English knives out for Brown

According to Charlie Clarke and others, Gordon Brown is now virtually "Joint Prime Minister" with Tony Blair, though as he perfectly well knows, in our system of government such an idea is a constitutional nonsense.

The more of this sort of thing I hear, the more I am tending to the view that Brown is being set up by the Blairites - an idea I explored in a previous post last week and may well return to....

Meanwhile, supporters of the Campaign for an English Parliament, of which I am also a supporter, have launched a campaign to stop Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister on the grounds that, as a Scot, he has no mandate in England.

This image of Gordon Brown currently appears on the CEP newsblog, along with a lengthy comment from me and response from the blog's author, Gareth Young.

Although I support the CEP's overall aims I think there is a rather unpleasant and personal overtone to this campaign. It doesn't seem so very far away from the sort of "send the buggers home" saloon-bar racism which still exists in some inner-city areas where racial tensions are high.

Gareth's argument is that until we have an English Parliament, we can't have a Scottish Prime Minister of the whole of the UK, but this seems a bizarre point of view to take if Gordon is the best candidate for PM in all other respects.

That said, Gordon could stop this sort of sabre-rattling in its tracks by saying a bit more about how he plans to tackle the West Lothian Question if and when he finally does become Prime Minister.

As I have said on previous posts, one of the opposition parties is going to come out in favour of an English Parliament before too long, because the status quo simply cannot be justified. Brown should pre-empt them by promising an English Constitutional Convention to look at the whole issue in the round.

February 15 update: Iain Dale's Diary is also inviting comments on this post.

February 16 update: More hostile comment on this post can be found at the CEP Cambs blog and The England Project. Some posters on CEP Cambs seem to think I am some kind of wealthy academic stuck in my ivory tower - if only they knew!

We hate it when our friends become successful....

...was of course originally the title of a Morrissey song. But it applies equally well to the world of journalism as Lib Dem leadership contender Chris Huhne is now finding to his cost.

Huhne, an ex-journalist, seems to have a fair few enemies in the media, which doesn't surprise me knowing what a bitchy, backstabbing world it is.

In a column published on Saturday, the normally scrupulously-fair minded commentator Matthew Parris described Huhne as "mysteriously and indefinably ghastly."

I think if people with Matthew's sort of power as an opinion-former are going to throw that sort of mud around, they really ought to say more by way of explanation, and I have written to the Times to say so.

But Parris is not alone. In this space filler at the end of his Observer column on Sunday, Nick Cohen dredges up some ancient story about Huhne driving a flash motor in the 1980s and contrasting this with his support for green taxes today.

And even the Daily Telegraph, whose esteemed political correspondent Brendan Carlin was the first to reveal the Huhne leadership bid, has come out against him in this editorial published on Friday, accusing him of "duplicity."

Against that, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian last week constitutes a rather lone supportive voice in the national media.

No doubt there is always some resentment towards poachers-turned-gamekeepers, but the level of media abuse being directed at Huhne in this contest is well in excess of his opponents.

Why it has to be Huhne

I've been plugging the claims of Chris Huhne for the Lib Dem leadership on this blog for some weeks now but I'd not had a chance to do so in my newspaper columns or podcast until the Dunfermline East result gave the issue a fresh topicality.

To read my detailed explanation of why Huhne is the man, click here, or alternatively, if you want to hear it, click here.

To the hills....

I'm off here this weekend - Llanthony Priory in South Wales for the stag do of my oldest friend for whom I'm best-manning in April. Be back Monday assuming I survive the whitewater rafting!

Huhne in the driving seat

Yesterday I was (wrongly) accused by an anonymous user of this blog of being the person behind a "fake" YouGov poll which artifically inflated Chris Huhne's support in the Lib Dem leadership election in a bid to create a false sense of momentum.

I suppose I ought to be flattered that anyone could think that I (1) had that much influence, or (2) was wealthy enough to fund YouGov polls.

The truth is Chris Huhne's campaign needs no help from me to give it a sense of momentum. According to a real YouGov poll published today, Huhne is now the front-runner in the race, with 38pc of the votes to 34pc for Ming Campbell and 27pc for Simon Hughes

Click here for the full story, and here for a detailed breakdown of the results.

The three candidates are due to appear on Question Time tonight which should be very interesting. Last week Huhne wiped the floor with the rest of the panel, despite Iain Dale hilariously claiming that actor and would-be Tory MP Adam Rickitt was the star of the show.

As for who was really behind the YouGov poll that wasn't - suspicion points firmly at Camp Campbell as has been covered in detail on Guido's blog.

February 10 Update: Question Time sort of confirmed me in my view that none of the candidates are as good as Charles Kennedy. Huhne did not quite sparkle as I had hoped but at least did not mess-up. For a fuller analysis (and more detailed comment from me) see Iain Dale again.

Since then, of course, we've had Dunfermline East, which demonstrates that the era of three-party politics is not quite as dead as the Tories and Labour would have had us believe.

Be careful, Gordy.

There now seems to be a general consensus across what might broadly be described as the political and media classes that Gordon Brown will be the next Prime Minister, and that the process for the handover is already under way.

According to this piece by Nick Robinson the Chancellor no longer greets questions about the succession with gruff denials.

But while I would by and large go along with this conventional wisdom, I would - to paraphrase John Cole's comment about the downfall of Margaret Thatcher - keep 1pc of my mind open to the possibility that Gordon is being rather royally set up.

Eighteen months is an awfully long time in politics, and if at any point Gordon appears to be taking the succession - and more importantly the Labour Party - for granted, then the mood could quickly change.

It is not impossible that someone like Alan Milburn could capitalise on a groundswell of resentment among Labour members at what might appear like an establishment "stitch-up." And this might be exactly what the Blairites are secretly hoping for.

If I were Gordon, I would revert to the "gruff denial" strategy - and fast.