Has Johnson really quit the race?

Unlike Ben Brogan, I don't seriously believe Alan Johnson plans to do a U-turn and come back into the Labour leadership race - but I have to say that his new campaign website launched today had me wondering a bit.....

Yesterday, Johnson made clear he would be backing Gordon Brown, describing the Chancellor as a "towering political figure" and praising his "gravitas, experience, and intellect."

Fair enough, but somebody should have told the person putting together the media section of his new website which seems to be slightly off-message in this respect.

It currently contains the following stories, all seemingly promoting the idea of Johnson as a candidate not for the deputy leadership, but as a rival to Gordon for the top job.

"Alan Johnson displayed his leadership credentials to the Labour Party conference yesterday when he announced plans to restore confidence in school exams and to help children in care." Greg Hurst, The Times

"When the backstabbing finally stops, could Alan Johnson be the man who delivers the fatal blow to Brown?" Rachel Cooke, The Observer

"For many Labour MPs he represents the perfect alternative to the Chancellor, being everything that Mr Brown is not." Anthony Browne, The Times

"Gordon Brown's enemies are pinning their hopes on Alan Johnson." 'Bagehot," The Economist.

November 13 Update: This was post was picked up over the weekend by both PoliticalBetting.com and The Daily, both of whom provide interesting angles on it. On balance I tend towards The Daily's verdict that it was an unintended hangover from Johnson's earlier plans to contest the leadership, rather than Mike's interpretation that AJ might re-enter the race at some stage.

Johnson wakes up and smells the coffee

Education Secretary Alan Johnson has now formally ruled himself out of contention for the Labour leadership and announced he is contesting only the deputy's post - not at the Press Gallery Lunch as speculated on The Daily but in an exclusive interview with the BBC. That will piss a few people off for a start.

I must confess to being surprised. I am after all on record as having said that Johnson would "do a Prescott" and stand for both posts, while making the deputy leadership his main target. I wasn't the only one who thought this though....

What really did for him I think was his poorly received speech at the Labour Conference. He must have realised at that point that he didn't really have the support in the party to mount a meaningful challenge.

His withdrawal and declaration of support for Gordon Brown could have one of two effects. It could demonstrate that the momentum behind Brown is now such that he is unstoppable, or alternatively it could concentrate minds in the "Anyone But Gordon" camp to the effect that either (but not both) of John Hutton or Alan Milburn now emerge as serious contenders.

My assessment of the situation is that, with more than half the Cabinet on his side and the opposition to him fragmenting, Brown is looking pretty unbeatable, but politics abhors a vacuum and if at any point Gordon is seen as in any way vulnerable, someone somewhere will step into it. Even a very reluctant David Miliband might be persuaded if the alternative is a Labour election defeat.

A few weeks back, I produced this breakdown of where the various Cabinet members stand on the issue, and I think it's now time for an update.

Cabinet members explicitly and publicly backing Gordon Brown for the leadership

John Prescott
Margaret Beckett
Peter Hain
David Miliband
Hilary Benn
Alan Johnson

Cabinet members who have not expressed a public preference but who are known allies of Mr Brown

Jack Straw
Alistair Darling
Douglas Alexander
Des Browne
Ruth Kelly
Stephen Timms

Cabinet members who are currently remaining neutral or who have expressed no known public or private preference

Tony Blair
Patricia Hewitt
Hilary Armstrong
Jacqui Smith
Valerie Amos

Cabinet members who, while not allies of Mr Brown, have signalled that they will not run against him for the leadership

John Reid
Hazel Blears

Cabinet members who have privately expressed doubts about Mr Brown and who could reliably be expected to support "Anyone but Gordon" - if such a candidate exists

John Hutton
Charles Falconer
Tessa Jowell

Incendiary devices

Okay, so Bonfire Night has been and gone, but I was heartened to come across this post today from the influential Labour blogger Kerron Cross, calling for a ban on the general sale of fireworks.

Says Kerron: "I don't really understand the arguments for keeping fireworks on sale to the public when you look at the nuisance, injuries and disruption they cause. I welcome the Government clamp down on sales but...we need to ban the general sale of these devices - they should only be used by trained professionals at properly organised events."

I couldn't agree more. Apart fom the noise nuisance of having fireworks going off up to a month either side of November 5, there is absolutely no need for them to be on general sale given the growth of organised events. I went to an absolutely marvellous one on Sunday night at Belper Town Football Club which had everything you need - a great bonfire, plenty of food and drink, and a stunning diplay set to the music of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds.

Anyone in any doubt about the destruction fireworks can wreak in the wrong hands should read this horrific tale from the pages of the Blackpool Gazette.

This blog is a Mid-term Elections Free Zone

I have never really understood American politics. Never understood how an allegedly educated country could possibly elect as its president someone who failed to remember the names of other world leaders during a TV interview, and certainly never understood how someone who lied about never having had sexual relations with a White House intern could possibly be allowed to remain president after being found out.

I could go on. I don't understand, for instance, why people of a generally Christian worldview like myself tend to vote for centre-left parties in the UK, but invariably vote for the Republicans in the States.

So because I don't get American politics, and because I don't really want to take the trouble to try to get it, I am hereby declaring this blog a Mid-Term Elections Free Zone (a former editor of mine will appreciate the irony.)

For those of you who feel compelled to know more of what is going on over the other side of the pond, and what it might mean for us back home, I direct you to the BBC, to PoliticalBetting.com, and the good people at Blairwatch.

Spin cycle

One of the best blogs around at the moment is Dizzy Thinks, which today features this little tale about the announcement of some Government funding for the nine English regions "to tackle local congestion and inform the debate on a national road pricing scheme."

As Dizzy rightly points out, the sum of money in question - £7.5m - actually only works out at around £800,000 per region, a figure which "wouldn't pay for much more than the hot air consultancy fees" and which compares with the £200m cost of introducing congestion charging in London.

"However, the real killer comes in the second paragraph of the press release. It says the "money comes from the second round of an £18 million fund, set up in July 2005". So errr. hang on second... it's not a further £7.5 million at all, it's the same money from a lump sum already agreed and announced."

A story of little consequence in itself, then, but one which illustrates a wider truth about the Blair Government and its use of the technique of "repeat messaging."

This was an idea originally developed by New Labour in opposition which they have carried with them all the way though government. It works on the Orwellian premise that if you repeat something often enough, the people will have no alternative but to believe it.

Thus the life-cycle of a typical Government announcement would look something like this:

1. A forthcoming Government initiative is leaked to a friendly newspaper. The story is neither officially denied nor confirmed, but by giving someone an exclusive, it guarantees big headlines for the story in at least one newspaper and guaranteed follow-ups in all the rest.

2. A few weeks later, the story is confirmed in a ministerial press release, which receives little coverage other than perhaps a few pars in the Guardian's Society supplement.

3. Gordon Brown reannounces it in the Budget. Close analysis of Gordon's Budget speeches show that most of the contents, especially those relating to spending announcements rather than taxation, have already been announced.

4. The relevant Government department then produces its own separate release setting out further details of the Budget "announcement," followed by

5. Nine separate regional press releases setting out what the Budget "announcement" will mean for each region, which are usually identical apart from the insertion of the words North-East/North-West/East Midlands etc.

6. The money finally comes on stream, enabling the relevant department to announce it yet again.

7. Regional ministerial visits are organised around the announcement, showing how it is being spent in a particular region with acompanying photo-ops. Theoretically, there could be as many as nine of these.

8. The second round of funding comes on stream, as in Dizzy's example above, potentially kicking off the whole process again.

Of course, like much else about New Labour's news management techniques, the whole policy of repeat messaging has backfired spectacularly. The one question journalists always ask about these kind of announcements is: "Is it new money?"

When, nine times out of 10, the answer to that question turns out to be no, it becomes very easy to conclude that nothing the Government announces is funded from new money, with the result that even genuinely new announcements are then routinely ignored.

I think the record for Government reannouncements is held by the launch of the Regional Venture Capital Fund, which began life in the Department of Environment, Transport and Regions, and was then transferred after the 2001 election to the DTI which decided to reannounce it all over again.

Even though it was an initiative designed to help poorer regions like the North-East, I must confess that, after the first five times, I simply gave up on it.

The lost leader's lament

This BBC interview with the former Labour leadership contender Bryan Gould has been around for a few days but I think it's well worth a read, if only for his less-than-flattering views of the current crop of leadership hopefuls.

On John Reid: "It would be frankly amazing if he became the next Prime Minister."

On David Miliband: "He seems to be more of a back-room intellectual who lacks the political touch."

On Charles Clarke: "The most serious challenger in terms of ability but he has been behaving in a bizarre way recently."

On Alan Milburn: "Government didn't seem to suit him - he became more pompous".

Neither does Gordon Brown emerge unscathed, with Gould appearing to damn the Chancellor with faint praise. "He's got deeper roots than Blair with the party, more affection for the party than Blair, but the reason he was dumped as a leadership candidate by Peter Mandelson in 1994 was because Tony was more voter friendly."

His most complimentary words are reserved for Jack Straw whom he praises as "a politician to his fingertips", before adding obliquely: "I don't think he's got charisma or the personality to be prime minister, but that's not to say that someone without personality can't become the prime minister."

I rated Gould very highly during his time in British politics and was sorry to see him depart to the world of New Zealand academia, although I don't doubt that the move has proved a happy and fulfilling one for him personally.

In 1992, he was told that he would get John Smith's backing for the deputy leadership if he agreed to stand aside and allow Smith a free run at the leadership, but refused and was ultimately elected for neither post.

This begs the interesting counterfactual question whether, had he accepted the deal and thereby become Acting Leader at the time Smith died, Gould might have actually become leader instead of Tony Blair.

My bet is that he would, at the very least, have held on to the deputy leadership, and gone on to become a senior figure in the Blair administration, with John Prescott's Cabinet career following a similar path to that of Frank Dobson.