So when will the next election take place?

Conventional wisdom has it that the next General Election will take place in 2009. Indeed Jack Straw seemed to suggest this last week when he said Tony Blair would be stepping down at the "mid-point" of the current Parliament.

But I think there is, to say the least, room for doubt over whether this will in fact turn out to be case.

The convention of four-year Parliaments has grown up largely since 1979. Both Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair clearly favoured a four-year electoral cycle, and when John Major opted instead for five years, much good did it do him.

But is this purely a matter of Prime Ministerial preference, or is there something inherent in the political cycle that makes four years an optimum time to seek re-election, as opposed to, say, three or five?

For my part, I think that if Gordon Brown wins the Labour leadership election - and I would certainly interpret today's "Real Labour" speech by Alan Johnson as a rival bid - he will be sorely tempted to call a General Election straight away.

There are some compelling arguments in favour of such a course of action. It would enable him to extract maximum political impact from the poll bounce from which all new leaders benefit, and also to exploit to the full his experience against David Cameron's lack of it.

Victory would give Brown his own mandate independent of Tony Blair and hence release him from any obligation to follow Blair's policies. It would also nip the Cameron revival in the bud, condemning the Tories to another four or five years of opposition in which they may well self-destruct again.

What might get in the way of all this, however, is Brown's natural caution, and desire to avoid going down in history as the shortest-serving Premier since Andrew Bonar Law.

By that token, if he does not hold an election in 2007, or perhaps early in 2008, I think there is just as much chance he will go on till 2010, particularly if he wants to be able to point to a solid record of achievement as premier when he eventually goes to the country.

Is there a betting market on this? If so, maybe this would be a good discussion point for Political Betting.com to take up.

Hain's debt to Ron Davies

Peter Hain's decision to run for deputy leader while supporting Gordon Brown for the top job is an astute move on his part and should help to further calm the situation at the top of the Labour Party following last week's troubles.

Given the prevailing view among Labour Party members - if not among the Blairite "ultras" - that the party needs to tack slightly to the left on issues such as social justice and constitutional reform - I think a Brown-Hain ticket will be marginally more in tune with mainstream opinion in the party than, say, Reid-Johnson or even Brown-Johnson.

But what few realise about Hain is that he might well have taken a lot longer to get a foot on the political ladder were it not for the unlikely patronage of Labour's forgotten Cabinet minister, Ron Davies.

Prior to the 1997 election, Davies went to see Tony Blair, who was initially sceptical about the former anti-apartheid protester's political abilities, to plead for the Neath MP to be given a job in government.

Over a beer in the Stranger's Bar later - I was the Lobby man for the South Wales Echo at the time - Davies revealed he had told Blair "just how bloody good Peter Hain is."

But the episode had a sting in the tale which had interesting consequences for Welsh Labour politics.

When Labour came to power a few months later, Blair did indeed give Hain a job - as Davies's number two at the Welsh Office in place of his close friend and long-time deputy, Rhodri Morgan.

Nine years on, Hain is on the verge of becoming Labour's deputy leader. Morgan is the First Secretary of Wales. And Davies is no longer even a member of the Labour Party.

Why Gordon is still the hot favourite

Amid all the speculation about possible Labour leadership contenders over recent days, some things are steadily becoming clearer.

There has inevitably been much excitement in the ultra-Blairite "Anyone But Gordon" camp at the prospects of Education Secretary Alan Johnson (pictured.) This always struck me as rather odd, however, as in no way could former trade union leader Johnson could be described as an ultra-Blairite.

Polly Toynbee makes the same point in today's Guardian. Johnson might well be a candidate, but will not be the candidate of the ultra-Blairite right. Furthermore, he is more interested in the deputy leadership than the leadership, although he will have Peter Hain for a rival.

Toynbee writes of Johnson: "He is too wise a politician to have this unsavoury, wrecking role thrust upon him. In fact, those who know him best say he will have none of it. So it seems certain he will only stand if some Blairite candidate stands first. In other words, he will not be their champion. But he might enter the race as a third force, intent on keeping the election clean, stopping it descending into internecine abuse. What's more, he would not enter the lists expecting to emerge as leader, but as a marker for his deputy leadership bid."

In a further blow for the ultras, David Miliband has again confirmed today that he will not be a candidate for either position, for the benefit of those who didn't believe him on the previous occasions on which he's said it.

So if Johnson won't be their candidate, and Miliband won't be a candidate at all, where does that leave the Blairites? With the somewhat unappetising choice of Reid (too much of a Scottish bruiser), Milburn (no support among MPs), Hutton (ditto, and lacks charisma) or Clarke (too prone to ill-considered outbursts after lunch.)

In other words, while Gordon undoubtedly did not help his chances during last week's shenanigans, I think the people who are predicting that he has blown it are getting slightly carried away.

As I said on PB.com last week, there is a fairly settled will among Labour Party members and the unions that it has got to be Gordon, and it would take an astonishing turnaround in mainstream party opinion for him to be denied the leadership at this late stage.

There is another point worth considering, and that is the fact that throughout Labour history, the party has almost always chosen the front-runner when electing a new leader.

In all but one of the Labour leadsership contests since the Second World War, the man who started out favourite has ended up winning comfortably: Hugh Gaitskell in 1955, Harold Wilson in 1963, James Callaghan in 1976, Neil Kinnock in 1983, John Smith in 1992, and Tony Blair in 1994.

The sole exception was in 1980 when Labour MPs, by a tiny margin of 139 votes to 129, chose the hapless Michael Foot over the greatest leader they never had, Denis Healey.

And that, with all due respect to Footie, is hardly a precedent that the party will want to repeat.

A day for remembrance

I guess everyone remembers where they were when 9/11 happened. I was working in the House of Commons at the time, just the length of a corridor away from Big Ben, while my wife and I were living in Docklands, a stone's throw away from another potential terrorist target, Canary Wharf.

A colleague hurried back from lunch to say a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Centre. We switched over to Sky News in our room in the Press Gallery and watched as the plumes of smoke rose from the first tower, convinced we were watching the aftermath of a terrible accident.

Then the second plane appeared. "Look, there's another one!" exclaimed a regional newspaper colleague. Almost as he said it, the other plane smashed into the second tower.

I don't think any of us could quite believe what was happening. For a moment, there was silence in the room, then someone said slowly "That was deliberate," and we all hit the phones to our head offices.

Of course it went without saying that the world had changed in an instant, but what I don't think we all fully appreciated at the time was how much British politics had changed too, kicking off the chain of events that was to destroy Tony Blair's once-promising premiership.

Mr Blair had been due to give a speech to the TUC that day in which he would mount a vigourous defence of the Government's public service reforms. Of course the speech was never delivered, and somehow the raison d'etre of a government that had come into power to improve the public services got lost along the way too.

But personal reminiscences and political consequences aside, it is right that, above all today, we remember those who lost their lives.

Here is one of many sites that aims to commemorate the victims of 9/11, including those that died in the other hijacks.

So who the f*** said it?

As the Blairites start to take their revenge on Gordon Brown for the week's shenangigans, Guido has asked his legions of readers for their help in identifying the Cabinet minister who told Nick Robinson that Brown "would be a fucking dreadful Prime Minister and I will do all in my power to stop him."

Well, I'm happy to lend a hand as it's a question that's been buzzing round in my mind too.

Going through the Cabinet list one-by-one, the following can be ruled out because they are bascially friends or supporters of Gordon: Prescott, Straw, Beckett, Darling, Hain, Alexander, Browne, Hewitt and Timms.

Meanwhile the following can be ruled out because they are too nice to use words like fuck - at least in public: Kelly, Miliband, Armstrong, Jowell, Amos, Benn and Smith.

Which to my mind leaves five prime suspects in the frame: Reid, Johnson, Falconer, Blears and Hutton.

Taking these in turn, Reid would seem to be the hot favourite, both on account of his well-documented views on Gordon and occasionally belligerent nature. But there's one problem - he was out of the country yesterday, and this exchange with Robinson has the air of something uttered to his face rather than over the phone.

What about Johnson, then? Well, it's the kind of thing he might have said, but he has been playing his cards very close to his chest with regard to the leadership, and I find it unlikely he would have used words to Robinson which would effectively confirm his candidature.

Blears? I'll say this much - she's the only Cabinet woman you can imagine making such a remark, and she's no fan of the Chancellor either. But it still sounds like a blokey comment to me, and Blears, as party chairman, will be aware of the need for her to remain publicly above the fray.

What about Falconer? Now I think we're possibly getting warmer. Some would say he's too urbane to use the f-word, but in my experience posh lawyers are just as foul-mouthed as their more humble counterparts. And with his Cabinet career at an end if Brown takes over, he certainly has the motive.

Finally, Hutton. He's often thought of as Mr Geniality but he sounded pretty tetchy to me on the Today Programme yesterday, especially when asked about whether he endorsed Gordon for leader. Maybe he's picked up some bad habits from his former flatmate Alan Milburn who swears like a trouper. Particularly about Gordon.

So there it is. But there's a serious point here too, in that if this the kind of thing the Blairites are saying about Gordon, then it is clear he is now facing a concerted attempt to block him, with all the consequential risks of a lasting split in the party if that effort succeeds.

You can be sure of one other thing, too. That Gordon's people will also be doing their damnedest to find out who said it.

****

To round off a hectic week's blogging, here's a couple of other things that caught my eye today.

First, Times Political Editor Philip Webster's front page story on the crisis, which contains the intriguing paragraph: "But Mr Brown appeared to be the unassailable favourite to succeed Mr Blair as one minister after another offered support to the Chancellor."

As any fule kno, at least at Westminster, the word "unassailable" has long been a political code-word for someone who is about to be sacked - after Margaret Thatcher used it about her soon-to-be-departing Chancellor Nigel Lawson in 1989.

Was this just Webster's little joke? Or was it possibly something more sinister, a warning to Brown delivered via one of the Blair camp's most trusted scribes that he is riding for an almighty fall?

Finally, the Blair fightback continues with the establishment of a new website, Keeping the Faith, dedicated to defending the PM against the "minority" of MPs who are trying to dethrone him.

Among those who have signed the online petition are Adrian McMenamin, the combative former Labour press officer whose job used to involve infiltrating the opposition parties' conferences and instantly rebutting any attack on New Labour, and Darren Murphy, the former Milburn SPAD who went on to become Mr Blair's political secretary.

But for a brilliant deconstruction of the site and the people behind it, I hereby direct you to this piece on Bloggerheads.

Tim "Manic" Ireland's twisted humour is quite frequently beyond me. But he has played an absolute blinder on this one.

It's not enough

Tony Blair has confirmed what we already knew and said he will stand down within the next year. Gordon Brown has said the timing is his decision and warned there can be no more private agreements or pacts.

But is it enough? Will Tony Blair now get his 10 years after all? And will Gordon Brown really just sit back and wait for him to go, in the certain knowledge that each day that goes by gives his enemies more chance of finding an alternative?

No, I don't think so. The heart of the issue - the political dynamic which is really driving this crisis and which has caused it come to a head now - remains unresolved.

That is quite simply the desire among Labour MPs for a new leader to be in place by the time of the local and devolved elections in May so they can begin the fightback against David Cameron's resurgent Tories.

On my blog earlier, I set out an way in which that could happen, with a new party leader taking over in March, but Blair remaining PM until May - the "Aznar Option" as it has been termed.

This to me is the only way in which both sides can salvage something from this, but there is no indication that it is even on the agenda. Indeed Mr Brown, in his statement, seemed to go out of his way to stress there can be no more deals.

The only Blairite minister who has really been seeking to pour oil on the party's troubled waters has been David Miliband, who I must say has gone hugely up in my estimation today.

In his interview with the New Statesman, he not only ruled himself out of contention for the leadership - a sensible move at his age - but made clear that he wanted a stable transition to Mr Brown - and no-one else.

By contrast, some of the Blairites seem determined to try to goad Mr Brown beyond endurance, with John Hutton the new flavour-of-the-month among the ranks of the "Anyone But Gordon" faction.

One Cabinet ally of Mr Blair is reported to have told the BBC's Nick Robinson tonight: "He would be a fucking dreadful Prime Minister and I will do everything in my power to stop him."

Mike Smithson has a theory that this is what the row has really been about - that Brown has realised Blair intends to make a real contest of it by stringing out his departure and endorsing other candidates' right to put themselves forward.

If that proves to be the case, then this week's shenangigans will prove only to have been the opening skirmishes in a bitter and protracted civil war.