Prescott tells it like it is

Wny does the media hate John Prescott so? While Alastair Campbell talks his customary load of mendacious bollocks over Tony Blair's departure date, Prezza just tells it like it is.

A few weeks back, in my North West Enquirer column, I predicted that the leadership and deputy leadership issues would need to be settled before the end of Labour's conference in Manchester. It seems Mr Prescott now agrees.

Writing on the BBC website, Nick Assinder goes further, speculating that the conference could be the stage not just for an announcement about the leadership, but for a leadership election.

My latest assessment of the situation as the Parliamentary term drew to a close last week can be found on my latest podcast available via the this is sites or by subscription to iTunes.

Note: This post was supposed to go up yesterday but Blogger appears to be somewhat temperamental at the moment. Given by the unusually small number of new posts on other political blogs yesterday it seems I'm not the only one who had problems.....

Was Dr Kelly murdered?

Lib Dem MP Norman Baker - more use than the rest of the party's frontbench put together - thinks so.

Air travel: why Richard Chartres is right

Unlike Iain Dale and the RAC I agree with the Bishop of London when he says that frequent air travel is not really a responsible option for a Christian.

Indeed, I would say that when mainstream politics is ignoring a particular issue of this nature, the Church has even more of a duty to speak out.

Bishop Chartres (who should have got Canterbury in my view) used the word "sin" which is a word always guaranteed to get the media's goat, but "sin" in this context means no more than mankind falling short of God's ideal.

Given that we are supposed to be responsible stewards of His creation, filling the atmosphere with kerasine fumes seems to me to be falling very far short of it.

Wedding bells....

Unfortunately I wasn't able to get along to St James' Piccadilly on Saturday to join Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett et al in offering my congratulations to New Labour's latest celebrity couple as I was down in the lovely town of Rye (pictured) celebrating the fifth anniversary of my own marriage to Gill.

I am proud to say that when we were married at St Helen's, Bishopsgate in July, 2001, there wasn't a politician in sight.

Disinformation, or just plain wishful thinking?

Mike Smithson seems taken in by today's Spectator "revelation" that Alastair Campbell thinks Blair will stay on "for a year and a bit," namely until next year's Labour Party Conference.

This is a little surprising, given that it is only a matter of days since Mike's highly-esteemed Political Betting.com site was saying he would go in 2006.

Leaving that aside though, I wonder what it is that makes him think that anything Alastair Campbell says can possibly be taken at face value, given that the man is a proven master of disinformation?

On this occasion, I don't think it even qualifies as that, more a hopeless case of wishful thinking from a man seemingly in denial about the extent of the crisis now facing the Prime Minister.

I am on record many times as saying Blair would step down on or around the 10th anniversary of his coming to power, namely on May 2, 2007, but I now take the view that that is the absolute limit of how long he can realistically hope to remain in power.

As one MP said recently: "The Labour Party will let him do 10 years. If he tries to go a day longer than that, they will kill him." Assuming, of course, that Inspector Knacker doesn't get him first.

Kennedy "twice as popular as Ming" - poll

This story speaks for itself. It requires no more comment from me really, other than to say to those Lib Dem MPs whose sheer, unparalleled act of political genius it was to replace Charles with Ming last January: We told you so!