Charles Clarke is a Kinnockite to the last

Much discussion in the mainstream media today on whether Charles Clarke is set to do a Geoffrey Howe and take revenge on Tony Blair over his sacking from the Cabinet last month by demanding that the Prime Minister set a date for his departure.

If so, it is odd that he is choosing to do it in a Newsnight interview which hardly anyone will watch rather than in a Personal Statement on the floor of the House of Commons, but his decision to speak out is significant none the less.

After all, it is not so very long ago that Clarke was still publicly maintaining that the Prime Minister would stay on until summer 2008 before standing down.

Perhaps the key to it is to remember that Charles Clarke was never really a fully paid-up Blairite. He was a Kinnockite, and Kinnock himself made clear as long ago as April 2004 his view that Blair probably ought to go soon after winning a third term.

June 27 Update: The story was not quite as billed. Despite the trenchant criticisms of Reid and the implied criticism of the reshuffle, Clarke apparently still wants Blair to stay on until 2008. Moral: Don't believe everything you read in the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail...

Politics or football - take your pick!

My two latest podcasts are now live online, one focusing on the World Cup and the other on the past seven days in politics.

The World Cup podcast, put together with colleagues on the thisis network of regional websites, focuses not unnaturally on England's efforts against Ecuador yesterday and their prospects for next weekend's Quarter Final encounter with a weakened Portugal team.

My colleagues are very upbeat about England's chances of making the Final but I remain cautious - I don't really think the experiment of playing Rooney on his own upfront is the best use of the player, and I still maintain a choice will eventually have to be made between Gerrard and Lampard in midfield if we are to get the best out of either.

Anyway to hear the podcast in full, click HERE.

Meanwhile the weekly politics podcast, acompanying my weekly Saturday column, focused on Gordon Brown's nuclear bombshell, and what it could mean for the chances of an "orderly transition."

It can be listened to HERE with the text version available HERE.

The lost leader returns

I watched Charles Kennedy on Question Time last night, his first appearance on national television since his resignation. And he was brilliant, just brilliant.

Given by the audience reaction to him, his rapport with the public remains as strong as ever and his answers were invariably both sensible and judicious, including one to a question from Dimbleby about whether he was now teetotal.

When he was asked about a possible return to the leadership in future, Charles made clear he was not ruling it out, bringing further cheers from an audience that clearly thought he should never have lost the job in the first place.

Bring it on, I say. Besides mumbling Ming and over-hyped political teenager Nick Clegg, Kennedy remains a class act.

Labour leadership contest is now a certainty

The BBC leads most of its bulletins this morning with the story that Gordon Brown has committed himself to a replacement for Trident if he becomes Prime Minister.

Some appear to be wondering why this is a story at all. Surely it's just a senior Government minister making clear that he supports existing Government policy?

Well, I reckon they're missing the point. The reason this is a story is because there are quite a few people out there in the Labour Party who thought, perhaps naively, that Prime Minister Brown might turn out to take a different view on the replacement of Trident and other nuclear-related matters.

What I think is really interesting about this story - and no-one really seems to have picked up on this yet - is that it makes a Labour leadership challenge from the anti-nuclear, Meacherite left an absolute racing certainty.

Now here's the rub. Until now, it has been generally assumed that Mr Brown wanted an uncontested election, or an "orderly transition" as it is usually described.

I reckon that's wrong, and that the Chancellor has decided he would benefit much more from a contest in which he can define himself as the natural inheritor of the New Labour mantle in opposition to a challenge from the old left.

By making clear his views on Trident at this early stage, he has given the left the perfect cause on which to mount such a challenge - perfect both in the sense that their feelings about nuclear weapons make it inevitable that they will take it up, and in the sense that it portrays Brown as in touch with mainstream opinion in the country.

All Gordon has to worry about now is whether the Blairites will be convinced by this display of loyalty, or whether they will, in the end, decide to run Alan Johnson against him.

Update 1: Clare Short has now made my point for me, by saying she will no longer support Gordon Brown for the leadership, and that there should be a contest.

Update 2: My most recent column looking at the Labour leadership issue, written earlier this week, is published today in the North West Enquirer.

Update 3: Ben Rooney has included this post in today's Guardian round-up of what's on the web - the second time this blog has been featured!