Lion hunt

It's a perennial source of debate among rugby fans after each round of Six Nations matches as to where they leave us in terms of potential selection for the next Lions' tour. I blogged on this a few weeks' back when it looked like every place in the starting XV would be taken by an Irishman or a Welshman. Since then England have enjoyed a bit of a resurgence and even one or two Scots have made the case for inclusion, so here's my current line-up (with last month's selections in brackets).

15 Lee Byrne (Wales)
14 Mark Cueto (England) (Leigh Halfpenny, Wales))
13 Brian O'Driscoll (Ireland) (Jamie Roberts, Wales)
12 Riki Flutey (England) (Brian O'Driscoll, Ireland)
11 Shane Williams (Wales)
10 Stephen Jones(Wales)
9 Mike Phillips (Wales)
8 Jamie Heaslip (Ireland)
7 Joe Worsley (England) (David Wallace, Ireland)
6 Tom Croft (England) (Ryan Jones, Wales)
5 Alun Wyn Jones (Wales)
4 Paul O'Connell (Ireland, Captain)
3 John Hayes (Ireland)
2 Ross Ford (Scotland) (Jerry Flannery, Ireland)
1 Garin Jenkins (Wales)

In addition to these names I would say that Martyn Williams (Wales), Donncha O'Callagahn (Ireland), Andrew Sheridan (England) and James Hook (Wales) can probably be fairly certain of a place in the squad.

It's obvious who should succeed Gordon - and it's not Harriet Harman

Could Harriet Harman really become Prime Minister if Gordon Brown fell? Not if Labour wants to maximise its chances at the next election. Here's today's Journal column.

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One of the enduring truisms of British politics is that when it comes to choosing party leaders, Labour invariably chooses the obvious candidate while the Tories often opt for the unexpected.

By and large, it holds true. In each of the last four Labour leadership elections, the party has chosen the initial front-runner – successively Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

By contrast, the status of early front-runner in a Tory leadership election is usually the kiss of death – as Michael Heseltine in 1990, Ken Clarke in 1997, Michael Portillo in 2001 and David Davis in 2005 all found to their cost.

It is tempting to think it has something to do with political worldview. While Tories are ruthlessly unsentimental by nature, Labour people seem more inclined to award the leadership on the basis of what used to be known as “Buggins’ Turn.”

But in the summer of 2007, the party did something mildly unpredictable. Not, of course, choosing Mr Brown as leader – that was as Buggins-ish a Labour appointment as they come.

No, their slightly leftfield choice – in more ways than one – was to select Harriet Harman as deputy leader over a field of candidates which included several nominally more senior figures.

If there was an “obvious” candidate in that election, it was probably Alan Johnson, at that time the education secretary and a man who had been seriously talked about as a potential alternative to Mr Brown for the top job.

That the Labour Party instead chose Ms Harman has subsequently led many observers to suggest that she would be the person to beat in any contest to succeed the Prime Minister.

It is not hard to fathom at least one of the reasons why Ms Harman had such substantial support among the party’s grassroots – her gender.

The party has a proud record of campaigning for greater gender equality and to give her her due, Ms Harman has been right in the forefront of that campaign for most of her political career.

Another reason for Ms Harman’s success was the fact that she managed to position herself in exactly the right place to win the election to be Mr Brown’s deputy – that is, very slightly to the left of the incoming PM.

This careful positioning ensured that she scooped up the second preference votes of the left-wing candidate, Jon Cruddas, enabling her to defeat Mr Johnson in the final run-off.

But there was one other very significant element of Ms Harman’s support in that 2007 contest which is less easily explained – the backing she received from key members of Mr Brown’s own inner circle.

Labour MPs who gave her their votes included Douglas Alexander, Yvette Cooper, Nigel Griffiths, Ed Miliband, Geoffrey Robinson, Michael Wills and two North-East MPs, Nick Brown and Kevan Jones.

Of course, it is quite possible that each of this eminent group of Brownites arrived independently at the judgement that Ms Harman was the best qualified of the candidates.

But that is not, historically, how Gordon’s gang have operated. They tend to hunt as a pack, taking their lead from the top and always acting in what they see as their man’s best interests.

So for me, the enduring mystery of the Harman election – especially in the light of all the subsequent rumours about her plotting to take over – is why the Brown camp wanted her as No 2?

The suspicion persists that it was primarily down to a desire to keep out candidates who would have been more of a threat – such as Mr Johnson or Peter Hain – along with those espousing a “Blairite” agenda, such as Hazel Blears.

It has been said by some that having encouraged his inner circle to back Ms Harman, Mr Brown then regretted it immediately.

If so, this would seem to be borne out by his decision to appoint her not as Deputy Prime Minister but instead to the relatively humdrum positions of party chair and Leader of the Commons.

Ever since then, Mr Brown has kept the post of deputy premier open, giving him the option of using it either to strengthen his Cabinet line-up or neutralise a potential rival.

That wily tactician John Major successfully achieved both when he elevated Mr Heseltine to the position in 1995.

The most likely beneficiary of such a manoeuvre in these circumstances would be Mr Johnson – but that would run the risk of triggering a full-scale revolt by Ms Harman’s supporters.

Ms Harman has already been cleverly positioning herself to the left of the collective government position on issues on which Mr Brown is vulnerable in his own party, such as bankers’ bonuses and the Royal Mail sell-off.

So could she really become leader and Prime Minister? Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think so.

Okay, so she won the only contested leadership or deputy leadership election Labour has held in the past 15 years and, on the strength of that alone, it is impossible to write her off.

But if Mr Brown did fall, the party would in my view be focused on one thing and one thing alone – choosing the person most likely to give David Cameron a run for his money at the next election.

That person is not Ms Harman, but the “obvious candidate” she so narrowly beat: Alan Johnson.

Should Gordon say sorry?

Probably not if he still wants to win the next election. But there is another option for Labour. Here's today's Journal column.

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Chancellor Alistair Darling says the government should show a bit of "humility" and accept "collective responsibility" for the economic crisis. Childrens’ secretary Ed Balls says it underestimated the risks of not having stronger financial regulation of the City.

Is New Labour edging towards something resembling an apology for the economic downturn? Not if Prime Minister Gordon Brown has anything to do with it.

To be fair, he’s had other things on his mind this week – that much-sought-after first meeting with President Barack Obama, and his big speech to the US Congress in which he set out his rescue plan for the global economy.

But the UK national media had only one thing on its mind – whether or not Mr Brown was going to utter the magic word: “Sorry.”

You almost had to feel sorry for the guy. There he is in the Oval Office enjoying his long-awaited moment of glory with Obama and all the BBC’s Nick Robinson wants to ask him about is the “S-word.”

A Sky News analysis of his speech to Congress concentrated less on Mr Brown’s ongoing attempts to save the world from financial meltdown and more on the fact that the number of times he had used the word sorry was zero.

Back home, meanwhile, the Conservatives redoubled their attempts to get the Prime Minister to take the blame for the recession, even in the absence of leader David Cameron.

It launched a new satirical website entitled www.sorryfromgordon.com in which users are invited to draft an apology on the Prime Minister’s behalf.

So should he or shouldn’t he? Well, the answer to that question really depends on whether you are looking at it from the point of view of political morality, or from the point of view of pure political advantage.

From the moral standpoint, the case for a Prime Ministerial apology is fairly clear-cut. This was after all the man who claimed to have abolished boom and bust, who insisted Britain was best-placed to weather the downturn, and above all who invented the system of financial regulation which has so palpably failed.

Since Mr Brown got all of these things wrong, some sort of “I screwed up” –style gesture is probably long overdue.

But whenlooked at from the point of view of whether it would be in Mr Brown’s or the Labour Party’s best interests for him to say sorry, the picture becomes much more confused.

There are good arguments on both sides, and they are arguments that have been playing out at the most senior levels of Mr Brown’s own Cabinet over the course of recent weeks.

Those urging Mr Brown to make some sort of apologetic gesture contend that it would enable the government to achieve “closure” on the issue of who caused the recession, thus enabling the public to focus more on the issue of who has the best remedies for it.

But those urging caution take the view that the whole apology saga is no more than a Tory trap that has been set by the opposition and its cronies in the national press.

Once Mr Cameron has secured an admission of guilt, they argue, he will throw it back in the Prime Minister’s face every day between now and the next General Election.

The public’s own view of the dilemma is not necessarily as straightforward as the Tories would like to think.

On the one hand, the Tory attacks seem to chime with the public’s general view of the Prime Minister as someone who is happy to take the credit when things go well but seeks to avoid any responsibility when they go wrong.

On the other, there is some evidence that the voters see the Tory attacks as petty point-scoring and the “apology” row as a distraction from the main issue of how to tackle the crisis.

A poll published on Thursday found that 60pc of voters would like to see the media and the Tories “give up” on the issue and move on to more pressing matters.

What are the recent historical precedents? Well, Margaret Thatcher would certainly never have dreamed of saying sorry for causing the mass unemployment of the early 1980s, for instance, or the social divisions arising from the miners’ strike that began 25 years ago this week.

For her, all this was mere collateral damage in her overriding mission to rescue the British economy from the ravages of socialism.

What about Tony Blair? He said sorry for the 75p state pension increase in 1999 – which was Mr Brown’s idea anyway – and also for initially having opposed Ken Livingstone’s bid to become Mayor of London.

But those were relatively minor mistakes. He never really apologised for the big one, the Iraq War, saying only that he would “answer to his maker” for the consequences.

Of course the key point about both Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair is that they each won three elections in a row, suggesting that a refusal to apologise for mistakes is not necessarily an electoral liability.

My own view on the matter- and I choose my words carefully here – is that if Mr Brown is intending to fight the next General Election, he would probably be better off sticking to his guns on the apology issue.

But there is another scenario, in which Mr Brown says sorry while simultaneously announcing he will not fight that election, thus achieving closure on the issue without giving Mr Cameron a gigantic hostage to fortune.

Ultimately, it may be the only way for the Labour Party to resolve the excruciating dilemma in which it finds itself.

"And a portion of your very excellent guacamole, please"

Those were the immortal words which were memorably not spoken by Peter Mandelson during a campaign visit to a Hartlepool fish and chip shop shortly after his adoption as the Labour candidate there in the mid-1990s. But, of course, they ought to have been. Indeed, never did an apocryphal political tale more deserve to be true than in this case.

So was it really green custard which the airport protesters threw at him today, or was it the guacomole coming back to haunt him again? Or could it, just simply, have been a punnet of mushy peas?

Another victim of the credit crunch...

Music lovers all over the East Midlands (and beyond) will have been dismayed to hear of the forthcoming demise of Selectadisc, Nottingham. My good friend David Gladwin - who expresses these sorts of things far better than I ever could - reminisces about bygone days spent there:

"I spent huge amounts of time there. And huge amounts of money, relative to my disposable income at the time. I first went on a bus trip to Nottingham with Antony Fearn. It was on Bridlesmithgate then, in just the one shop. I remember first hearing Garlands by the Cocteau Twins in there, and having to have it right there and then.

"The same thing happened some years later, when I went to the Market Street shop one Friday afternoon as a student and they were playing Birthday by the Sugarcubes. Selecta (as the locals used to call it) would stay open late on nights when there were gigs in the centre of Nottingham (so that was every weekend and most of the week, then) and would give me somewhere else to go instead of a pub before the show. It was tricky getting through a standing show with a piece of 12 inch vinyl under your arm, mind.

"I went there less and less over the years, but only because I didn’t live in the area. If I’d stayed in Belper then I’d have gone to Selectadisc at least once a fortnight – Nottingham has always pissed all over Derby for shopping purposes. But now Nottingham will never be the same.

"So thank you and goodnight, Selectadisc. Thank you for all those glorious 12 inch singles on Factory and 4AD. For albums and singles on Cherry Red. Thank you for having a Giveaways rack where curious young music fans could pick up Tim Buckley’s Starsailor on cassette for £2. Thank you for the fantastic second hand section (a whole shop full until fairly recently) where some serious bargains and get-it-now-or-never-see-it-again opportunities were to be had. The only better second hand section I’ve ever been to is in (the thankfully extant – for now) Record Collector on Fulwood Road in Sheffield. Thank you for the Fantastic Something album for £1.99. For Still by Joy Division. For my first copy of Martin Newell’s The Greatest Living Englishman. For the amazing dance and soul sections. For being the only record shop I’ve ever known where you could just walk in and be certain that a new release – however obscure – that you heard John Peel play the night before would be there, in the racks, waiting."

The answer's in the Post, Gordon

Wednesday's suspension of hostilities at PMQs showed Brown and Cameron in a good light - but with the Royal Mail row threatening the mother of all Labour rebellions, politics will soon be back to normal. Here's today's Journal column.

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Over the course of recent years, it is fair to say that the weekly gladiatorial joust that is Prime Minister’s Questions has not always shown the British system of government at its best.

Although seen as vital for party morale, the exchanges between the two main party leaders frequently generate more heat than light while more often than not leaving the public cold.

The clashes between Gordon Brown and David Cameron over the past 18 months have proved no exception to this general rule.

In truth they have been less about policy and more about psychology – a series of confrontations in which the opposition leader has sought to get under a notoriously prickly Prime Minister’s thin skin.

But it is this evident personal edge to the Brown – Cameron rivalry which made the suspension of hostilities in the Commons Chamber on Wednesday of this week all the more remarkable.

For the best part of two years, they have kept their relations at a purely perfunctory level, avoiding the customary courtesies that take place between a Prime Minister and an opposition leader.

Yet on Wednesday, the two men set aside their personal and political differences as they found themselves united by the common bond of grief they share.

The death of Mr Cameron’s six-year-old son Ivan, seven years after the loss of Mr Brown’s own first child, reminded both them and us that there is more to life than politics.

The personal is of course political, and there can be no doubting the part that their respective private traumas have played in forming the political outlooks of the two men.

Mr Brown has spoken openly in the past of how his experiences of the NHS after losing an eye in a rugby injury as a teenager helped shape his politics from an early age.

More recently Mr Cameron too has made clear the important part he believes the health service plays in the life of the nation - based on the significant part it has played in his own life.

Much of what the Tory leader does in politics is pure positioning, but not this. This comes genuinely from the heart.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether this week’s events will lead to any lasting thaw in the frosty atmosphere between the two party leaders.

Will they start to treat eachother with greater respect, now that each of them knows the other has shared their deepest personal tragedy?

I suspect the public would probably welcome that, but a year out from a general election, it’s probably not going to happen.

Mr Cameron may well now view Mr Brown in a more sympathetic light, but that won’t stop him trying to get the Prime Minister to admit that the recession was his fault.

What would the two men have talked about this week, had Wednesday’s clash gone ahead as normal?

Well, former Royal Bank of Scotland chief Sir Fred Goodwin’s £650,000-a-year pension certainly. It is becoming increasingly clear that the government may have missed a trick here.

But probably the big issue of the week would have been the government’s plans to sell off a 30pc stake in the Royal Mail.

Mr Cameron’s objective in this would have been clear: to drive a wedge between Mr Brown and the growing army of Labour backbenchers who are bitterly opposed to the plan.

There are broadly speaking three points of view in the Commons on the future of the Royal Mail. One is that it should be privatised – the view that is held by almost all Conservative and most Liberal Democrat MPs.

Another is that it should remain entirely in the public sector – the view held by 130 backbench Labour MPs who are determined to thwart the proposed legislation.

In this context, the government’s “third way” of part-privatisation might seem like an acceptable compromise – but it is hard to find anyone who believes in it outside the government.

As the rebel former minister Peter Hain has pointed out this week, it is not easy to see where a parliamentary majority for any of these positions currently lies.

The Commons arithmetic is such that if even a third of the 130 Labour rebels vote against the plans when they come before the Commons in June, Mr Brown will have to rely on the votes of Tory MPs to get them through.

Which essentially means that, on this issue at least, Mr Cameron has the Prime Minister by the short and curlies.

An added danger for Mr Brown is the fact that not everyone in his government – notably deputy leader Harriet Harman – appears to be wholeheartedly behind the proposed sell-off.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that, like banking bonuses, this is yet another issue on which Mr Brown’s would-be successors are carefully positioning themselves.

For all these reasons, I expect Mr Cameron to try to keep this issue uppermost on the agenda when he returns from compassionate leave the week after next and Prime Minister’s Questions returns to its familiar format.

He knows that Mr Brown can ill-afford to fall out with his party at this point in his troubled premiership and that a rebellion of the magnitude of 130 MPs could prove terminal.

Last week I posed the question whether the government can carry on much longer in an atmosphere where Labour MPs were indulging in ever more open speculation about the succession as the Prime Minister’s authority steadily drained away.

For Mr Brown, the answer to that could be in the Post.