Ten years of my Newcastle Journal column

Okay, so they won't be letting off fireworks over the Tyne Bridge, but today is a celebration of sorts for me as it marks ten years of my Saturday Column in the Newcastle Journal.

I was given the column shortly after starting work as the paper's political editor in 1997, and retained it despite standing down from that role in 2004 to spend more time with my family - yes, that really was the reason in my case!

I will always be grateful to The Journal for giving me this break. I had written light-hearted Diary columns before, but it was The Journal which gave me my first chance to do a serious, big picture commentary on the week's political events and I would like to think I found a bit of a niche there.

You can read this week's column in full on the Companion Blog HERE

Whose sock-puppet is Bill Blanko?

As a former Lobby hack, I had to laugh at the appearance in today's Guardian of this sparkling new column about Lobby life written by someone calling himself "Bill Blanko." I think that's what we in the blogosphere know these days as a sock-puppet.

So which Guardian political hack is it? Is it a Guardian hack at all? Suspicion will undoubtedly fall on veteran former Pol Ed "Sir" Michael White, if only for the fact that whoever it is has obviously been around long enough to remember the infamous Lobby Bad Taste competition which used to be held annually at whichever party conference happened to be in Blackpool.

As "Blanko" points out, the winner was whoever managed to purchase the tackiest souvenir from the resort's many tacky souvenir shops. The last contest I recall was won by Jon Craig (now of Sky News) for an imitation penis which you strapped to your ankle so that it protruded from the bottom of your trouser-leg.

Presenting the award in the Press Room at the end of the conference, the Tory MP Alan Duncan announced: "And first prize goes to Jon Craig for confirming what we always knew about him."

Hain rediscovers his balls. A pity he mislaid them in 2003

There was a time when Peter Hain and the late Robin Cook were close allies, soft-left political soulmates who had essentially reached an accommodation with Blairism without ever really becoming "New" Labour.

By and large, Cook maintained this position throughout his six-year ministerial career, pursuing such non-Blairite enthusiasms as proportional representation and an "ethical foreign policy" before finally deciding that supporting the Iraq War would be an accommodation too far.

Unfortunately, Hain failed to resign with him, at a point where such a joint resignation might have brought down this lying Prime Minister and his pathetic excuse for a Labour Government.

Now, belatedly, Hain has rediscovered his principles, arguing in the New Statesman that the neocon experiment has failed and branding George Bush "the most rightwing American administration in living memory."

Why has Hain waited till now to say this? The answer, as at least one Jon Cruddas-supporting blog has pointed out, is that he is standing for Labour's deputy leadership and is trying to reposition himself as an anti-war critic within the Cabinet.

But in my view, he could have had himself a much bigger prize had he joined Cook in opposing the invasion from the start, putting himself in the frame as a credible, sensible left candidate for the leadership.

As it is, I might still back Hain in the deputy leadership election, as I think his views are probably the closest to my own on a range of issues from Iraq to devolution to personal taxation.

But he will only have himself to blame if people who should have been his natural supporters end up backing Mr Cruddas instead.

The lone voice

I expect most bloggers will disagree or even laugh at this, but there is a certain, magnificent stubbornness about John Prescott which I can't help but admire. While the New Labour project as a whole has been all about shifting with the political wind, that is one thing you can't lay at Big John's door.

Two years and three months ago, the people of the North-East dealt a death-blow to the prospects for English regional government by voting 4-1 against plans for an elected North-East Assembly. It immediately became clear that the idea was dead in the water as far as other regions were concerned and it swiftly disappeared off the political agenda.

Those of us, amongst whom I include myself, who initially supported the idea as a way of rebalancing our lopsided constitution, were forced to reappraise our position. I eventually concluded that an English Parliament represented a more promising way forward for English devolution, and recent polls seem to have borne that out.

Yet, to listen to his speech to the New Local Government Network yesterday, none of it seems to have made the slightest dent in Mr Prescott's belief in the inevitability of his regionalist dream.

"A regional level of administration is necessary alongside the need for the new localism. Regional planning is an essential part of the accountability that is needed from elected representatives rather than appointed regional civil servants," he said.

"I'm sad that regional government was rejected in the North East, but I believe that England will eventually move to elected regional government - just as Scotland and Wales originally rejected devolution and then voted for it."

Some might call it contempt for the electorate. Others might call it losing touch with reality. Both would be justifiable accusations, but for me there is still something admirable about a politician who is prepared to say what he thinks in defiance of the conventional wisdom.

He may be wrong, he may even be stupid - but at least he's genuine.

Did Blair really say Brown was psychologically flawed?

Blogger Iain Dale has been setting the political agenda again today following his 18 Doughty Street interview with former No 10 spin doctor Lance Price. In the interview, Price questioned the assumption that it was Alastair Campbell who first called Gordon Brown "psychologically flawed," suggesting that the phrase might actually have come from the Prime Minister himself.

It's a great scoop, as evidenced by the fact that Tony Blair was asked about it at Prime Minister's Questions earlier today.

But is Price telling the truth? Well, several things cause me to doubt that, I'm afraid, not least the fact that Price appears to be making a fine living at the moment out of the dishing dirt on his former employers.

Entertaining as this sort of thing may be for the press, and for the publishing industry generally, I can't help thinking it is bad for British government.

In his interview with Dale, Price also subtly misquotes the political commentator Andrew Rawnsley, who was the journalist originally on the receiving end of the "psychological flaws" comment and who wrote about it in his masterwork on early New Labour, Servants of the People.

Price says that Rawsnley described his source as "somebody with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister’s mind. Well, the only person with a better claim to know the Prime Minister’s mind than Alistair Campbell is, possibly Cherie, is the Prime Minister himself."

This is factually incorrect. The words Rawnsley actually used in Servants of the People were "someone who has an extremely good claim to know the mind of the Prime Minister."

Splitting hairs? Well, not really. Someone with a better claim than anyone else to know the Prime Minister's mind could only be Blair. Someone with merely an extremely good claim could be three or four people - Cherie, Campbell, Peter Mandelson, maybe even Jonathan Powell except that he doesn't often speak to journalists.

As it is, Blair has now denied it in the House, and loath as I am to admit that the Prime Minister might, for once, be telling the truth, this, for me, seems to settle the matter.

Why? Well, because if Blair is not telling the truth, he has just handed Andrew Rawnsley the golden bullet with which to put a fairly immediate end to his premiership.

If Rawnsley were now to reveal that it was indeed Blair who said it, then the Prime Minister will have lied to Parliament and he will be forced to resign.

Would Blair take such a risk with his political career even at this late stage? On balance, I think not.

A story of great importance, but nobody to know what it is

I both like and respect my fellow leftie Christian blogger Paul Burgin, but this post on his Mars Hill blog earlier today really is the blogging equivalent of the South Sea Bubble (depicted by Hogarth, left.)


To quote Tom Hamilton on Fisking Central, "give that man a newspaper column now!"

The Union: Will it last another 300 years?

Well, the answer to that is sadly not, unless the growing pressure from English voters for a distinctive political voice of their own is finally acknowledged and acted upon in the shape of an English Parliament.

Indeed, if our political leaders continue to place their heads in the sand on this issue in the way that our esteemed Prime Minister is currently doing, it will be surprising if it lasts another ten.

It's War in Cyberspace

I have long believed that Guido Fawkes and Tim "Manic" Ireland are the two greatest creative genii in the political blogosphere. They also come from completely different political persuasions and have wildly diverging views about just what the purpose of political blogging ought to be. So it's barely surprising that Tim has chosen to mark the return of his Bloggerheads blog from a period of semi-dormancy with this coruscating attack on his right-wing alter ego.

It's an extremely long post, but in summary, Tim argues that Guido is a danger to political blogging and accordingly should be sent to Coventry by the rest of us by having his link removed from our blogrolls. Guido has now hit back with the accusation that Tim is basically launching the "flame war" as a means of kick-starting his "moribund" blog.

Well, for my part, I won't be removing either of them from my blogroll, for the simple reason that both of them are blogs I like and admire. Just as Guido has helped keep the pressure on No 10 over the cash-for-honours scandal, so Tim has uncovered some great stories of his own such as exposing the Johnson4Leader plot and highlighting the journalistic shortcomings in the case of Mirza Tahir Hussain.

So, sorry to sit on the fence guys - but in my view the blogosphere is big enough for both of you.

How the two sides are lining up so far:

For Manic

Chicken Yoghurt
Tom Watson
Stuart Bruce
Ministry of Truth

For Guido

Theo Spark
Dizzy
Tim Worstall
The UK Daily Pundit

Sitting Beside Me on the Fence....

Labour Watch
Liberal England
Lib Dem Voice



Keen observers may have noticed that, with the possible exceptions of UK Daily Pundit and myself, the debate is thus far polarising on political lines....

Martin Kettle's flawed history lesson

Amid all the spurious nonsense that gets written about the Labour leadership, one or two articles occasionally stand out. Such was the piece by Martin Kettle in Saturday's Guardian in which he advocated a six-way contest for the Labour leadership along the lines of the one that took place in 1976 - the only other time in its history that Labour has chosen a new Prime Minister while in office.

Kettle's views on this subject have long been worthy of note on account of his close relationship with Tony Blair and evident dislike of Gordon Brown. If he is saying something, it is a fair bet that someone in the Blair inner-circle is thinking it.

To my mind, his call for a contest is all of a piece with the recent similar intervention by arch-Blairite Stephen Byers - an attempt to turn what should be a debate about policy into a debate about personalities.

This is to confuse two very separate issues. There is a genuine desire in the Labour Party, a genuine need even, for a debate over its future policy direction. But there is much less debate over whether Gordon Brown is the right person to take that forward, because the overwhelming view of the Cabinet, the PLP, the Unions and the Party as a whole is that he is.

For those with an interest in recent political history, the most interesting aspect of Kettle's piece is his analogy with the 1976 leadership election, in which Tony Benn, James Callaghan, Tony Crosland, Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins all stood. He suggests that a contest between Hilary Benn, Gordon Brown, Peter Hain, David Miliband, John Reid and Jack Straw would have a similarly revitalising effect on the Government today.

Superficially, it's an attractive argument, and it would certainly generate a lot of excitement at Westminster and beyond. But there are three major flaws in it as I will seek to show.

First, it ignores what Kettle's would-be candidates have actually said on the record about the issue. Benn, Hain, and Miliband have all made it clear they are supporting Gordon Brown, and that they regard his claims on the job as superior to their own. Straw has said nothing but is widely assumed to hold the same view. Only Reid has stood aside from this consensus.

Second, the "Class of '76" were, with the possible exception of Foot, all true political and intellectual heavyweights with genuine claims to leadership. Two of them, Crosland and Healey, would make most people's lists of the Best Prime Ministers We Never Had. Only Brown among the current crop can boast anything like that sort of stature.

Third, there were genuine ideological differences between the candidates in 1976 which to an extent defined the contest. The party was deeply split between the Gaitskellite right represented by Crosland, Healey and Jenkins, and the Tribunite left represented by Foot and Benn. In the end it chose Callaghan in the middle as the best man to keep the two factions together. No such divisions exist at the top of the party today.

A contest, not least a six-way one, would be great news for the press, and for the wider commentariat. I am increasingly coming to the view that, for the Labour Party, it would be a pointless diversion.

Podcast Episode 52

A little later than normal, this week's podcast develops the theme of Tony Blair as a "follower not a leader" that I wrote about on this blog last week. It can be heard HERE or alternatively read on the Companion Blog HERE.

Links and Finks

Apologies for the relatively light bloggage this week which was due to the need to finish off an important project at work. Just time before I clock off for the weekend to tell you about the latest new links on the blog and to highlight a couple of interesting new initiatives on the blogosphere.

The first of these is Daniel Finkelstein's long-awaited "best of the blogs" aggregator on Comment Central. It's called Web Grab, and it's easily the best thing of its kind to be found on any national newspaper website.

Unlike Comment is Free, Web Grab is genuinely seeking to reflect the diversity of stuff on the blogosphere, owing its inspiration to Tim Worstall's peerless Britblog round-up. I was fortunate enough to get a mention in the first Web Grab, in the shape of my post a week ago on the devilishly clever John Reid.

The other thing that's caught my eye recently - and I'm a bit late with this as Dizzy had it a while back, is the New Constitution blog, which is, at its name suggests, an attempt to write a new constitution via the blogosphere. I don't necessarily agree with all the content - it's anti-monarchist for a start - but I like the general idea.

As for those new links, welcome aboard Luke Akehurst, one of the best Labour bloggers around, PragueTory, a blog that many people predict is going to be big in 2007, and The Psychiatrist, an interesting health and politics blog from Dr Michelle Tempest.

Like most bloggers I have a general policy of linking to any site that links to mine so if I have missed yours off, please let me know.

BlogGems

An occasional series dedicated to bringing the choicest comments from the blogosphere to a slightly wider audience.
No 5.

"I think it can be safely assumed that when this century's Presidents are graded, George W. Bush will feature at the bottom. If we ever have a worse one then mankind is unlikely to survive for such a survey to be realised."

Campbell Waterman, commenting on Danny Finkelstein's Comment Central blog.

History repeating itself?

"Our troops will have a well-defined mission, to help Iraqis clear and secure neighbourhoods, to help them protect the local population, and to help ensure that the Iraqi forces left behind are capable of providing the security that Baghdad needs."
George W. Bush, 2007

"Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation."
Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

Who is the most persecuted minority?

I am not one of those who believe that incessantly banging on about homosexuality does the cause of Christianity in this country any great favours. Indeed I am notorious among my circle of Christian friends for my oft-repeated view - not shared by all of them - that if the church got half as worked up about injustice as it does about gay sex then maybe it would have more credibility.

Nevertheless, in the context of what is essentially a political row about a piece of anti-discrimination legislation, the question that sticks in my mind is who is now the most persecuted minority - homosexuals, or Christians?

In my own profession at least, the answer is clear. To have had same-sex experiences is practically de rigeur in some sections of the media. To be a Christian, by contrast, is deeply unfashionable and tends to engender deep distrust on the part of colleagues and, occasionally, employers.

If I were to come out as gay, I doubt very much whether I would lose any readers on this blog or be denied any employment opportunities. I know for a fact that both of these things have happened to me as a result of my being a Christian.

Update: The debate on this now appears to have migrated to Caroline Hunt's blog.

A follower, not a leader

Disappointing though it is for those of us who have argued fairly consistently for something to be done about the environmental costs of air travel, I cannot say I am hugely surprised by Tony Blair's latest comments about the issue in an interview published today. My main criticism of him as a politician down the years has always been that he is essentially a follower, not a leader, and his refusal to seek to lead public opinion on the question of climate change is entirely typical of his cretinous style of political "leadership."

"You know, I'm still waiting for the first politician who's actually running for office who's going to come out and say it - and they're not," he says. Wrong. His own environment minister, who unlike him is actually running for office at the next election, recently called for curbs on shorthaul flights and branded Ryanair the "irresponsible face of capitalism."

Blair would like to think that his comments show himself to be in touch with the great mass of ordinary people. In actual fact they show him to be increasingly out of touch with what has become an emerging political consensus on the air travel issue.

Ten months ago, I described this on the blog as an issue mainstream politics was ignoring. To be fair, it is ignoring it no longer. But the fact that the Prime Minister seems determined to do so only serves to demonstrate once more the extent to which he has outlived his usefulness.

Cruddas leads the way

My ongoing, totally unscientific but possibly quite representative poll on Labour's deputy leadership shows Jon Cruddas leading the way over Hilary Benn with the rest moreorless nowhere, which I think by and large presents a fairly accurate picture of what is really going on.

I have gone with my readership and plumped for Cruddas in my latest podcast previewing the race which is now live. For the benefit of those who can't be bothered to listen or subscribe, the full text is available HERE.

The Seven Deadly Sins

I quite enjoyed this as blog questionnaires go. Apparently I have very few problems with lust, but a bit of an issue with pride...

Greed:	Low
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

England: where to from here?

I can't say I am hugely surprised by England's 5-0 Ashes whitewash, given the clear gulf in ability between the two teams and the mistakes made by Duncan Fletcher and Co in selection and preparation - but where do we go from here? The next Ashes series is two and a half years away, in the summer of 2009, so we have plenty of time to regroup and bring on new talent.

There's been much talk about Michael Vaughan coming back as captain, but I'm not convinced he is going to be worth his place in the side. By contrast, although Andrew Strauss has had a poor series on paper, he was the victim of a number of shoddy umpiring decisions and overall looked in good nick. He should get the captaincy in my view.

I have a feeling Paul Collingwood won't be around by 2009, so I think it's probably time to have an extended look at Ed Joyce and Owais Shah as middle-order options. Although he flattered to deceive in this series, several times reaching 50 but failing to go onto a century, Ian Bell will surely come good in the long run.

In the wicketkeeping area, I think we now have to move on from the endless Geraint Jones - Chris Read debate and give an oportunity to James Foster or Steven Davies, both good wicketkeepers who can bat.

The main changes, though, will come in the bowling area. Steve Harmison looked a shadow of his former self in this series and has already retired from one-day cricket at the age of 28. I have a hunch he will have retired from all cricket by the time he reaches 30.

Matthew Hoggard bowled manfully in this series but may be over the hill by 2009. I think our main fast-bowling options by then will be Stuart Broad and Sajid Mahmood, with young spinner Adil Rashid forming a potentially lethal slow-bowling partnership with Monty Panesar.

My XI for 2009: Strauss (Captain), Cook, Bell, Pietersen, Joyce, Flintoff, Davies, Broad, Mahmood, Panesar, Rashid.

Reid: Disarmingly honest, or devilishly clever?

So what exactly is John Reid up to with his big speech today highlighting the need for his party to hold fast to its current political direction and demonstrate to the public that there is more to New Labour than Tony Blair.

On one level, it could be seen as almost an endorsement of Gordon Brown. He says that "personal attacks" on the Chancellor by the Tories will "rebound" and makes clear his view that Brown's achievements "tower above anything anyone in the Tory Party has ever aspired to or could ever aspire to."

If you take this comment at face value, he appears to be saying not only that Gordon is New Labour to the core, but that attempts by the Conservatives to portray him otherwise are doomed to failure.

On another level, though, the speech can clearly be read as a devilishly clever piece of duplicity, that in appearing to praise Brown he is really warning him that he will face a rival leadership bid if he so much as even thinks of lurching a millimetre to the left.

This is certainly how Brownite MP George Mudie, a former Deputy Chief Whip, has interpreted it. He said today: "I think it's an early attempt to put a marker down to get some of the Gordon Brown supporters to say 'we need a change of direction' so that he can say 'this is disloyalty to the leader and, therefore, I shall throw my hat into the ring or we shall find someone to do so'."

Mudie, who led the unsuccessful rebellion against university tuition fees in 2003, is a disappointed and disillusioned man, and some of what he says should be treated with a pinch of salt, but if this is the level of paranoia in the Brownite camp, it doesn't augur well for a smooth leadership transition.

If the Brownites genuinely believe Dr Reid is out to get their man, they should know better than to rise to his bait by putting the worst possible construction on everything.

Far better, surely, to simply throw the ball back into Reid's court by agreeing with everything he says and welcoming his very generous comments about the Chancellor's record?

Poll: who should be Labour's new deputy?

Amid all the New Year predictions about the political year ahead, perhaps the most uncertainty surrounds the identity of John Prescott's successor as Labour deputy. Unlike the Labour leadership, it's a genuinely open race, with Jon Cruddas and Hilary Benn currently heading a field that also includes Alan Johnson, Hazel Blears, Peter Hain and Harriet Harman.

So I thought it was time to introduce a poll which will run for the rest of this month on who it should be. I have also included Jack Straw in the field as he has not ruled out joining the race.

To clarify, I am after views on who you think should get the job, not who you think it will be. I have already nailed my own colours to the mast on the latter point, backing Jon Cruddas in the PB.com political forecasting contest.

To vote, click HERE or go to the Current Polls panel in the sidebar.

The result of my first poll, on whether Labour's next leader should call a General Election immediately on taking office, resulted in a surprisingly narrow majority of 54pc saying yes, he should.

Of course, Gordon Brown won't do this, although I don't think it's beyond the bounds of possibility that he might call one in the summer of 2008 after a year in office, once he has had a chance to show the public that he is a real politician with real values and not some manicured PR man.

That was the life that was

I don't normally do telly reviews, but given that last night's ten-year reunion of This Life was the closest we come to "event television" these days, I thought I would make an exception.

Iain Dale, clearly as big a fan of the original as I was, thinks it was "outstanding," a reference to the last line of the last series, uttered by Warren when Milly clomped Rachel after discovering she had told Egg about her secret affair with O'Donnell. (Still with me?)

Anyway, while it was good to catch up with the former flatmates again after all this time, the main problem with it to my mind was its lack of believability - in total contrast to the original series in which the believability of the characters was its very essence.

Basically, we all knew people like Myles, Egg, Milly, Anna and Warren. I was actually at uni with Amy Jenkins, who wrote it, and while she did not base her characters on individual members of the UCL Law Faculty, it had its fair share of driven careerists (Milly), sexual predators (Anna), rich boys playing at law (Myles), and state school kids who didn't quite fit in (Warren).

By contrast, I don't know anyone who bought himself a huge house in the country at the age of 28 after making a fortune in Hong Kong, and neither do I know anyone who became an overnight literary sensation after finally completing a novel he had been working on for a decade.

The homespun stars of This Life seemed to have joined the ranks of the super-rich and the moderately famous, which, for me, immediately put them at a distance. It wasn't helped by the fact that Egg, the character I once most identified with, had clearly grown up into an egotistical twat.

Milly's conversion from superlawyer to supermum was more believable. As Anna shrewdly pointed out, she poured the same commitment, the same earnestness into bringing up her child that she once poured her cases when she worked all hours at O'Donnell's practice.

By contrast, Anna seemed to have turned into a cliche of the woman who suddenly realises she "can't have it all" after reaching the top of her profession in her mid-30s. Did it really take her ten years to realise that this is what happens?

The other thing I found really irritating was the lack of continuity between the end of the second series (which was not written by Jenkins) and last night's episode, notably in the relationship between Egg and Milly which had all but foundered after her fling with O'Donnell.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the final 1997 episode, he told her: "I told you that if you sleep with someone else while you're going out with me, it's over." You really believed Egg meant this when he said it, but now we discover that apparently he didn't mean it all.

I think Egg would have continued running his restaurant, maybe making a moderate success of it, while Milly would eventually have married O'Donnell. These were a couple going their separate ways for most of the second series - how are we expected to believe they would still be together ten years on?

It would have been great if they could have got Natasha Little (Rachel) involved. The frisson between her and Milly was part of what drove the second series and I half expected her to get wind of the reunion and turn up uninvited.

The plot denouement itself was neat. Anna had come along in search of a sperm donor to help her realise her dream of motherhood, which of course we all assumed would be Myles. In fact, she asked Warren, although you didn't get to see them actually do the deed.

But then Anna went and shagged Myles after all, leaving me wondering whether we really were being asked to believe that Myles would let Warren co-parent his own child.

If so, I'm afraid that was no more credible than the idea of Myles - a consummate office politician in the original but never really the sharpest tool in the box - as a Tory millionaire with a string of hotels.

All in all, I would prefer to remember the end of This Life as Milly and Rachel brawling on a dancefloor at Myles's first wedding. Now that really was "outstanding."

The great game of political forecasting

Mike Smithson is currently inviting entries to his annual Political Forecaster of the Year contest over on PoliticalBetting.com. There are 27 questions in all, ranging from the holders of the major offices, to the extent of the post-Blair bounce, to the likely net gains and losses in the May elections.

My entry is already in, but for the benefit of my own readers, here are my answers to the first five questions together with a short explanation of my choice.

On Christmas Day 2007 who will be…? (50 points for each correct answer except where stated)

1. Prime Minister (bonus of 150 points for correct answers that are not Gordon Brown.) As it's a game, that 150 point bonus looked very tempting. But I genuinely do believe it will be Gordon, and I'm not about to switch horses now.

2. Leader of the Opposition. It will be David Cameron. The Tory right may not like what he is doing, but they won't move against him. Until he loses an election, that is.

3. Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg, after a narrow victory over Chris Huhne. Expect Sir Ming to bow out during the summer "on health grounds" after continuing to fail to make an impact.

4. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. This one is the closest to call but I am plumping for Jon Cruddas over Hilary Benn, just because I think Labour members will see it as their chance to have a "say."

5. Chancellor of the Exchequer. Will be David Miliband, in return for not standing for leader. The Miliblogger is the only man who can beat Gordy, and he will have extracted the Treasury job as the price of the deal.

Update: Mike is also inviting contributions on who will be the first minister to resign or be sacked this year. Patricia Hewitt looks quite good value to me at 18-1.

A return to barbarism

I have made it clear in previous posts that I am opposed to the death penalty, even for criminals of the magnitude of Saddam Hussein, but even if you agreed with the execution, there is surely room for debate over the manner in which it was carried out, and I suspect this is what John Prescott was on about this morning.

As a means of ending someone's life, hanging is a barbaric practice which deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history. A public hanging such as this was, with people shouting abuse at Saddam as he went to the gallows, belongs even more surely in the middle ages.

If we have to have the death penalty at all, then surely the most humane method of killing is by lethal injection. To deny Saddam's humanity by arguing that this would be "too good" for him is simply to stoop to his level.

Some bloggers have decided to display the mobile phone video images of the moment of death. The blogosphere is a free world - mercifully - and that's their right. But Jonathan Calder on Liberal England has a typically thoughtful post in which he compares it to pornography, and I agree with him.

Podcast enters its second year

My Week in Politics Podcast is now one year old having orginally begun just before Christmas 2005 as an experiment on the this is regional websites which I was helping to manage at the time.

Regular readers of this blog may already have seen my look back at the political year 2006 and look ahead to 2007 in text form, but both are now available as podcasts. The Review of 2006 is available HERE, and the Preview of 2007 HERE.

Meanwhile, I am pleased to report some recognition for the podcast from Jonathan Shepherd over at Tory Radio, another blogger who helped pioneer the podcast medium. He has awarded me a CBE for "services to political podcasting" in his unofficial New Year's Honours List.

It's the only New Year's Honours List on which I am likely to feature, or indeed have any desire to, so cheers Jonathan!