Blair's nemesis

Lords reform - and how Tony Blair's failure to address it seriously in his first term has now come back and bitten him on the bum - is the subject of my latest podcast which can be heard
HERE or alternatively read HERE.

"There is surely a bitter irony in the fact that had Mr Blair done the sensible, democratic thing and brought in a fully-elected Second Chamber back in 1997, the whole cash-for-peerages affair would never have happened, but in his lack of radicalism and loss of nerve lay his nemesis. It is as good a summary of the Blair years as any."

Is that all Dave? Why Cameron should have come clean

So the big secret's out at last. David Cameron enjoyed a few spliffs while a schoolboy at Eton, and went on to enjoy a few more while a student at Oxford. Well big fucking deal.

The response of the media and political opponents alike has been predictably underwhelming, although admittedly it's hard for Home Secretary John Reid to make too much of an issue of it

For me, it all begs the question why Cameron didn't come clean about this much earlier, instead of allowing the view to take root that he must be trying to cover up a much more serious drug problem. At one point, practically the entire journalistic profession thought Cameron's family trust fund had disappeared up his nose.

Really, it's a bit like a man suspected of marital infedility refusing to answer questions about his sex life when all he has actually done is pull himself off in the shower.

Giles Radice knew the score

Giles Radice was the kindest and most courteous of the North-East MPs I regularly dealt with in my old job as Political Editor of the Newcastle Journal. After I left the Lobby he stayed in touch for a while and sent me a copy of his Diaries which were published towards the end of 2004. Thumbing through them earlier this evening, I came across this remarkable paragraph, written on General Election Day 2001.

"Lisanne and I work in Newark for Fiona Jones. It is an uphill task, because despite being a sitting Labour MP, Fiona is the victim of a horrendous whispering campaign. Sad to say, she has been a lame duck MP, ever since she was wrongly convicted of "fiddling" her election expenses. Although she was immediately and totally exonerated on appeal, the mud stuck and the Tories have been conducting a vicious doorstep attack on her personal character. We meet hostility to her as we knock up, including schoolboys who say she is "corrupt." Poor Fiona!"

This needs little further comment from me, as it already says so much: about Giles Radice and his dedication to the Labour Party; about the awfulness of Fiona Jones' plight; but also about the Labour Party's desertion of her, that she was left to try to get the vote out on election day with the help, not of the party's "stars," but of only a veteran backbencher on his way, that very day, into retirement.

Poor Fiona, indeed....

Has Miliband blown it?

As regular readers of this blog will know I have long tipped Environment Secretary David Miliband for great things under Gordon Brown, including possibly a 50-50 shot at the Chancellorship. But I can't imagine that the PM-in-waiting will have been too chuffed by the Boy Wonder's remarks on BBC Question Time last night.

"I predict that when I come back on this programme in six months or a year’s time, people will be saying ‘wouldn’t it be great to have that Blair back because we can’t stand that Gordon Brown’."

Miliband tried to explain it away by saying he was merely making the point that people always complain about the sitting Prime Minister, but the Brownites will view the comment as, at best, inept and, at worst, indicative of the mindset in the "Blair Bunker."

I don't think Gordon will forget this, and it may well take him a fairly long time to forgive. I may have to revise my predictions as to the make up of Brown's future Cabinet.

A real vote-winner, Charlie

Writing in today's Daily Telegraph, Toby Helm reports that Charlie "No Trousers" Clarke is advocating the abandonment of Labour's historic commitment to providing free education and health care and the introduction of "some level of charging" for public services.

Fair enough, you might think. Such issues have to be debated after all, and Clarke is a backbencher with complete freedom to speak out. Except that in the very next sentence, Helm goes on to write that Clarke's comments "will be seen as a pitch for the Labour leadership against Gordon Brown."

I've always rather rated Toby Helm, but what planet was he on when he wrote this? Can anyone, seriously, think of anything less likely to attract votes in a Labour leadership election than arguing that the National Health Service should no longer be free at the point of delivery?

Answers on a postcard, please....

My Top 10 weirdest Google search referrals

People are always asking me for more Top 10s.....so here, courtesy of MyBlogLog are the 10 strangest Google searches that have led people here in the past three months. Enjoy!


1. Fiona Jones Jack Straw. Actually, not at all weird, but topical.

2. Top Kenyan Orators

3. Cross Dressing 19th Century Doctor

4. David Cameron Man Boobs

5. Badger Watching in England

6. Public Executions in Newcastle

7. Paul Linford The Guardian

8. Paul Linford Lib Dem

9. Well Written Political Commentary

10. How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink

Thanks for the last one Stephen R!

A lame duck government cannot reform the Lords

...but Gordon's Government maybe can.

It is a savage indictment of the Blair Government's loss of reforming nerve that it has taken them 10 years to come up with a plan for a 50pc elected Second Chamber. But such is its shortage of political capital that even implementing this timid proposal is likely to prove beyond it.

The next Government, though, will have much more of such capital to expend, and if he becomes Prime Minister, Gordon Brown should make it clear from the start that he intends to go the whole hog and bring in a fuly democratically-elected upper House, and that this will be a Labour manifesto commitment at the next election.

There is no place in a modern legislature for hereditary peers who owe their titles to some past royal service or liaison. No place for bishops who no longer even believe in the God they purport to worship. No place for appointed party placemen and timeserver ex-MPs. And no place either for so-called "representatives" of ethnic communities who are often those with the loudest voices rather than the broadest level of support.

There is, I grant you, a case for involving "experts" from the world of science and academia, of which Lord (Robert) Winston is a good example. But there is no reason why any of those people should not be co-opted as non-voting advisers onto Lords Committees scrutinising legislation without actually making them voting members of the upper House.

But a fully-elected Second Chamber would not only be right in principle, it would also make good politics. By coming out for a 100pc elected Chamber, and making this a manfesto commitment, Brown will accomplish three things.

First, it will give him the necessary authority, under the Salsibury Convention, to push through a fully-elected Second Chamber after the next election irrespective of the inevitable opposition from the peers themselves. Second, it will prevent David Cameron outflanking him on the left by himself coming out in favour of 100pc election.

But thirdly, and best of all, it will enable Brown to draw a line under the sleazy Blair years at a stroke by removing the right of future Prime Ministers to abuse the Parliamentary process by awarding peerages to their political cronies in the way Blair has done.

Indeed, since everyone except John "fucking" Hutton and Charlie "no trousers" Clarke now accept he is going to be the next PM, there is surely nothing to stop Brown coming out and saying all this right away.

The mystery minister

If you go to this thread on Jane Griffiths' blog, you will find some interesting allegations about the identity of the Cabinet minister who offered the late former Newark MP Fiona Jones promotion in return for sex.

Apparently the News of the World have already named him, but you would need to have read two stories written two years apart to make the link. The second story is HERE. Not surprisingly, the original one published in 2005 seems to have disappeared from its website.

No further comment from me required....

Update 1: Alice Miles of the Times has written a brilliant piece on Fiona Jones HERE. "That image of a teenage son heaving a mother in an alcoholic stupor back into bed for her to die, alone, is a dismal reminder that behind the machinery of politics, beyond the criticism and the cynicism we fling, lie real people struggling in a failing system."

Update 2: For some reason, this has been a record-breaking day on this blog, despite the missing hat-tips.

Gordon's Government - II

....Who will be following Blair and Prescott out of the door?




Last week, in the first of my series of posts on the likely make-up of Gordon Brown's Cabinet, I said I believed that up to eight ministers - more than a third of the Cabinet - could be leaving the government as a result of the transition.

The identity of two of them we already know - Tony Blair himself, and his deputy John Prescott who announced last October that he would be following his boss into retirement.

But who will join them? Which veterans of the New Labour years might have to be asked to make way for new blood - and which Blair loyalists might find they have pinned their colours rather too closely to Mr Tony's mast for his successor's liking?

Well, there are two over-60s among the ranks of the Cabinet's Blairite sisterhood who appear vulnerable on both grounds - Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, and Social Exclusion Minister Hilary Armstrong.

In the days when she was John Smith’s parliamentary private secretary, Ms Armstrong was once close to Mr Brown. But over the years, she has become more and more identified with the Blairite cause, most notably during an undistinguished stint as Chief Whip.

I suspect that she finds the social exclusion role much more to her liking, but at 61, she is surely living on borrowed political time.

As for Ms Jowell, her chances of remaining on board are additionally hampered by having been caught up sleaze accusations as a result of her husband David Mills' involvement with the corrupt Italian media tycoon-cum-politician Silvio Berlusconi.

Her solution to that was to claim she had known nothing of the link and then to lay down her marriage for the sake of her career, but her tenure of the Culture brief has not greatly endeared her to the press or public and her departure would be seen as no great loss.

More controversial would be the axeing of Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton, who has been seen as a rising star under Blair and who is still talked about in some quarters as a dark horse contender for the leadership.

I don't believe Gordon will go out of his way to victimise those who could have emerged as contenders - John Reid will be kept in a senior role for instance - but I somehow doubt if the quality of mercy will extend to Mr Hutton.

He is widely believed to have been the Cabinet minister responsible for telling the BBC's Nick Robinson last September that Mr Brown “would make a fucking dreadful Prime Minister," and I expect him to pay the political price for this outburst.

Joining him in the exit lobby will, surely, be Charlie Falconer, the "First Flatmate" and Prime Ministerial favourite who has performed much the same role for Blair as Lord Young did for Margaret Thatcher and George Wigg did for Harold Wilson,

There will also be much discussion concerning the fate of two of the Cabinet's other senior women - Margaret Beckett and Patricia Hewitt.

Mrs Beckett is now the only remaining minister who served under Callaghan and as such has an unrivalled claim to the title Great Survivor of modern Labour politics. She is also a very close ally of Mr Brown's.

But her role as Foreign Secretary is keenly coveted by a trio of heavyweights in Jack Straw, Hilary Benn and Peter Hain, and if Gordon can stomach the idea of a Derby South by-election she may well find herself asked to become Leader of the House of Lords.

That would be bad news for Valerie Amos, who has never particularly shone in the role, and also for Lord Kinnock, who some Labour sentimentalists hope might finally get to occupy a Cabinet seat in the evening of his career.

But if Mrs Beckett looks set to survive the post-Blair cull, I am far less sure about Ms Hewitt. A couple of years back, she fancied herself as the first female Chancellor, but her performance as Health Secretary has been lamentable.

Not only has she failed to convince many of her Cabinet colleagues to support the current regionalisation of health services, she has totally failed to explain it to the public either.

Australia's most famous political export is a Brownite of old, and that, together with the fact that Gordy won't want to be seen to be sacking too many women, may yet save her.

That said, it is hard to see her being offered any post that would not now be seen as a demotion, and as such she may herself conclude that her political career has now peaked.

The future of Margaret Beckett is also the main subject of my latest Podcast which is now live. A text version can be found at the Derby Evening Telegraph site.

A sad story

I can't claim to have known Fiona Jones (pictured, left, in happier days) but I was extremely saddened to hear the news of her death last week. Although her death was ostensibly due to alcohol abuse, her problems appear to have stemmed from our hard-drinking Westminster culture coupled with her shocking, but totally predictable, treatment at the hands of the New Labour hierarchy.

Fiona was one of a number of MPs elected in 1997 who hadn't really been expected to win, and who as a result had not been thoroughly Mandelsonised in the way other "Blair Babes" had been. Mandelson actually held a meeting with Labour Press Officers at 6am on the morning of Labour's election victory to discuss what to do about these dangerous loose cannons. In Fiona's case, the answer soon became clear: marginalise them.

She certainly wasn't the only one. Another 1997 intake MP who I won't bother to name also became well-known for enjoying a drop or two and for consorting with journalists, and within a couple of months of the election I was being told by people in the whips' office that she "would probably have to be deselected." Another victim of the briefing culture around this time was Gordon McMaster, who committed suicide in 1997, alleging that two fellow Labour MPs had spread rumours about his sexuality.

Like McMaster, Fiona Jones was not a heavy drinker before entering Parliament, but once subjected to its degenerate boozing culture she allowed a taste for alcohol to get out of control. Having worked in the Commons for nearly a decade I know how easily this can happen, and at one time I had to take steps to make sure it didn't happen to me.

In 1999, Fiona was wrongly convicted of falsifying her election expenses in what, in the light of what we now know about this sleazy New Labour regime, now seems a pretty inconsequential hill of beans. The sum total of the case against her was that she had overspent her allocation by a few quid by neglecting to fill in her expenses form properly.

She was cleared on appeal, but "whiter-than-white" New Labour had now cut her firmly adrift and in 2001 she lost her seat. Perhaps this is one of the reasons they were so keen to see the back of her.

Several other pieces sympathetic to Fiona have appeared on the blogosphere over the weekend, but perhaps the most revealing comment came from an anonymous poster on Paul Walter's blog, Liberal Burblings.

"She was treated like shit by a local and national Labour Party that should have at least the minimal duty of care that we would expect (especially a trade-unionised party) in any other type of work. I was told not to speak to her - "she's bad news." Fiona's story is not the first and will not be the last."

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

In my dreams?

I had a fairly vivid dream last night that Tony Blair would resign today, although I think this stems more from reading too much of Iain Dale's Blog than any genuine prophetic insight on my part.

Nevertheless, today's revelations that he was questioned a second time over the cash-for-honours affair last Friday have surely pushed him even closer to the exit door.

It's not that often I take issue with Guido Fawkes but I was surprised to see him advising punters today to back a July departure, admittedly before news of the second interview broke.

I honestly think the very best he can hope for now is a March announcement on a formal departure just after the local elections in May. That way he still gets to do his 10 years, while at the same time lancing the boil ahead of those elections to limit the damage to Labour.

Of course, Blair himself remains in denial about the degree of damage he is doing by hanging on, but the man who has run Britain like an elected president is about to be reminded that we live in a parliamentary democracy after all.

To put it bluntly, I don't think Labour MPs are going to put up with another five or six months of this. It will be a plain, old-fashioned backbench revolt that gets him in the end.

Gordon's Government

....But who will get his old job?





With Gordon Brown's accession to the Labour leadership now looking all-but-assured, guessing the shape of his first Cabinet has become one of the favourite pasttimes of political bloggers and even some serious journalists. I myself have been challenged a couple of times to name who I think will in be Gordon's line-up.

Well, I'm not only going to take up this challenge, I'm going to do a whole series of posts on it, starting today with a look at who I think will get his current job as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Before turning to that, however, I thought I would, by way of a general introduction to the series, make some general observations about what factors I think will guide Brown in his choices.

They are: the need to be seen as a new government, the need to unite a divided party, the need to placate potential rivals, the need to ensure competence and continuity, and finally the need to reward those who have stuck by him through thick and thin.

1. A new government. Most observers now agree that the Brown accession will see a big influx of fresh talent from the younger generation, including some MPs elected as recently as 2005. I would expect at least eight members of the present Cabinet - more than a third - to leave the Government.

2. Party unity. There will, I believe, be a return to the Wilsonian style of party management. Jon Cruddas will be offered a senior role whether or not he wins the deputy leadership. Iraq War resigner John Denham will be given a Cabinet job. And some key Blairites will be kept on.

3. Placating rivals. In the same vein, Gordon will be magnanimous to those who could have emerged as potential rivals. John Reid will remain in a senior role. Charles Clarke may be offered a way back into government, though he may decline it. And then there's David Miliband....(see below)

4. Competence and continuity. I believe Gordon wants to run a government that will be noted for its quiet efficiency, with a premium on ministers who get the job done. There will be less of the putting square pegs in round holes (eg Reid to Health) that frequently happened under Blair.

5. Rewarding loyalty. There are some people who were extremely badly treated by Blair on account of their closeness to Gordon - most notably Nick Brown and Yvette Cooper. Gordon will want to repay them for the years the locusts have eaten.

So, turning to the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer, what do I think will Gordon do about his most vital appointment - that of his own successor?

Well, any assessment of this is complicated by the recent discussions about splitting the Treasury into a Ministry for Economic Affairs (also subsuming the DTI) and a Finance Ministry (a bit like the difference between a finance director and a commercial director in most companies.)

Assuming though, for the sake of argument, that the job remains intact, attention has focused primarily on two candidates.

They are Gordon's former economic adviser, now junior Treasury minister Ed Balls, and his long time ally, the Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling.

Taking Balls first, I find Philip Webster convincing on this one, and not just because he goes to watch football with Balls every other Saturday.

I have long taken the view that promotion to the Chancellorship this early on in his career would be too big a leap, and according to the Political Editor of the Times, so does Gordon. Balls seems destined instead for the Chief Secretaryship, with the big promotion coming some time in the next Parliament.

So what about Alistair Darling? Well, I am going to come out against him as well, not because I think Gordon wouldn't want him as Chancellor, but because I don't think he can have him.

At a time when the Tories are seeking to make a general election issue of Brown's Scottishness, he simply cannot afford to have the two most important jobs in British politics occupied by politicians from north of the border - particularly if he also keeps John Reid at the Home Office.

That, to my mind, leaves two English candidates as the front-runners for the Treasury role.

The first of these is David Miliband. He was the only potential leadership rival that Brown ever really feared, and had he been a slightly cannier operator, I think Miliband could have played on that fear and demanded the Exchequer as his price.

But his current role as Environment Secretary has, suddenly, become a very high profile as well as a very important role in terms of helping to shape the politics of the next few years, and he may well elect to stay there.

Miliband also weakened his own negotiating position by making it clear fairly early on that he wouldn't stand for leader. In conclusion I'm not as convinced as I once was that he will end up as Chancellor, although I still think he is a very strong contender.

The other candidate is Jack Straw, the great survivor of the New Labour years. Some tip him for a return to the Foreign Office, but though this could well happen, other strong candidates for the FCO exist, notably Hilary Benn or even Peter Hain.

In contrast, there seems an absense of real heavyweight contenders for the Treasury, and I am now tending towards the view that if Brown decides to keep the department intact, Straw could well be his man, perhaps with the brief of overseeing the eventual transition to two separate departments.

But if Gordon decides to go for the Big Bang, I tip Straw to return to the Foreign Office rather than undertake either of what would both be lesser roles. In those circumstances, I would back Darling to become Economic Affairs Secretary and Miliband to take on the Finance brief.

I suspect the position will become clearer over the coming weeks as we get an idea of just how serious the proposal to split the Treasury really is.

They don't learn, do they?

You would think, wouldn't you, that with all the problems it is encountering as a result of the cash for peerages inquiry, Labour would have the good sense to end all Prime Ministerial patronage over House of Lords appointments and support a fully elected Second Chamber.

But, according to The Guardian's Patrick Wintour, apparently not.

A very un-British state of affairs

I have been struggling for anything original to say about the Government's so-called "compromise" on gay adoption, which whatever it may achieve in terms of homosexual equality represents yet another nail in the coffin of freedom of conscience in this benighted country - something which all of us, including the gay community, will pay for in due course.

The Prime Minister knew in his heart that his Communities Minister, Ruth Kelly, was right about this issue. But, battered by cash-for-honours and increasingly at the mercy of events, he lacked the authority to impose a sensible resolution, allowing the opportunistic and vote-seeking deputy leadership contenders Alan Johnson and Peter Hain to dictate events.

Much of the coverage of this issue on the blogosphere has been in the opposite direction, and it is hard to go against their views. But I came across something yesterday on a blog called For Queen and Country that sums up my thoughts on this entirely.

The author, who blogs under the name Cyberleader, makes the very wise argument that, when you have two competing sets of rights, it is better, and more British, to respect both points of view and try to muddle through than to impose one set of values over the other.

"The status quo before the Act - that gay couples could adopt from a number of agencies and that Catholic adoption agencies could turn them away - was a perfectly acceptable state of affair for all parties involved, and it seemed a common-sense way to avoid a clash of values.

"This would have been the perfectly sensible (and quite British) compromise - avoid the issue and everyone could live and let live.

"Roman Catholics didn't question the right of gays to adopt and in fact referred them to other agencies and in turn they had their rights to their beliefs in turn, which you would think would be fair enough.

"However, New Labour can't resist a bit of tinkering, and so we have another fissure point in British society, which has far deeper implications than they intended. We now have two competing sets of rights set against each other, and there can't be a return to the former status quo without one group taking great offence."

Spot on.

The Blog Questionnaire

This blog has now been running for a year and a half. It has grown into a medium-sized political blog with a thoughtful community of regular visitors which regularly gets namechecked on other, bigger blogs and in the mainstream media. By and large, I am very happy with the way things are going.

But there is always room for improvement, and over the next month I will be running this poll in my sidebar to try to find out what readers would like to see more of - whether it be more analysis, more gossip, more personal stuff or even, God forbid, more politics!

There are some interesting "strategic" issues which I want to try to address - such as whether people want to see this blog develop into more of a thorough-going political blog or whether they appreciate some of the non-political stuff that occasionally appears here.

My own view on this is that the combination of the personal and the political is one of the great strengths of blogging - as both Iain Dale and Rachel North have shown in their different ways. But I want to know your views.

One thing I would like to see more of is your comments! While the overall blog stats have grown steadily over the past few months, the number of comments has been slightly decreasing, which is odd. It could be that I'm not being controversial enough. Alternatively it could be that I am writing about things you are not interested in! Either way, I want to know.

It's a multi-choice poll so you can tick as many boxes as you like. Please also feel free to leave your observations in the comment box.

Who will stop Cruddas?

For the past four weeks I have been running a poll on this blog on Labour's Deputy Leadership election. The results are of course totally unscientific but they do suggest that I was right in my original supposition that Jon Cruddas and Hilary Benn are some way ahead of the field among ordinary Labour supporters (some of whom visit this blog!) with Alan Johnson, Peter Hain, Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears fighting it out for the minor placings.

The full results (which can also be viewed HERE if you like coloured graphs) are:

Jon Cruddas 35%
Hilary Benn 29%
Alan Johnson 6%
Peter Hain 5%
Harriet Harman 4%
Hazel Blears 3%
Jack Straw 3%
None of the above 15%

On the basis of this, and also some of what has appeared about the contest in the mainstream media and on other blogs, it is possible to draw some early conclusions about the candidates and the eventual shape of the field.

The first is that Jack Straw will not actually stand. He doesn't really need the job, and he seems to be in line for a return to the Foreign Office under Gordon, or alternatively, a surprise appointment as Chancellor. As I have pointed out previously, he could even stay in his current job and be appointed Deputy Prime Minister anyway if Cruddas wins, given that Cruddas doesn't want the DPM title.

My second preliminary conclusion, in common with UK Daily Pundit is that Hazel Blears is effectively out of the race, and that the female vote will line-up solidly behind Harriet Harman. Interestingly, Brendan Carlin in the Telegraph's new Little and Large blog also speculates that Harriet's campaign is gaining momentum.

By contrast, my third conclusion is that Peter Hain's campaign is in deep trouble. Already, Cruddas appeared to have stolen a lot of his natural support on the left. The fact that Guido has now got hold of a list of his supporters, including several paid Labour Party officials who are supposed to be neutral, has only added to the sense that this is turning into a rather ill-starred enterprise.

Finally, I conclude that while it is Cruddas rather than Hain who appears to be collaring the anti-war, anti-establishment left vote in the party, the pro-Blair, pro-war "establishment" has reached no clear consensus among itself as to the best way of stopping him. It is this that, to my mind, will now become the key question at the heart of the election.

From my poll, and also from much anecdotal evidence surrounding the campaign, it appears that the obvious answer to the question "Who will stop Cruddas?" is Hilary Benn. But some with much greater inside knowledge of the PLP than I have dispute this, and claim that it is Alan Johnson who actually has the greater support among MPs and even the unions.

So while I suspect that this battle is really boiling down to Benn v Cruddas, I'll err on the side of caution for the time being and just say that whichever of Benn or Johnson emerges ahead on the first ballot will go on to become the main challenger to Cruddas in the final run-off.

Much will then depend on what happens to Hain's support among the unions, which is still significant. Will it fall in dutifully behind the establishment candidate, or will it go to Cruddas, whose ideological position is much closer to Hain's own?

On the answer to that question, I suspect, the eventual outcome will rest.

This post was featured in Web Grab, on Daniel Finkelstein's Comment Central.

Things can only get worse

There is a fair amount of speculation on the blogosphere today as to whether Tony Blair might surprise us all and resign this week or next rather than attempting to see it through to his 10th anniversary in May. Mike Smithson on Political Betting suggests his demeanour in yesterday's Politics Show interview was that of a beaten man. Meanwhile Iain Dale quotes an interesting exchange with a TV producer who seemed to think the PM's departure was now very imminent.

This might or might not come to anything. But if Blair is contemplating a swift exit, then I would suggest it might have something to do with the recent revelations from Guido revealing the existence of the secret email system that No 10 initially denied, together with the Daily Telegraph story claiming that police have now found a handwritten note from Mr Blair implicating him directly in the cash-for-peerages affair.

In my latest Podcast, which is now live, I take the view that things can now only get worse for Mr Blair, and that each new problem that arises, while it may be small in itself, is pushing him more firmly towards the exit door.

"He has made it clear he still wants to go out on a high, and has publicly stated his intention to remain in charge at least until the EU Summit due to take place at the end of June, but the odds on an enforced departure occurring well before then are now shortening by the day. Indeed, all things now appear to be conspiring towards that inevitable conclusion."

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

Just Fancy That

"Tony Blair is not a Prime Minister going gently into the night. And it is easy to see why he is raging against the dying of the light."

- Andrew Rawnsley, in his Observer column today.

"A leader who had long outstayed his welcome, yet who, in the vain search for a legacy, continued to rage against the dying of the light."

- My Political Review of 2006, first published in the Newcastle Journal on 23 December and also available on this blog.

It's not the first time either, is it, Andrew?

Power is the great aphrodisiac

Today's revelation that Gordon Brown has been voted one of the World's 100 Sexiest Men calls to mind a notorious episode in the recent history of political journalism when a couple of female ITN lobby hacks drew up a list of the "20 most shaggable men in the Lobby."

It was topped by the then Sun Political Editor Trevor Kavanagh (pictured), who may or may not have been the sexiest man in the Lobby (I wouldn't know, dearie) but who was certainly, at the time, the most powerful.

The list later became bitterly controversial after the New Statesman columnist Paul Routledge wrongly attributed it to Julia Hartley-Brewer, now of the Sunday Express, who fashioned the memorable retort: "I didn't know there were any shaggable men in the Lobby."

For the record, I came 17th, a fact that, for some reason, Routledge seemed to find a great deal more interesting than who came 2nd or 3rd.

Political Heroes (Again!)

Paul Burgin of Mars Hill has tagged me to name my six political heroes. I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave a few months ago.

Paul and I share two heroes - Winston Churchill and Denis Healey (pictured). The others are Tony Crosland, David Lloyd George, Mikhail Gorbachev and Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I. Martin Luther King, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Lord Palmerston and Michael Heseltine were also named in my original Top 10.

Stop Thatcher!

The BBC's Daily Politics show is currently running a poll to find Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister. At least that makes for a relatively objective criterion for inclusion on the shortlist, in contrast with the recent Politics Show poll on political heroes which included the likes of Alex Salmond and Clare Short while leaving out genuine greats like Denis Healey.

Margaret Thatcher, who is being championed by her old Fleet Street cheerleader Kelvin Mackenzie, has predictably already built up a big lead, but that may have something to do with the fact that the Labour vote appears to be splitting fairly evenly between Clem Attlee, Tony Blair and Harold Wilson. Some tactical voting is clearly called for here!

For what is worth, this is how I would rank the ten Prime Ministers in the BBC's poll. Only the first two, I would contend, left the country overall in a better state than they found it. The rest have left it in varying degrees of messes ranging from industrial chaos to (in the case of the last two) disastrous military escapades.

Anyway, here goes.

1. Clement Attlee. The undisputed No 1 in my book for having fashioned, from the ruins of WW2, a country fit for heroes. The architect of much that was good about the Britain I grew up in.

2. Margaret Thatcher. Yes, she sorted out Britain's industrial anarchy and restored our national self-confidence, but she also left a bitter legacy in social division that continues to this day.

3. James Callaghan. The period of Lib-Lab government from 1977-78 was in my view the most sensible and humane of my lifetime. But Big Jim funked an election in '78 and paid a terrible price.

4. Edward Heath. Another PM brought down by the industrial problems he had failed to solve, he deserves credit for his towering achievement in bringing Britain in from the sidelines of Europe.

5. Harold Wilson. His achievements were primarily political, in making Labour for a time the natural party of government. But like many before and after, failed to arrest our long economic decline.

6. Sir Alec Douglas Home. Considering he had less than a year in the job, he didn't make a bad fist of it really. Took over a party rocked by the Profumo Affair and nearly won the 1964 election.

7. Harold Macmillan. A Blairite before Blair in political style, this consummate poseur told us we'd "never had it so good" while accelerating the post-war decline. Overrated in my view.

8. John Major. Nice chap totally out of his depth after being chosen to succeed Thatch. Promised a nation at ease with itself, but ended up as the hapless fall-guy for his feuding, sleazy party.

9. Tony Blair. Promised to restore trust in politics but ended up sullying it still further as well as embroiling Britain in possibly its most damaging military disaster for more than a century.

10. Anthony Eden. Was kept waiting too long for the top job by Churchill (excluded from the BBC shortlist) and went bonkers, causing him to view Colonel Nasser as a reincarnation of Hitler.

The Restructuring of Government

The apparent confirmation by John Reid of the long-overdue restructuring of the Home Office begs several questions about what is currently going on in the corridors of power, and how if at all it relates to the forthcoming Blair-Brown handover. Dr Reid's proposal to split the creaking monolith into a Department of Homeland Security and a Ministry of Justice - a re-working of an old Number 10 initiative that was blocked by David Blunkett in 2003 - apparently has both Blair and Brown's backing.

It's an eminently sensible idea, and although it's been round the block a few times, Dr Reid's recent admission that the Home Office is "not fit for purpose" makes this a logical point at which to implement it. But that, to my mind, does not fully explain why an internal reordering of the structures of Whitehall has suddenly leaped to the top of the political agenda.

As anyone who has ever tried to draw up an organisation structure for a business will know, no discussion such as this can ever be divorced from consideration of who might fill the resulting posts. I suggest that, in the context of national politics, this is even more likely to be the case.

Reid's plan, then, and the Prime Minister-in-waiting's approval of them, has to be seen as part of a much bigger power game that is being played out within New Labour and across Whitehall.

Splitting the Home Office in the way that has been mooted will have some interesting knock-on effects. For starters, the creation of a standalone Ministry of Justice in charge of prisons, probation and the criminal justice system, will necessitate a break-up of the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which is currently responsible for the courts.

That will leave the DCA as much more what was originally envisaged when it was first created in 2003 - a "department for devolution" subsuming the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland offices, perhaps with added responsibility for issues such as Lords Reform.

So who might fill some of these roles? Is Dr Reid, for instance, eyeing up the job of being Gordon's Homeland Security supremo in return for not running against him for leader? Could the new Min of Justice create an interesting new career opportunity for Brown ally Jack Straw?

And would not the DCA's transformation into a department concerned more with political reform and devolved administrations provide a natural berth for another of Mr Brown's key allies, Peter Hain?

Allied to all this are the suggestions that Mr Brown plans to split the Treasury into a Finance Department and an Economic Department, the latter of which would subsume most of the DTI.

Once again, this change will create two senior Cabinet posts from one - perhaps enabling Brown to let Alastair Darling down gently while simultaneously buying-off his most dangerous potential rival for the leadership, David Miliband?

All in all, it will give the new Prime Minister more room for manoeuvre at a time when he is going to be anxious to appease some of the big players, while also bringing fresh talent into the Cabinet.

As Mr Blunkett has not been slow to point out, it will also give him much more power. And power is what this is really all about.

Is No 10 playing the expectations game?

When dealing with stories emanating from "Senior Ministers," "Downing Street sources", "Friends of the Prime Minister" and the like, it is never particularly advisable to take things at face value. Such, I think, is the case with today's Guardian story asserting that Tony Blair will "go early" if anyone at No 10 is charged over the cash-for-honours affair.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't doubt for a moment that Patrick Wintour's story is accurate, in the sense that (i) someone fairly senior said this to him, and (ii) that Blair would indeed quit if one of his key aides faced charges. He could hardly do otherwise.

But what I am questioning is why someone close to Blair - and Wintour's contacts are pretty good in that sort of area - would want this information out in the open now, and specifically why a story speculating about the circumstances in which he could be forced to quit would be considered helpful.

It's just a thought - but I wonder if No 10 is playing the expectations game, deliberately setting the bar at "charges" so that, for instance, any further "arrests" involving his inner circle can be brushed aside.

My reason for asking this is that while I suspect that the cash-for-honours probe will eventually result in charges - the claims on Guido and elsewhere that they've found the smoking gun ring true to me - I also suspect that no charges will actually be brought until Blair has left No 10.

Why do I think that? Well, for no reason other than that if the Police and the CPS can somehow avoid embroiling themselves in the unedifying spectacle of unseating a democratically-elected leader, with all the inevitable constitutional flak that will entail, then what have they really got to lose by a few months' delay?

But let's just say for the sake of argument that Blair's people actually know, rather than just suspect, that this is the case. Well, if so, they know they can pretty safely promise that Blair will go early if charges are brought, without any fear of being made to deliver on the pledge.

As I said, it's just a thought....

This post was featured on "Best of the Web" on Comment is Free.

State of the Union podcast

The Union between England and Scotland was 300 years old last Tuesday - but how much longer can it last in the face of the growing demands for independence north of the border and growing resentment south of it at the lack of an equivalent English voice?

Plenty of subject-matter there for my latest Week in Politics podcast which can now be heard HERE