Farewell, Humphrey - you were a reminder of a gentler age

I was very sad to learn from the BBC this morning of the death of Humphrey the Downing Street cat.

Humphrey was a stray who was taken in to Number 10 during the last days of Margaret Thatcher and became almost synomymous with the place during John Major's time as Prime Minister.

He was unceremoniously evicted in 1997 at the behest of Cherie Blair amid all sorts of ghastly rumours she had actually had him done in.

Thankfully those rumours were untrue - but it's a shame poor old Humphrey didn't live to see the Blairs equally unceremoniously evicted from Number 10 as they doubtless will be before too long.

March 21 update: The great Michael White has now penned a full tribute to Humphrey which can be read here.

No to Ming's Dynasty

I see that Iain Dale is mischievously touting me as a contender for the job of Press Secretary to Sir Menzies Campbell as advertised in this week's Press Gazette.

I'm sorry to have disappoint him. Even if I had the slightest inclination to return to London from glorious Derbyshire, going back to the Parliamentary Press Gallery as a spin doctor would be a bit poacher-turned-gamekeeperish for my liking.

But even if I was interested, I think this column published a week or so ago would probably rule me out!

I will however be sure to recommend Iain Dale for the post of Number 10 Press Secretary if and when David Cameron becomes Prime Minister.

March 20 update: Forget No 10 Press Sec - I hereby nominate Iain for the forthcoming vacancy at Folkestone which was announced on Friday night. And unlike me becoming Ming's press spokesman, I reckon he'd be in with a serious chance!

Blair-must-go watch

With Tony Blair's premiership now holed below the waterline, I'm going to be keeping a fairly regular watch on this blog on what the MainStream Media and also other blogs are saying about his survival prospects.

First up is the Economist which says in an editorial that the Prime Minister would be better-off leaving office soon rather than getting into an increasingly destructive scrap with his party over public service reforms.

In today's Guardian, Polly Toynbee argues that the loans-for-peerages affair and Wednesday's schools rebellion should be seen as a warning to Mr Blair to make peace with his party and retire with good grace, although interestingly the paper itself doesn't yet go that far.

Meanwhile king of the tipsters Guido Fawkes is putting his money on an autumn departure, around the time of the Labour Conference, and after his brilliant call on the Lib Dem leadership election, who are we to disagree?

For my part, I first called on Mr Blair to go in the wake of the David Kelly affair in 2003 and he rather disappointingly failed to heed my advice, but I'm going to have another go in my columns and podcast this weekend which as ever will be available here on Monday.

As to what I actually think will happen...while I've always maintained that he will go on or around the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, in May 2007, I am seriously beginning to wonder whether he can hang around till then without doing very serious damage to the Labour Party.

Clarke flies a kite for coalition

The next General Election is still at least three years away...but already Ken Clarke is talking up the prospect of a Tory-Lib Dem coalition in an interview in today's Spectator - helpfully reproduced online at e-politix as the Speccie insists on charging us for visiting its web pages.

The idea is not so fanciful as many will instinctively suppose. As the excellent Electoral Calculus website shows, the Tories will have to be a long way in front of Labour to get an overall majority at the next election, and the best estimate at the moment is that they are likely to fall short of that.

But the issue Clarke is specifically addressing in this interview is the political dynamics which such a result will create in terms of who teams up with who in a hung Parliament. While I have absolutely no doubt that Sir Menzies Campbell would prefer to join a coalition led by Gordon Brown, that may not be an option if the Tories both win the popular vote and comprise the largest single party.

In those circumstances, as I discussed in a recent column entitled Which Way Will Ming Swing?, it would be politically impossible for the Lib Dems to sustain a defeated Labour Government in power, and Sir Ming would have little option but to get into bed with Mr Cameron.

In return, Mr Cameron would of course have to promise electoral reform, but by then he will hopefully have realised how unfair the current system is to the Tories and how they might actually benefit by the introduction of proportional representation.

Mr Cameron will no doubt deny it till he's blue in the face - but I reckon Old Ken might just be flying this kite with his leader's tacit approval.

Minister "pissed at Despatch Box"

Labour Watch has an excellent story that a senior Government minister was having difficulties remaining upright at the Despatch Box during a late-night adjournment debate earlier this week.

The minister in question is an unctuous little toad who regularly used to frequent the Press Gallery Bar of an evening in an attempt to pick up titbits about what people might be writing about the next day, so maybe he got into bad habits.

I don't know why more national newspaper diarists have not picked up on this story, but in my view it's well worth a read!

Two reasons why Blair is finished

1. A Prime Minister with a majority of 66 is forced to rely on Conservative votes to get through a reform which he claimed would form a vital part of his legacy.

2. Labour's Treasurer is forced to launch an investigation into his own party's finances over accusations that loans were exchanged for peerages.

The Government has now lost all political and moral authority. Tony Blair came to power in 1997 on a tide of so-called Tory "sleaze" but it is now clear that his administration is the sleaziest since the original cash-for-honours scandal involving Lloyd George.

When Labour donors become so brazened that they stand up and demand to know "where's my peerage?" as Chai Patel did, it is clear we are living in a corrupt and decadent political culture.

Since 1997 Blair has made reform of the public services his number one priority - but in his increasing obsession with "marketisation" he has completely failed to carry his party with him.

New Labour's spin machine and its fawning acolytes in the national media will doubtless tell us otherwise tomorrow - but this Prime Minister is now holed below the waterline.