Attack puppies called off?

Last week both Iain Dale and the equally insightful and reputable UK Daily Pundit were confidently predicting that the government would declare "class war" on David Cameron.

Dale went further and named the three so-called "attack puppies" who would be unleashed against the Tory leader - Tom Watson, Kevin Maguire and, oddly, Denis MacShane, who hardly fits the same stereotype.

Well, it hasn't happened, but this doesn't necessarily mean the story wasn't true. It may just be that Gordon Brown has thought better of employing such a low-grade tactic at a time when he is once more trying to project himself as a serious and purposeful national leader.

The British public are a funny lot. The one thing that might make them more inclined to vote for an Old Etonian than they might otherwise be is if someone sought to make an issue out of his Old Etonianism.

Bill Richardson is my man

Courtesy of Iain Dale I couldn't resist having a go at the Electoral Compass USA test designed to see which presidential election candidate comes closest to your views.

The answer in my case is the Democrat outsider Bill Richardson, with Hillary Clinton not far behind. The candidate whose views I am furthest away from is the Republican, Fred Thompson.

Bill Richardson would be a good vice-presidential candidate to Clinton or Obama in my view - despite his English-sounding name he's actually a Hispanic so would draw the large Spanish vote in.

I also expect Fred Thompson to end up on the ticket as a running mate to either John McCain or Rudy Guiliani.

It's about service, not "enjoyment"

Nick Robinson today returned to blogging after a lengthy Christmas break to pose the burning political question of the moment, namely is Gordon Brown enjoying the job?

Leaving aside the question of why the BBC political editor chose to focus on this aspect of the Prime Minister's Today Programme interview this morning rather than discuss the actual content, I would have thought the answer was pretty obvious. Because for the great majority of people engaged in it, politics is about public service, not enjoyment.

If you are the kind of person who "enjoys" power, you are almost certainly the wrong kind of person to be exercising it. If on the other hand you look on leadership as a responsibility, as Gordon does, then you might one day make a half-decent manager, or chief executive, or even Prime Minister.

What surprises me about Nick's comments, and for that matter the whole line of questioning from Jim Naughtie in the first place, is that examples of the kind of self-sacrificial public service I am talking about abound in voluntary organisations, charities and public sector bodies the length and breadth of the land.

Did my wife "enjoy" being chairperson of our local National Childbirth Trust branch last year? Not especially, but she did it because she believes in the NCT's work and wanted to see awareness of it growing in our community. And there are various unpaid jobs I've done, in the NUJ, in the Lobby, in my local church, which have brought me little but hassle but which similarly needed to be done.

By following this politics-as-enjoyment agenda, Robinson and others are not only failing to understand what it is that makes Gordon tick, but failing to understand the motivation for much of what makes for civil society in this country.

Blairites can offer Brown fresh thinking

A week ago today Stephen Byers wrote a piece in the Sunday Times declaring that Tony Blair was "history" and it was time for the Labour Party to get behind Gordon Brown. I thought this was a significant development, but didn't blog on it at the time because it was New Year and we had people staying and I had loads of cooking to do etc etc.

I did however devote my weekly column in the Newcastle Journal to the story, and this can be read in full on the companion blog.

The digested read is that this olive branch by Byers is intended to lay the ground for other key Blairites such as Alan Milburn and David Blunkett to bring forward new policy ideas without that interpreted as some sort of leadership challenge to Gordon.

I argue that this fresh thinking is what the Brown administration now desperately needs, and that the Prime Minister should accept such help wherever it is being offered.