No coincidence

I must be getting less cynical in my old age, but in retrospect I was far too kind to New Labour in yesterday's post on whether the Government might have been guilty of burying bad news under the cover of the Ipswich murders and Lord Stevens' inquiry in the death of Diana. It's now absolutely bleeding obvious that this is exactly what they were doing.

According to the Daily Tel's George Jones and others, Scotland Yard has made it clear that the timing of yesterday's interview of the Prime Minister over the cash-for-honours affair was determined by Downing Street, not by the police.

Another Lobby doyen, Trevor Kavanagh, writes in his Sun column: "We all guessed weeks ago that this would be the perfect day for Mr Blair to invite the police in – the day the world would be transfixed by the [Diana] report."

Somehow, though, I don't think even a gnarled old cynic like Trevor really thought they would actually do it. And neither, I confess, did I.

Burying bad news?

Of course it could just be coincidence. But isn't it just a teensy bit suspicious that the long-awaited interview of Tony Blair by police investigating the cash for peerages affair should take place on the very morning that Sir John Stevens publishes his equally long-awaited report on the death of Diana?

Further, isn't it also a teensy bit suspicious that someone should see fit to leak a damaging story about Gordon Brown's possible involvement in the affair on the very day that Blair is questioned?

I only ask the question....

Update: Iain unearths some more bad news while Guido speculates on the contents of today's "grid."

They will get him for this

This is Sir Jeremy Beecham, former chairman of Labour's National Executive Committee and hitherto one of Tony Blair's most loyal supporters in the party hierarchy. I once had a conversation with him in which I invited him to speak frankly about the Prime Minister, on an off-the-record basis. He replied: "I don't do off-the-record, Paul, I'm a member of the NEC for God's sake."

Well, now Sir Jeremy's loyalty has finally been provoked beyond endurance by the news that Mr Blair plans, as his parting gift to the party, to use the cash for honours affair as a pretext to sever its links with the unions.

On one level, it's a truly breathtaking manoeuvre, an attempt to turn a hugely damaging political scandal to his own advantage by doing something he has dreamed of for years. On another level, though, it's political suicide.

Earlier today, Mike Smithson posed the question on Political Betting whether Blair's union funding plans were a step too far. If he seriously hopes to remain in office until next summer, they are.

Where's Denis?

Hat-tip to Kerron Cross for drawing this to my attention, but the BBC's Politics Show is currently holding an end-of-year poll to find out people's
Greatest Living Political Heroes. A fair enough idea, I thought, until I saw the so-called "Magnificent Seven" shortlist which comprises the following:

Tony Benn
Neil Kinnock
Alex Salmond
Clare Short
Norman Tebbit
Margaret Thatcher
Shirley Williams

Now there can be no disputing the heroic status of three of these names - Margaret Thatcher, Tony Benn and Shirley Williams - while Neil Kinnock might just scrape in for the "grotesque chaos" speech and for generally losing elections in a rather heroic way.

But Norman Tebbit? Alex Salmond? CLARE SHORT?!! Come on, you're having a laugh, surely?

The absense of my own greatest living political hero Denis Healey from this list is a startling omission on the part of the Beeb.

Denis is widely acknowledged to be the greatest Labour Prime Minister we never had and his recent interview with The Observer's Bill Keegan shows he has lost none of his sharpness.

If he had been on the list, I'm willing to bet he would have got many more votes than his old rival Tony Benn.

That is, after all, what happened in the Deputy Leadership Election in 1981, even though the union block vote nearly conspired to turn it into a Benn triumph.

Will Brown scrap the monthly press conferences?

On his peerless blog yesterday, Iain Dale posed the question whether Tony Blair's monthly press conferences serve any remaining purpose, given his refusal to answer the important questions currently on the lips of voters. To take two examples: (i) what does he think of the findings of James Baker's Iraq Study Group report, and (ii) whether he has been questioned by detectives investigating the "cash for honours" affair.

I was in the Lobby when the "pressers" started up an few years back and the common consensus at the time was that they provided a useful opportunity to put the Prime Minister on the spot. I even managed to get the odd question in myself occasionally.

Recently, though, the monthly Q&As seem to have got stuck in a bit of rut. The BBC's James Landale had to ask three questions yesterday before he found one the PM was prepared to answer, and practically the only decent story to come out of it was that Mr Blair thinks the PC anti-Christmas brigade are misguided, which is nice to know.

It could just be that it's because Mr Blair is on the way out, and he really doesn't give a monkey's any more. But either way, I seriously question whether Gordon Brown, if he becomes Prime Minister, will continue with them, for two reasons.

Firstly, they are very "presidential" in nature, and I don't think that will be Gordon's style as premier. Secondly he will be looking to make changes in the structure and conduct of government that draw a line under the Blair years and make the point that this is a new administration.

If Brown does decide to continue with regular press conferences, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he made them regional events, rehearsing the time-honoured technique of by-passing the venal Parliamentary lobby to talk "directly" to voters via the more trusted local press hacks.

Bishop on the brink

Am I the only person to have detected shades of the Ron Davies affair in the current controversy surrounding the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler? The former Welsh Secretary, who was forced to quit in 1998, initially claimed he had been the victim of a straightforward mugging. In fact the truth turned out to be rather more complicated.

Likewise the Rt Rev Butler, who initially put his black eye down to having been mugged on the way home from a Christmas Party, has been forced to change his story after the emergence of witnesses who saw him throwing childrens' toys out of the back of someone's car while apparently the worse for wear for drink.

If this blog by Times Religious Affairs Correspondent Ruth Gledhill is anything to go by, Butler is toast. La Gledhill is an influential figure at Lambeth Palace and while giving the appearance of an objective summary of the facts, in reality her piece is a ruthless hatchet-job.

I doubt if many tears will be shed over him. Having lived in Southwark Diocese for six years I can testify that he has not been a particularly good Bishop, having generally failed to uphold Biblical teaching on personal morality issues and attempted to frustrate the efforts of churches who did so by refusing to ordain their clergy.