4% (-1)

Now of course all this is totally unscientific, but assuming that (a) some of my readers are Labour Party or union members, and (b) that some of the same people voted, it does seem to me to indicate two things:

1. Hilary Benn now has a big lead in grassroots support - which is what most other polls on the matter are saying anyway.

2. By carving himself out a distinct niche in this contest as the "change" candidate, Jon Cruddas continues to steal a march on the more established ministerial heopfuls.

It is still way to early to try to call this contest, but I do now expect Hazel Blears and Peter Hain to be the first two candidates eliminated, although I am not sure in what order. I expect much of Blears' support to go to Alan Johnson, while a lot of Hain's will go to Cruddas.

Since Harriet Harman and Cruddas have endorsed eachother, their second prefernces may well transfer to eachother in later ballots. The question is whether there will be enough of them to overtake Mr Benn, and at the moment, you have to say it is looking unlikely.

Vote early, vote often

I see that James Higham is inviting nominations for the Blog Power awards, the winners of which will be presumably chosen by other bloggers as opposed to members of the Tory Party or senior editorial staff of the Guardian as with certain other blogging awards.

I am most grateful to whoever it was who nominated this blog for Best British Blog and also for Best Political Blog, but it seems I still need a seconder if anyone feels inclined!

To nominate, e-mail jameshighamatmaildotcom.

Graham Brady is right

Like most people on the centre-left, I have grown up with the idea that Grammar Schools are elitist and socially divisive. But the ongoing row in the Tory Party over the issue has forced me to take a fresh look at this, and in particular to ask myself what a "progressive" position on academic selection would look like in today's world.

Reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that Graham Brady is right when he argues that selection by academic ability is a greater engine of social mobility than selection by house prices.

Near to where I live in Derbyshire, there is a former Grammar School which nevertheless retains many of the facets of one, which is regarded for miles around as the school to get your children into.

As a result, house prices in that village and the surrounding area are a good 20-30pc higher than in those areas which lie slightly outside the catchment area, meaning that only better-off families can in fact afford to send their kids there.

I don't doubt that there are countless other examples of this kind of effect across the country, a consequence of the exponential growth in house prices since comprehensive education was but a twinkle in Tony Crosland's eye.

By ditching his party's previous policy on creating new grammars, Tory leader David Cameron thinks he is being "modern" and "progressive." In fact he is doing what the Tory Party has historically always done - standing up for the interests of the wealthy elite who can afford homes near the top state schools against those who have to make do with what Alastair Campbell called "bog standard" comprehensives.

In my view, if Gordon Brown wants to lead a genuinely progressive government, as well as outflanking Cameron on an issue of real concern to the hard-working classes, he should take a very close look at what Graham Brady and the other Tory rebels are saying.

How about this for an autumn conference speech soundbite, Gordon? "Read my lips - no selection by house prices or interview under a Labour Government."

Designed to annoy

The Telegraph is currently running a competition to find the most annoying phrases in the English language. Some great reader comments can be seen here.

My own Top Five are as follows:

1. Going Forward. Management jargon for "in the future." I hear this one approximately twice a day in my current workplace.

2. Winterval. Or in fact any so-called politically correct terminology that takes Christ out of Christmas (eg cards that say "Happy Holidays!")

3. Fresh Turmoil. A phrase that became somewhat over-used by my former profession, usually as a means of keeping a political row story going for another day.

4. With respect. Which, as everyone who has ever had this said to them knows, means with absolutely no respect at all.

5. Next station stop, when used by railway announcers. As opposed, of course, to stops that occur between stations due to leaves on the line etc.

So who did Blair call a c**t?

When it comes to the inner workings of New Labour, Andrew Rawnsley gets all the best scoops. He knows who it was who called Gordon Brown "psychologically flawed," and now he's discovered, via an early draft of Alastair Campbell's memoirs, that Tony Blair once referred to a "very senior" Labour figure from the 1980s as "a cunt."

As recounted in yesterday's Observer, Blair requested that the expletive be deleted from the final version, lest it damage his reputation too much, though as Rawnsley points out, it is hard to see how Blair is going to come out of any book written by Campbell as anything other than media-obsessed.

But be that as it may, Rawnsley's revelations have now kicked off a new guessing game: who was on the end of the Prime Minister's four-letter outburst? Apparently it was "a very senior Labour figure from the 1980s who has been highly critical of New Labour," which narrows the field considerably.

Who were the senior figures from the 1980s? You could name, in moreorless chronological order, Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Peter Shore, Neil Kinnock, Roy Hattersley, John Smith, and Gerald Kaufman. These were the men who, at one time or another, occupied the posts of leader, deputy leader, shadow chancellor or shadow foreign secretary during the course of that decade.

So which one is it? Well, Foot, Kinnock, Smith and Kaufman can be ruled out because none of them has ever been "highly critical" of New Labour. Shore can be ruled out because, although twice a leadership candidate, he never really qualified as "very senior."

It follows, therefore, that Blair must have been referring either to Healey, who has been fairly personally critical of him though not of the wider New Labour project, or Hattersley, who has indeed been highly critical of both. My money is on the latter.

As it is, Hattersley is well-used to being on the end of somewhat agricultural language from his senior party colleagues. During the 1976 leadership election, he dropped in on Tony Crosland and asked him whether he would like to hear in detail his reasons for voting for rival candidate Jim Callaghan.

Whereupon Crosland gave the immortal reply: "No. Fuck off."

The deputy race: what it all means

My latest weekend column focuses on the deputy leadership race and what each of the potential outcomes could signify in terms of the Labour Party's future direction. I argue that while an Alan Johnson win might appear on the surface to be the most electorally advantageous course for the party, a Jon Cruddas victory would open up the prospect of the genuine policy renewal that is vital if New Labour is to re-enthuse the electorate.

Here's an extract:

"So what does it all mean....Well, a Hazel Blears victory would signify that party members, far from wanting a shift away from New Labour, are anxious for Mr Brown not to stray too far from the Blairite faith. On the contrary, a victory for either Mr Cruddas or Mr Hain would indicate a desire for a much more traditional sort of Labour agenda, with concerns about inequality much more to the fore.

If either Mr Benn or Ms Harman wins, it would suggest to me a desire not to rock the boat too much - both stand in the broad mainstream of Labour opinion and both would make natural deputies. Finally a win for Mr Johnson - probably the candidate with the widest public appeal - would suggest that the party is concerned, above all else, about winning the next general election.

Of all the possible outcomes, the one which contains potentially the greatest peril for Mr Brown is a triumph for the backbench outsider, Mr Cruddas. It would be portrayed by the Tories not only as a lurch to the left, but proof that the unions - where the Dagenham MP's support is strongest - still run the Labour Party.

But at the same time, such an outcome would probably provide the greatest opportunity for genuine policy renewal for a party which looks to have run out of ideas. In purely policy terms, if anyone has been setting the agenda in the course of the campaign thus far, it is Mr Cruddas.

Take housing, for instance. For years, this has been a Cinderella issue, neglected by Blair as an issue only of interest to the have-nots whose support he consistently took for granted. New Labour thought that by building thousands of new low-cost homes on brownfield sites, it would widen access to home ownership - but many of these have been snapped up by buy-to-let speculators.

Thanks to Mr Cruddas, the pressing need for a major increase in social housing provision has now leaped to near the top of the agenda for the incoming Brown administration. And whoever emerges as deputy, it is "forgotten" issues such as these which Labour needs to embrace if it is to convince the electorate that it has a fresh and distinctive vision."