A tale of two elections

It's all change in America, no change at Glenrothes - but which result tells us more about the current state of UK politics? Here's today's Journal column.

---

It was a tale of two elections, one that has seemingly given new hope to the whole world, another rather closer to home that has given new hope for Gordon Brown and his once-beleaguered premiership.

One outcome - the victory of Barack Obama in the US presidential election - was widely expected. The other - Labour's victory in Thursday night's Glenrothes by-election - was rather less so.

The first brought the sense of a fresh beginning for America and possibly the world, encapsulated in the words of Mr Obama's acceptance speech "change has come."

The second, by contrast, conveyed a message of “no change just yet,” at least from the voters of Glenrothes but also possibly from a wider British public that currently seems more content with Mr Brown.

Taking Mr Obama first, it has been notable how much of the coverage of his victory has focused on his colour when it was scarcely an issue in the campaign itself.

I don't deny it's a remarkable achievement for an African-American to become president of a country that 40 years ago denied blacks the right to travel on the same buses as whites, but Mr Obama won because of his charisma, not his colour.

Above all, he won because he successfully presented himself as the change candidate at a time when America appears to be crying out for change.

His republican rival John McCain also lost it by failing to do enough to distinguish himself from the increasingly unpopular George Bush, and also by appearing to be somewhat complacent about the state of the US economy.

Much discussion has already surrounded the impact of Sarah Palin, Mr McCain's surprise choice of vice-presidential nominee, on the eventual result.

On the one hand, she undoubtedly energised the Republican Party’s campaign and enabled Mr McCain to re-connect with a part of its core vote that has always distrusted him.

On the other, she was plainly out of her depth when dealing with foreign policy issues and, for all her freshness as a Washington "outsider," came over as something of a political ingenue.

All things considered, perhaps a 72-year-old man who has had cancer four times should have paid slightly more heed to the need for experience in choosing the person who would have been "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

As for what it means for UK politics, it was predictable that the two main parties would offer wildly differing interpretations of the significance of Mr Obama's triumph.

For Tory leader David Cameron, the important point was the message of change. For Mr Brown, it was the victory of progressive politics over the neo-Conservative right.

Both are plausible enough interpretations, but for me, the sight of British Tories attempting to clamber aboard the Obama bandwagon has been one of the more amusing aspects of the campaign.

No matter that Mr Obama is the most left-wing president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - there's absolutely nothing the ideology-free-zone that is today's Tory Party won't do to get with the zeitgeist.

For all the understandable excitement about Mr Obama, though, it is what happened in Glenrothes which says more about the current state of British politics.

That this is an extraordinary triumph for Mr Brown cannot be in doubt, even allowing for the fact that local issues dominated the by-election campaign.

Consider where the Prime Minister was before the conference season two months ago. He had lost three by-elections on the trot, all of them badly, and there was a growing perception in the party that he was a "loser."

Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband was openly agitating for his job, while deputy leader Harriet Harman told friends "this is my time."

There was a widespread expectation of an autumn coup against Mr Brown's leadership, and dark talk that up to 15 ministers would refuse to serve come the reshuffle - a rumour which, had it come to fruition, would surely have spelled the end of him.

Even at the end of what was judged a successful conference, the shadow of another disastrous defeat in Glenrothes still hung over him like a sword of Damocles, as I noted at the time.

Instead, Mr Brown now finds himself back in the game and with an outside chance - I would put it no more strongly than that - of winning that elusive fourth Labour term.

Okay, so it's largely down to his handling of the economic crisis - but that fighting conference speech and the coup-de-theatre of Peter Mandelson's reshuffle comeback have certainly played their part.

Up until now, the Brown renaissance, or the "Second Brown Bounce" as some have called it, has been largely driven by a media narrative - a general consensus among the commentariat that the Prime Minister's position has improved.

But there is no substitute for actual real-life votes, and Thursday's result has provided concrete evidence that the "media narrative" is actually not that far off the mark.

In other words, the Labour fightback is no mere media invention designed to make politics more interesting again for readers, viewers and listeners. It really is now under way.

It doesn't prove that Mr Brown is a "winner." But it does show that he is not quite the inveterate loser that some thought he was.

So is it now "game on" for the next general election? Could we soon be back to a position where a hung Parliament, rather than an outright Tory victory, once more looks the most likely outcome?

Well, hang on. One swallow doesn't make a summer, and it's important for Mr Brown and Labour not to get carried away with Thursday night's success.

The truth is that Mr Cameron remains as much an overwhelming favourite to win the next general election as Mr Obama was to win the presidency.

But unlike Senator McCain, Gordon Brown still has time on his side.

A well-deserved victory

Okay, so I admit I didn't originally want Barack Obama to win the US Presidency. I thought he was too inexperienced, and there was something about his very smoothness, his apparent reliance on style over content, that reminded me uncomfortably of Tony Blair. In addition, I had a bit of a sentimental attachment to John McCain on the grounds that for someone of his age to win the presidency would give encouragement to clapped-out old gits everywhere.

But there's no point being churlish about this. Obama deserves his victory if only for having stood up to the onslaught of two of the hitherto most powerful machines in world politics - the Republican machine, and the Clinton machine.

I still don't buy all the silky, JFK-style rhetoric. I've already lived too long and seen too many smooth-tongued politicians worm their way into the affections of the British public to believe in all that stuff. But underneath it all Obama strikes me as a decent sort of man, and if he can restore some stability to American foreign policy and its domestic economy over the next few years he will be well on the way to becoming a great president.

Did he win it, or did McCain lose it? A bit of both I think. Obama clearly came into this election as the "change candidate" and played that hand for all it was worth, both against Clinton and later against McCain. But I think McCain also made errors, notably in failing to do enough to differentiate himself from the increasingly despised George W. Bush and claiming after the collapse of Lehman brothers that the American economy was "fundamentally sound."

Was making Sarah Palin his running mate an error? That's a difficult one to call. She certainly energised the McCain campaign and brought a much-needed touch of glamour, but perhaps a man of 72 who has had cancer four times should have paid slightly more heed to experience in selecting the person who would be "a heartbeat away from the presidency."

As for the most hilarious spectacle in the election, it has to be the sight of British Tories attempting to clamber aboard the Obama bandwagon once it became reasonably clear he was going to win. No matter that he's the most left-wing president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - there's absolutely nothing the ideology-free-zone that is today's Tory Party won't do to get with the zeitgeist.

Hors de Combat

I think I probably owe my readers some sort of explanation as to why it's all gone rather quiet over here of late - rest assured I haven't given up blogging, but I have been rather unwell, as a result of which I simply haven't had the energy or the inclination to think about politics, or much else for that matter.

One rather sad consequence of this was that I had to abandon my annual October walking pilgrimage to the Lakes which has continued, on and off, since 1993. It's been mostly off in recent years - last year I couldn't make it as we were moving house, and this year I was laid-up in bed. Maybe next year....

I'm slowly on the mend now, I hope, so hopefully things will be back to normal round here pretty soon. I gather there's some cotton-picking little election taking place somewhere this week, and I'm sure I'll have something to say about it before too long.

Remembering the public hangman

I enjoyed following the career of Peter Bruinvels in the 1980s - it was difficult not to as he was rarely out of the papers - and 20 years on I enjoyed writing about him for Total Politics magazine.

My "Where Are They Now?" feature for the magazine is now in its fifth month - previous subjects have been Walter Sweeney, Bill Pitt, David Bookbinder and David Bellotti.

Prince of Darkness continues to weave his spell

Apologies for lack of blogging this week - a combination of illness and extreme busy-ness - but here's my weekly Journal column, focusing inevitably on the so-called Corfu capers.

---

It is no exaggeration to say that, of all the men and women who have influenced the course of political events over the past 16 months of the Brown premiership, the one who had possibly the greatest impact was Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.

It was his audacious plan to slash Inheritance Tax for all but the very-super-rich unveiled in his 2007 conference speech that, more than any other single factor, persuaded Mr Brown not to call a general election that autumn.

Many thought it finally marked the 36-year-old Mr Osborne’s arrival as a genuine player in the front rank of politics - a “Big Beast” in the old Tory parlance.

But if so, the events of the past week have reopened some of the old doubts in the party about whether Mr Osborne’s exalted position in the Tory hierarchy is a case of too much, too young.

The tale of the "Corfu Capers" is an intriguing demonstration of how high society and its tangled network of relationships can impact on day-to-day political events.

It all began when former Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson, then a European Commissioner, made some critical comments about Mr Brown to Mr Osborne while they were both staying at the Greek villa of their mutual friend, Nathaniel Rothschild, this summer.

When a few weeks later Mr Brown made the dramatic step of restoring the newly-ennobled Lord Mandelson to his Cabinet in his reshuffle, what had been merely a juicy piece of gossip became political gold-dust.

A story duly appeared in The Sunday Times in which it was claimed that the new Business Secretary had “dripped pure poison into the ears of a senior Tory” about the Prime Minister during the holiday.

Mr Rothschild was furious at what he saw a breach of confidence, and got his own back by deciding to reveal what else Mr Osborne had got up to on his holidays.

Specifically, he claimed that Mr Osborne and the Tory chief executive Andrew Feldman had tried to solicit a £50,000 donation to Tory funds from a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, while visiting his yacht.

Mr Osborne has denied this, but "friends" of Mr Rothschild has now made clear that if he continues to query his version of events, he will destroy him, suggesting he has written witness statements from others who were present.

There is no suggestion that it was Lord Mandelson who tried to persuade Mr Rothschild to exact revenge on Mr Osborne.

It seems the merchant banker was simply so enraged by the breach of confidence that he decided to administer what one close associate called a "slap on the wrist."

However Tory leader David Cameron's office was warned following the Sunday Times' story that the Business Secretary knew something "explosive" about Mr Osborne and that the Shadow Chancellor should "be careful."

Mr Osborne has been forced to learn two hard lessons. First, you don’t breach confidences. Second, you don’t mess with Mandelson.

It seems unlikely as yet that the Shadow Chancellor will have to resign, and even though Mr Brown has said he hopes "the authorities" will investigate, it is not entirely clear whether any actual offence has been committed.

But it does focus attention on the Tories' readiness for government and specifically on whether they have yet got the make-up of their senior team quite right.

Already this question has been thrown into relief by Mr Cameron's failure to restore David Davis to the Shadow Home Secretaryship even though his successor Dominic Grieve seems ill-fitted for such a cut-and-thrust role.

Now the focus is on Mr Osborne - and whether someone who looks and sounds a bit less like a merchant banker might be a more convincing advocate for the Tories in the midst of the current crisis.

There has been persistent talk in Tory circles that if he wins the next election, Mr Cameron intends to bring Ken Clarke into a front-line role in government, possibly as Leader of the Commons.

But if he really does intend to employ the 68-year-old bruiser's considerable talents, he should not waste time hanging around for polling day.

He should bring Mr Clarke in now - preferably as Shadow Chancellor so he can deploy all his Treasury experience against Labour as the economic crisis continues to unwind.

Mr Clarke has long harboured a grudge against Mr Brown for the way he failed to give the Tories any credit for stabilising the economy between 1993 and 1997. What better way to get his own back.

The Corfu affair also focuses attention once again on the whole issue of political donations, demonstrating that no party is immune from the problem.

Last year we were all agog over whether Newcastle businessman David Abrahams had channelled donations to the Labour Party through associates in the city. Now the spotlight is once again back on the Tories.

What it shows is that attempting to rid British politics of sleaze is a bit like trying to abolish sin

Unless and until we move a situation where political parties are state-funded, these sorts of controversies will surely continue to recur.

For me, though, what has really elevated this story beyond the realms of run-of-the-mill political tit-for-tat has been the involvement - however innocent - of Lord Mandelson.

It has been yet another fascinating example of the Prince of Darkness's almost unique capacity for causing mayhem, even if it is sometimes inadvertent.

We saw this in his Cabinet career with his two resignations. We have seen it in the way he can both electrify and terrify the political establishment in almost equal measure.

Three weeks into his third Cabinet comeback, the man once known as the Prince of Darkness has certainly not lost his lethal touch.

Normal politics returns

Brown to call snap election? Cameron to be replaced by Ken Clarke? Political pundits should stop getting carried away by the idea of a "Brown Renaissance," I argue in my Journal column today.

---

In last week's column, I wrote that it was unclear whether we are currently living in a period where "normal politics" has gone into abeyance, or whether the political landscape has undergone a permanent change.

In the sense that we don't yet know the extent to which the post-Thatcher free market consensus has been changed by the events of the past few weeks - and won't know for some time - that still holds true.

But in another respect, it was pretty clear that "normal politics" had indeed been temporarily put on hold, as the political establishment rallied round Gordon Brown at the height of the banking crisis.

Briefly, we saw the same sort of bipartisanship that was seen, say, in the wake of 9/11, when the then Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith was forced to tear-up his party conference speech and say nice things about Tony Blair instead.

For a fortnight or so, the current Tory leader David Cameron and his Shadow Chancellor George Osborne found themselves in a similar position.

It is often said that the job of an opposition is to oppose, but this is too simplistic. The truth is that sometimes, the job of the opposition is, in fact, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the government.

This week, however, "normal politics" in the sense of the battle between the two main parties returned with a vengeance.

Mr Cameron's speech yesterday, in which he accused Mr Brown of a "complete and utter failure" in economic policy, gave us a flavour of the argument that will rage between now and whenever the next general election finally comes.

"Over the past decade, we have seen a total breakdown of economic responsibility," he told an audience in the City of London.

"We need change to mend our broken economy. This lot cannot do it - not least because they cannot own up to any mistakes.

Mr Cameron said that some people thought his party's decision to support the banking rescue plan meant it now "subscribed to the government's entire economic policy and doctrine."

But he added: "Let me make it crystal clear - we do not. And the complete and utter failure of their economic record has never been more clear to see."

All of this puts in stark perspective the talk of the "Brown renaissance" which has become widespread over the past fortnight or so.

Yes, the Prime Minister has certainly bought himself some breathing space, but talk of a complete turnaround in his political fortunes is still way too premature.

Gossip and rumour are part and parcel of political life, but some of what has appeared on political blogs and even in some national newspapers over the past few days has taken fantastical speculation to new heights of absurdity.

There was talk, for instance, that Mr Brown would hold a snap general election to cash-in on his new-found "popularity" in the wake of the crisis - as if he would even go near the idea after getting his fingers so badly burned last time.

One rumour even had it that backbench Tory MPs have been so angered by Mr Cameron's failure to land a killer blow on Mr Brown over the crisis they planned to replace him with Ken Clarke.

I think that David Davis - freshly vindicated by the collapse of the government's plans for 42-day detention - would have something to say about that, but no matter.

The truth is Mr Cameron is not going to be overthrown this autumn any more than Mr Brown is going to hold an autumn election.

After yesterday, he must know that had he been foolish enough to call one, the whole country would by now have been plastered with posters bearing his picture and the words "no return to boom and bust."

The Prime Minister's only hope is still to play it long and hope that by May 2010, he can actually justifiably claim to have "fixed" the crisis.

Even then, it may still not be enough to secure him another term in 10 Downing Street.

At the risk of repeating what I said a week ago, the prevailing public sentiment towards him may still be a case of "we want you to sort out this mess - and then we want you to go."

The electorate can be an unsentimental lot, and as Winston Churchill found in 1945, saving the country from catastrophe is no guarantee of a further term in power.

If anything is going to do for Mr Brown, it is not an essentially arcane difficulty over whether or not banks will lend to eachother, it is what is happening in what has been dubbed the "real" economy.

People in the North-East know all about that. To paraphrase the old saying about America and Europe, the region is usually the first to catch a cold whenever London sneezes.

It was amusing to hear BBC political editor Nick Robinson say this week that unemployment had not been an issue in British politics for 15 years. He has clearly not spent much of that time in the North.

It is in fact ten years ago this month that the then Governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George, told me that lost North jobs were an "acceptable" price to pay to curb inflation in the South, following a spate of factory closures in the region.

Maybe the region's economy is more resilient these days, but if history is anything to go by, the North-East is once again likely to be in the eye of the economic storm.

The region's construction industry has already been badly hit by the crisis, but that is surely just the start.

I suppose those who are set to lose their jobs in the forthcoming months could always go and lag roofs for a living, as the Prime Minister helpfully appeared to suggest this week.

But as Mr Cameron might say, if he had actually fixed the roof while the sun was shining, they wouldn't need to.

The dead-fat-cat bounce

In his weekly take on political events, cartoonist Slob buys into the idea of a "Brown renaissance," but even if such a thing exists, I wonder how long it will last in the wake of David Cameron's speech today. More on this theme in my weekly column tomorrow.

Subcontinental drift

Life is full of unsolved mysteries. What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Who killed JFK? Does the Bosun-Higgs particle exist? What did Margaret Hodge have on Blair and Brown, and so on.

But here's another question that's had me scratching my head over the last few hours or so: Why is the Man Booker Prize almost invariably won by a book about India?

Answers on a postcard in the comments please...

Now give him his job back, Dave

David Davis says he feels vindicated over the government's decision to scrap its absurd plan to detain terror suspects for 42 days - once touted by the so-called political cognoscenti as the make-or-break issue that would define Gordon's premiership. And so he should.

Meanwhile it is reasonably clear that, for all his obvious intellectual firepower, Dominic Grieve lacks the political clout to shadow a major office of state.

The conclusion ought to be an obvious one for David Cameron: Restore David Davis to the Shadow Home Secretaryship forthwith. Not only would it be right and proper in view of his 42-day triumph, it would also steal some of Brown's thunder in the wake of his astonishing yet still widely-applauded decision to appoint his most implacable political enemy as Business Secretary.

Will Cameron will have the balls to do it? I'm not holding my breath...

Nothing new under the sun

The frequent references in the mainstream media to "binge drinking" never cease to bring a smile to my face. News editors who think that women throwing up in the street is somehow representative of our having crossed the fine line between civilisation and anarchy have clearly never seen any Hogarth prints. In a similar vein, this article provides proof, if ever it were needed, that British men have always been, and always will be, overgrown schoolboys at heart.

Has politics really changed for good?

"Things will never be the same again" says Nick Robinson. "Don't believe a word of it" says John Rentoul. Who is right, and what are the implications of this week's banking rescue for Gordon Brown? Here's today's Journal column.

---

Politics is full of historical ironies – but ironies don’t come much bigger than what the Labour government has been forced to do to the British banking system over the past seven days.

Fourteen years ago, Tony Blair stood up at the Labour conference and pledged to scrap the infamous Clause Four of the party’s constitution and its commitment to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.”

“Common ownership of the means of exchange” was in fact just a fancy way of saying “nationalisation of the banks” even though this had long ceased to be a realistic policy goal.

Nevertheless, to Mr Blair and Gordon Brown, it was a meaningless shibboleth which only served to alienate floating voters, and as such it had to go.

Those with even longer memories may recall another little gem from Labour’s historical archive which first saw the light of day in the year Messrs Blair and Brown were both first elected to Parliament.

It consisted of a wish-list of improbable promises which included tighter government control over bank lending, creation of a publicly-owned investment bank, and a securities commission to regulate the City.

“We expect the major clearing banks to co operate with us fully on these reforms, in the national interest. However, should they fail to do so, we shall stand ready to take one or more of them into public ownership,” the document concluded.

It was of course Labour’s 1983 election manifesto – long-derided by those of a New Labour persuasion as “the longest suicide note in history.”

The main author of that document Michael Foot – still going strong at 95 – might have permitted himself a wry old smile this week.

The party he once led has spent a total of £500bn propping up the UK banking system, and that’s not including the £119bn already spent on rescuing Northern Rock and £14bn on Bradford and Bingley.

As a result of the deal the government now owns preference shares in eight leading financial institutions - Abbey, Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide Building Society, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered.

Add to that Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley and that’s ten major banks that are either wholly or part-owned by the taxpayer.

I will leave the economic analysis of whether this mother of all gambles is likely to pay off to the likes of BBC business editor Robert Peston, who has been transformed into an unlikely TV celebrity by the crisis.

I remember “Pesto” from my Lobby days when as FT political editor he was regularly the butt of No 10 press secretary Alastair Campbell’s mockery. I wonder who is laughing now.

But I digress. The truth is I am not qualified to give a judgement on whether I think the rescue plan will work, whether the stock market will recover, or whether we are now in a “feedback loop” – apparently the new name for a vicious circle.

And I know not who was to blame for persuading Derwentside District Council and scores of other local authorities to place their deposits in Icelandic banks – this year’s equivalent of Bulgarian umbrellas it seems.

But what of the political implications? Peston’s BBC colleague Nick Robinson intoned gravely this week that “things will never be the same again,” but he really should know better than to make such sweeping claims.

The truth is, it is far from clear at this stage whether we are in a period in which “normal” politics has simply gone into abeyance, or whether the landscape really has undergone a permanent change.

The events of the past few weeks may very well mark the end of the free market political consensus that was ushered in by Mrs Thatcher in 1979 and assimilated by New Labour after 1994. Or then it again, it may not.

Until we’ve come through this and out the other side, we won’t really know.

Similarly with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. History may show that the past few weeks have transformed him from a political dead man walking into a popular and respected leader who is set to go on and win the next election.

He certainly has a bit more a spring in his step these days, and it is becoming clearer and clearer that, like Churchill, like Thatcher, he is more at home in a crisis.

But the pro-Labour but anti-Brown commentator John Rentoul was scathing about the very idea that Mr Brown’s fortunes had undergone a turnaround.

“Don't believe a word of it. People think the Government has made a terrible mess of the economy and are furious that it is asking taxpayers to pick up the tab….this is game over,” he wrote this week.

Once again, we won’t really know who is right about this at least until the government has faced another serious electoral test.

My own hunch is that while this crisis has undoubtedly given Mr Brown the opportunity to redefine himself and his premiership, the public’s underlying attitude to him may not, in fact, have changed.

Has the prevailing sentiment “We think you’re a lousy Prime Minister and we want you to go” been replaced by “We actually think you’re quite good on the whole and we’d really rather like you stay?”

Or has it simply changed from “We want you to go,” to “We want you to stay and sort out this mess which you helped create – and then we want you to go.”

To put it another way, will this week’s part-nationalisation of the banks prove to be Gordon Brown’s Falklands Moment – the point at which he stood up to the enemy in the form of rampant, unregulated capitalism and slew the monster?

Or will it prove to be his ERM moment, the moment his party’s old reputation for economic incompetence resurfaced and all New Labour’s work was undone?

On the answers to these questions will, almost certainly, hang the ultimate fate of Mr Brown’s premiership – and the result of the next general election.

Only then, I suspect, will we see whether the political world really has changed for good.

Good luck Chris

It's never nice to see a newspaper or magazine go under and I have latterly had my attention drawn to this piece by my old lobby colleague Chris McLaughlin about the potential demise of Tribune.

Chris is a fine chap and a fine journo who has done wonders with the dusty old left-wing mag over the past few years, and his efforts to save the title deserve to succeed.

Gordon's gamble

As previously mentioned I've not had time to blog on the economic crisis this week although I will be looking at the political implications of it in my weekly column tomorrow - but I reckon Slob's cartoon below pretty well sums it up nicely.

The not-the-global economic meltdown open thread

Profuse apologies for lack of blogging this week - it's been a hectic time both at home and at work and my No 2 is off on holiday so it's been a case of too few hours in the day.

Feel free to use this thread to raise any issues of interest, so long as they are not about the global credit crunch as I'm bored rigid with it.

Brown does while Cameron talks

The Boy Dave may have done good this week, but he couldn't change the fact that oppositions are at the mercy of events. Here's today's Journal column.

***

It was, of course, a Conservative Prime Minister who coined the famous truism about the nature of politics - namely that governments are invariably at the mercy of “events, dear boy, events.”

But what Harold Macmillan didn’t say was that oppositions can be just as vulnerable to sudden, unexpected changes in the political weather.

The truth is that “events” are an ambivalent force of political nature, and can just as likely ride to a government’s rescue as to blow it off course.

And in the case of the global economic crisis, it is David Cameron’s Conservative opposition – not Gordon Brown’s Labour government – who have been left scratching their heads.

This week’s party conference in Birmingham should have been the opportunity for Mr Cameron to “seal the deal” with a British electorate that has still not quite taken him to their hearts.

With a lead in the opinion polls of around 20 points going into the conference season, their plan was to give the public a much clearer idea about what a Cameron-led government would actually do.

But the global credit crunch changed everything. New policies which had spent up to two years in incubation swiftly had to be torn-up or rewritten.

Mr Cameron’s own keynote speech apparently went through five or six rewrites as each new twist in the economic crisis hit home.

In the circumstances, he didn’t do half badly. Platform oratory is one of the Tory leader’s big strengths and many who watched his speech on Wednesday would have seen a PM-in-waiting.

His line about how it would be “arrogant” to try to prove you’re ready to be Prime Minister was just the sort of self-deprecation the British naturally warm to.

He was right, too, to say that if experience were the only criterion for choosing a PM, the government would never change – though wrong to compare himself to Mrs Thatcher in this regard.

The Iron Lady was far from being a political novice when she entered No 10, having served in Ted Heath’s Cabinet for four years and been an MP for 20. Mr Cameron, by contrast, only entered the Commons in 2001.

But David Cameron’s real problem this week was not lack of experience, but lack of relevance.

The economic crisis has left the Tories not only impotent in the face of events but ideologically on the wrong side of the argument.

Their traditional support for deregulation and free markets – and traditional opposition to the role of the state – is now looking increasingly at odds with the new political and economic realities.

They also seem confused as to which way to turn. For instance, they were against the nationalisation of Northern Rock, but in the case of Bradford and Bingley this week, they were rather unconvincingly in favour.

And if Mr Cameron has not been aided by events in the financial world, neither has he been helped by much else that has been going on politically over the past 48 hours.

We began this conference season with poor Nick Clegg trying to get a look-in amidst the financial turmoil, and we end it with the Tories too being overshadowed by happenings elsewhere.

First, there was the resignation on Thursday of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair at the instigation of London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Although Sir Ian’s demise was long overdue, the bull-in-a-china-shop fashion in which Mr Johnson handled this will, in my view, come back to haunt him.

Then yesterday we had Mr Brown’s long-awaited reshuffle – and the sensational return of former Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson for a third spell in the Cabinet.

In a sense, justice has been finally done. Mr Mandelson was forced to quit the Cabinet in 2001 after the Hinduja passport affair despite having done absolutely nothing wrong.

There is no doubting it is a massive coup for Mr Brown as he seeks to unite his fractious party and imbue it with an “all hands to the pump” mentality as it seeks that elusive fourth term.

He was rebuffed by Darlington MP Alan Milburn, rubbished by former Home Secretary Charles Clarke - but blow me if he hasn’t gone and landed the biggest Blairite of them all.

Labour Kremlinologists will immediately see the significance of Mr Mandelson rejoining the Cabinet at the same time as his old rival, Newcastle East MP Nick Brown, who returns as chief whip.

The briefing war between the Blair-Brown camps in the ’94 leadership battle was largely played out between these two, and this will be seen in the PLP as an attempt finally to put the old feud to bed.

The return of Mr Mandelson undoubtedly represents the biggest gamble of Mr Brown’s career. If he is forced out a third time, the Prime Minister’s judgement will be shot to pieces.

But if on the other hand Mr Mandelson can bring to the Brown administration the same strategic brilliance he displayed in the early years of Tony Blair’s leadership, it will have been a gamble worth taking.

As for Mr Cameron, he is now being forced to face up to an uncomfortable truth about opposition – that while oppositions merely talk, governments can do.

Over the past few weeks, Mr Brown has used the power of incumbency, the power to shape events rather than be blown about by them, to absolutely maximum effect.

A lot of very clever and influential people thought that the Prime Minister might not survive this conference season, but against the odds he has come out of it far stronger than when he went in.

One thing is absolutely certain. If Mr Brown is going down, he is certainly not doing so without a fight.

Plotters routed

We were told that seven ministers were going to resign, that Ruth Kelly's was just the first in a series of departures which would deliver a crushing blow to the Prime Minister's authority. We were told that others, including John Hutton, would refuse to serve or be moved. And today, Gordon Brown has stuck a triumphant two fingers up to the lot of them.

The key to this reshuffle, for Gordon, was to find a way of demonstrating that he can unite the Labour Party and thereby isolating the rebels. Today he has done that - and then some.

Gordon's tactic from the start was to find a senior Blairite who would be prepared to join his team and help heal the party's wounds. Alan Milburn rebuffed him, while Charles Clarke simply rubbished him, but what did Gordon do? He recruited the archest Blairite of them all.

As a demonstration of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again" it could scarcely be bettered. If he'd persuaded Mr Tony himself to come back as Foreign Secretary, then maybe - but getting Peter Mandelson on board as Business Secretary was surely the next best thing.

The message to the rebels is unmistakable. To paraphrase Chapter Eight of the Book of Romans - if Mandy Mandelson, Maggie Beckett, Dolly Draper, Ali Campbell and yes, John Hutton are all for me, then who can be against me?

In other words, relative political nonentities such as Joan Ryan, Graham Stringer and Siobhain McDisloyal have been put very firmly in their place.

It's not perfect. I'd like to have seen Jon Cruddas given the housing job, while I think the very talented and articulate Shaun Woodward is wasted at Northern Ireland - and you don't often see those two guys praised in the same sentence.

But that apart, this is a cracking reshuffle which demonstrates Brown using the power of incumbency to absolute maximum effect to make both the Tories and the rebels look irrelevant. The public loves a fighter, and Brown is fighting, fighting and fighting again to save the party he loves.

You can read more of my thoughts on the past week in politics - and where it leaves David Cameron - in my Journal column which will be posted here tomorrow as usual.

Reshuffle kremlinology

One for Labour kremlinologists, this, but the return of Peter Mandelson and Nick Brown to the Cabinet at the same time is significant. These two were the main protagonists in the briefing war that was fought between the Blair-Brown camps in the ‘94 leadership battle and afterwards. Bringing them both back into the Cabinet together could be seen as the ultimate healing gesture by Gordon - which is I suspect how it will be seen within the PLP.

More on the reshuffle later, and in tomorrow's Journal column.

Digital Team of the Year

I rarely blog about work stuff, but last night our company, Associated Northcliffe Digital, was named Digital Team of the Year at the Newspaper Society Digital Media and Advertising Awards. Its stable included the memorial site Lasting Tribute which I helped launch last year, green platform Big Green Switch, and my current baby, journalism jobs and news site HoldtheFrontPage.

Since our original entry went in, these sites have been split between different parts of the business so the team no longer exists in the same form, but I'm sure the good work will go on. Congratulations all.

More on this (with pics) from work colleagues and fellow bloggers Lactose and Alex.

Ever the buffoon

It is of course right that Sir Ian Blair is to stand down as Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He arguably should have done so in July 2005 as soon as it became clear that his force had fired seven bullets into the head of an innocent man and that he had given a misleading account of the circumstances surrounding it. He should certainly have done so last November when the force was found guilty of health and safety offences in relation to the said shooting.

But the circumstances of Sir Ian's resignation yesterday - effectively sacked by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson on his first day as chairman of the police authority - raises issues not just about Sir Ian's fitness for the job of Commissioner, but also about Mr Johnson's fitness for the job of Mayor.

As the increasingly impressive Jacqui Smith pointed out in a Question Time performance of cool, controlled anger, there is a clear procedure in place for the removal of a Commissioner involving the police authority - not just its chairman - making a recommendation to that effect to the Home Secretary.

By failing to follow this procedure, and behaving instead like a tinpot dictator, Mr Johnson has not only managed the considerable feat of inducing sympathy for Sir Ian Blair, he has demonstrated once again his deep and ineradicable buffoonery.

Limited reshuffle predictions

So Gordon Brown is enjoying a new surge in popularity and there won't be a big reshuffle after all. How times change.

One is reminded of Harold Macmillan's famous saying about "Events, dear boy, events." Of course when he said it, he was referring to the dangers that can beset a government and blow it off course, but the past couple of weeks have shown that "events" can sometimes come to a government's rescue, too.

And so to the reshuffle. Instead of fantasising about replacing Alistair Darling with Ed Balls - and let's be thankful for Labour's sake that it remained in the realms of fantasy - Mr Brown is instead to carry out some limited changes to the lower reaches of his Cabinet.

Here are three potential scenarios, depending on how "limited" Mr Brown wants to be.

The not-very-limited-at-all reshuffle

Tony McNulty to become Transport Secretary
Jim Murphy to become Nations and Regions Secretary
Shaun Woodward to become Minister for the Cabinet Office
Ed Miliband to become Business Secretary
John Hutton to become Defence Secretary
Nick Brown to become Chief Whip
Paul Murphy, Des Browne, Geoff Hoon and Ruth Kelly to leave the government

The fairly limited reshuffle

Ed Miliband to become Transport Secretary
Paul Murphy to become Nations and Regions Secretary
Shaun Woodward to become Minister for the Cabinet Office
Ruth Kelly to leave the government

The extremely limited reshuffle

Tony McNulty to become Transport Secretary
Ruth Kelly to leave the government

October 3 Debrief: Well, I was right about, Hutton, Nick Brown and Des Browne, wrong about everyone else. C'est la vie.

Is this one reason to vote Tory?

Setting tribalism aside for a moment, I have to applaud the Tories for thinking outside the box and refusing to go along with the conventional wisdom on airport expansion. Instead of a third runway at Heathrow, they plan to build a new high speed rail link to the Midlands and the North.

To hear the Conservatives actually advocating major investment in (a) rail infrastructure, and (b) the North of England was a real breath of fresh air and shows how much politics has been turned on its head since the 1980s and 1990s when both would have been anathema. Much more of this sort of thing and I might even vote for them.

My only criticism of the plan was that the Tories' proposed new high-speed rail route appears to run only from London to Birmingham to Manchester to Leeds. What about Newcastle, Dave?

Conference cartoon

Last week's story about the Tory conference delegates being offered discount vouchers for a lap-dancing club in Birmingham inspired this Slob cartoon to mark their annual conference in the second city.

Hopefully I'll get around to some serious analysis of the Tory gathering at some point this week...

A lot done, a lot still to do

Gordon Brown's fightback may have begun in Manchester on Tuesday - but there is still a very long way to go. Here's my column from today's Newcastle Journal.

***

There are some Labour conference speeches that literally changed history. Tony Blair’s ditching of Clause IV in 1994. Neil Kinnock’s murderous assault on Militant in 1985. Nye Bevan’s stand against unilateralism in 1957.

Gordon Brown has never been in the Blair, Kinnock or Bevan class as an orator. His talents as a platform speaker have never been more than slightly on the better side of workmanlike.

Yet this week, our beleaguered Prime Minister gave himself a fighting chance of making what would truly be a history-making return from the ranks of the political walking dead.

Sure, he is not yet even close to being out of the woods. But in Manchester on Tuesday, he finally delivered the speech that his admirers have wanted to hear him make ever since he took over as Labour leader 15 months ago.

During the Blair years, we became accustomed to regarding the Labour Party as a devastatingly successful electoral machine, but one that seemed devoid of any real values.

The party appeared to have moved a long, long way from Harold Wilson’s famous description of it as “a moral crusade or nothing.”

Mr Brown has not restored that lost moral compass at a stroke. Mere words alone cannot accomplish that.

But on Tuesday, in setting out his vision of the “fair society,” he finally reminded his party why it exists.

In a way, events have moved in his favour. The global financial meltdown has finally demonstrated the limits of free-market capitalism and made the idea of state intervention fashionable again.

As one commentator put it: “Labour folk have seized on the collapse and bailout of the big banks as evidence that the neo-liberal era is over.”

Hence it is made easier for Mr Brown to say on Tuesday that his “new settlement for new times” must be “a settlement where both markets and governments are seen to be the servants of the people, not their masters.”

To the biggest cheers of the day he added: “Just as those who supported the dogma of big government were proved wrong, so too those who argue for the dogma of unbridled market forces have been proved wrong.”

But though this was duly lapped up by the faithful, Mr Brown didn’t really get into his stride until he started to talk about his “fairness agenda” – the real emotional core of Tuesday’s address.

“Why do we always strive for fairness? Not because it makes good soundbites. Not because it gives good photo opportunities. Not because it makes for good PR. No. We do it because fairness is in our DNA,” he said.

“It's who we are - and what we're for. It's why Labour exists. It's our first instinct, the soul of our party. It's why when things get tough, we get tougher."

Here, at last, was some recognition that the Labour Party does indeed have a higher purpose than simply staying in power.

And yet., and yet……the towering question that, for me, hangs over this week’s events in Manchester is why Mr Brown could not have made that speech 12 months ago.

Had he chosen to set out his vision then, rather than winding-up the Tories about an early election, it is at least arguable that the collapse in public support for him over the past year would not have happened.

As it is, Mr Brown has done no more than buy himself a bit more time this week in which to try to turn a desperate political situation around.

The early signs are good – one poll showed a 7pc bounce for Labour in the wake of the speech – but the rhetoric must now be backed up with more action if the momentum is to be maintained.

Mr Brown can at least reassure himself that his main rival, Foreign Secretary and South Shields MP David Miliband, had an uncommonly bad week.

He found himself on the wrong end of the Prime Minister’s clever two-in-one put-down "this is no time for a novice” – a line which had the brutal touch of Alastair Campbell written all over it.

Mr Miliband also got into hot water by being overheard comparing himself to the erstwhile Tory leadership pretender, Michael Heseltine.

Wrong, David. Michael Heseltine was a man of courage who resigned from a government on a point of principle and later openly challenged the most powerful Prime Minister of modern times.

Some of the shine was inevitably knocked off the Prime Minister’s speech by the 3am news of Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly’s resignation the following morning, but like so much in politics, this turned out to be cock-up rather than conspiracy.

Dark rumours had initially swirled around Manchester that Ms Kelly was part of a nefarious Blairite plot to undermine Mr Brown in his moment of triumph.

The truth was rather more prosaic. It appears that a Downing Street press officer got into a rather heavy session with some journalists in a hotel bar and became a trifle indiscreet.

It shows that things haven’t changed all that much in the five years since I last attended a party conference as Journal political editor.

For Mr Brown, the prospect of another humiliating by-election defeat, in Glenrothes in early November, still hangs over him like a sword of Damocles

The reshuffle, too, looks ever more problematical. Rumours persist that a cadre of ministers will refuse to be moved or even refuse to serve in a clear challenge to Mr Brown’s authority.

Over him, too, hangs the twin spectres of Sir Menzies Campbell in 2007 and Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, two leaders who got rapturous receptions from their party conferences yet were gone within weeks.

The Prime Minister made a great speech on Tuesday. But he has a long way to go before he alters what still seems to be the inevitable tide of history.

Ruth's choice **updated**

I know not why Ruth Kelly has announced her intention to resign from the Cabinet. Some will probably be prepared to take her assertion that she needs to spend more time with her family at face value. Others will hint that she is part of the plot to undermine the Prime Minister. My view, for what it's worth, is that it probably has something to do with the ongoing row within the government over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, as some Labour conference sources have apparently already suggested.**

If this is the case, then I applaud Ruth for taking an honourable course in relation to a truly baleful piece of legislation. If more ministers are indeed considering resigning as we keep being told, then they should perhaps consider resigning over this rather than in protest at Gordon's leadership.

The HFE Bill was wrong on three counts - wrong to sanction to use of hybrid-human embryos when there is no proven scentific need to do so, wrong to further undermine the position of fathers in today's society by removing the legal requirement for doctors prescribing IVF treatment to take account of a child's need for one, and wrong not to take the opportunity to adjust the time-limit for abortion to take account of medical advances which in exceptional circumstances can allow babies born at 22, 23 or 24 weeks to survive.

Ruth's decision has focused my thoughts on a long-standing personal dilemma of my own in relation to the same issue, to which I will return shortly.

** Thursday 25 Sept update: Apparently it was none of these things. It was, in a word - as they say by way of explanation for the multifarious "big cat" stories that appear here in Derbyshire from time to time - alcohol.

The lost moral compass restored

Gordon Brown has always been a man with a huge sense of Labour history. And while his speech to the party's conference today was certainly focused on the present and future, it was also deeply rooted in the history of the party.

Harold Wilson used to say the Labour Party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. During the Tony Blair years, it was pretty clear that it had become nothing. Yet in one passage of today's speech, Mr Brown restored the moral purpose that has been missing from the party for so long.

"And why do we always strive for fairness? Not because it makes good soundbites. Not because it gives good photo opportunities. Not because it makes for good PR. No. We do it because fairness is in our DNA. It's who we are - and what we're for. It's why Labour exists. It's our first instinct, the soul of our party. It's why when things get tough, we get tougher."

Although the pundits will doubtless focus on his clever two-in-one put-down of the two Davids - "This is no time for a novice" - this, for me, was the key message of the speech, a reminder to the country that this party is about more than simply a desire to stay in power for as long as possible.

The message was underlined, near the very end of the speech, by Mr Brown's use of the phrase "United we are a great movement."

The words "This Great Movement Of Ours" or "TGMOO" used to be practically obligatory in Labour leader's speeches in the pre-Blair days, but references to Labour as a "movement" went dramatically out of fashion during the NuLab era, presumably because, like "moral crusade," the word implies some higher purpose. The idealists among us will be pleased to see it back again.

The good old, bad old days...

If like me you miss the good old, bad old days when Labour conferences were effectively pitched battles between the leadership on the platform and the delegates on the floor, you'll have enjoyed this bit of reminiscing today from Neil Kinnock and James Naughtie. There's an excerpt from Kinnock's great Bournemouth '85 speech at 6.03 minutes in.

Where are they now No 4

The latest edition of Total Politics is now in circulation together with the fourth instalment of my "Where Are They Now?" series of columns. This one focuses on the Liberal Democrat David Bellotti who won one of the most significant by-elections in modern times in 1990, but whose newsworthiness lay less in his rather inconsequential political career and more in having been one of the worst football club proprietors in the history of the game.

How the Prawn Cocktail Offensive skewered New Labour

What with global economic meltdown and the ongoing crisis over Gordon Brown's leadership, poor Nick Clegg found himself struggling for attention this week. Here's today's column from the Newcastle Journal.

***

There is an old and venerable tradition in this column, going back a decade or more, that each September the Liberal Democrats get an annual opportunity to bask in the Linford, er, spotlight.

It’s only fair, after all, that a party that is invariably subjected to the third-party squeeze should have at least once chance each year to get its message across.

They certainly need it, with one poll this week showing the party’s share of the vote down to 12pc – its lowest standing since the early days of Paddy Ashdown’s leadership.

Two changes of leader since 2005 have not altered the party’s fundamental problem: that the Tory revival under David Cameron looks set to deprive it of most of its MPs in the South and West, with few corresponding gains from Labour in the North.

New-ish leader Nick Clegg did at least demonstrate this week that, like Mr Cameron, he too can make a speech without notes, even if he needed the help of a set of giant autocues all around the conference hall in Bournemouth.

And he did demonstrate a determination to reach out to voters on both right and left, in a tactically clever speech that managed to be both redistributionist and tax-cutting.

But sorry chaps, it is impossible, for this year at least, for me to devote to your conference the level of attention to which you have become accustomed in previous years.

In a week which saw both continuing global economic meltdown and the beginnings of a concrete challenge to Gordon Brown’s leadership, the events in Bournemouth were no more than a sideshow.

It was a desperate, desperate week for the Prime Minister. As he battles to save his premiership, the one thing he needed above all was a trouble-free run-in to his party’s conference.

But his hopes of presiding over a moreorless united gathering in Manchester were shot to pieces last Friday evening when junior whip Siobhain McDonough went public with her call for a leadership challenge.

Ms McDonough was followed out of the door by party vice-chair Joan Ryan and special envoy Barry Gardiner, while another 12 MPs put their name to a barely-coded call for leadership change.

Finally, on Tuesday, came the resignation of David Cairns, Minister of State at the Scotland Office and the most senior figure so far to put his head above the parapet.

The rebels are as yet small in number. But it’s not about numbers so much as momentum, and the momentum is with the rebels.
Thus far, the revolt has spread from a couple of obscure backbenchers to former cabinet ministers to the whips office to the parliamentary private secretaries and finally to a minister of state.

It is surely now only a matter of time before it spreads to the Cabinet, with Barrow MP and Business Secretary John Hutton the overwhelming favourite to wield the knife.

The fact that Mr Hutton could not bring himself to condemn those MPs who have called for a leadership challenge this week was surely significant.

I myself have thought it likely for some time that Mr Brown would face a challenge this autumn, and before the recess, I argued on these pages that he probably should face one.

That said, it would have made a certain amount of sense for the rebels to hear what Mr Brown had to say in his conference speech before rushing to judgement about his prospects.

What the rebels are effectively saying is that there is nothing he can possibly say in his speech on Monday that can make any difference to his public standing – which is a somewhat crass position to adopt.

They may well be right – but if so, why not wait until after the speech before speaking out? It would, after all, only serve to make their argument that much stronger.

The one thing, it seems, that might rescue Mr Brown, is the continuing economic turmoil resulting from the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the near-collapse of HBOS.

It certainly seems to have removed the immediate threat. As Harriet Harman said on Question Time, holding a leadership contest while people are worried about their jobs and savings would make little sense to the public.

It is a seductively persuasive argument, but the events of the past week have not removed the Prime Minister’s underlying political weakness. Indeed, if anything, they have intensified it.

What we are actually seeing is the old argument about Mr Brown being the “best person” to deal with economic turmoil being turned on its head. Increasingly, people are in fact blaming him for the mess.

The Prime Minister’s announcement on Thursday about “cleaning up the city” is a case in point. If it needs “cleaning up” now, what on earth was Mr Brown doing as Chancellor for 10 years to allow it get in such a state?

The truth is, New Labour made a strategic decision a decade and a half ago that it needed to win the support of big business in order to demonstrate its credibility as a party of government.

It was once known as the Prawn Cocktail offensive - in the days when City executives still ate the stuff. Nowadays it would probably be called the Seared Scallops offensive instead.

Either way, the upshot was that when Labour came to power, it proceeded to apply a light-touch regulatory framework that was never likely to prevent a credit-fuelled boom getting out of hand.

To my mind, Mr Brown will now forever be haunted by the phrase which, during the early years of his Chancellorship, he made his own: “No return to Tory boom and bust.”

Back in the days when “Prudence” ruled the roost at No 11, he was as good as his word – but eventually, he allowed his vanity – or was it just ambition? – to get the better of him.

Like Anthony Barber and Nigel Lawson before him, Mr Brown found the temptation to bask in the reflected glory of economic good times too hard to resist.

Now, as Prime Minister, he is reaping the whirlwind – and how.

Stating the obvious

Alan Milburn says that Labour must bring forward a message of "change" if the party is to win the next election. John Prescott says that in order to win the party needs to remain united.

They may be coming at the situation facing the party from different directions, but both are right.

There can be no happy outcome

Firstly, I apologise for the lack of blogging during the past few days. Partly it's down to other commitments, but also it's down a feeling of deep despair about the current state of politics and the apparent sad denouement to which the Gordon Brown administration appears to be heading.

Today has seen the resignation of David Cairns and by all accounts two more Ministers of State are likely to follow. Take your pick from Tony McNulty, David Hanson, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Kim Howells, Pat McFadden, Bill Rammell and Ben Bradshaw. It could be any of them, though Byrne would probably be the most damaging.

I still think these are essentially too disparate a group of people to be acting as part of some dark plot being co-ordinated behind the scenes by John Reid or even by Tony Blair as some bloggers have sought to suggest. But in that probably lies their strength.

If this was a Blairite plot, I think the charge would have stuck by now, and the party rallied much more strongly behind Gordon. The right-wing bloggers who delight in taunting Brown may find it hard to believe, but the very last thing the Labour Party wants - or for that matter needs - is a return to Blairism.

I myself thought it likely for some time that Gordon would face a leadership challenge this autumn, and before the recess, I argued that he probably should face one, on the grounds that he has failed to restore Labour's lost moral compass as his supporters hoped.

However he still had a few cards left to play - the September relaunch, the reshuffle, the conference speech, and finally the electoral test offered by the Glenrothes by-election. In my view, he should have been allowed to play those cards before the party was forced to reach a conclusion about whether his leadership should continue.

As it is, I think the failure of the party to remain united at this critical time has made it moreorless inevitable that there can be no happy outcome for Mr Brown. In other words, the rebels have created for the party a self-fullfilling prophecy - which no doubt was the intention of some of them.

It's not about numbers - remember that Chamberlain was never defeated in the Commons in 1940 - it's about momentum. And the political narrative created by these sackings and resignations will ultimately ensure that all roads conspire towards one end.

But what most deeply depresses me about all this is not the fact that a politician I still admire has failed to live up to the high hopes invested in him. It is the fact that politics is increasingly starting to resemble a reality TV show.

Political leaders who once might have expected to be around for a generation as Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher were, or going further back, for several generations in the case of Gladstone and Churchill, now have a shelf-life of only a few years before an increasingly superficial electorate becomes bored of them.

Over the past 11 years, the Tories have had five leaders, the Liberal Democrats four, and by the end of the year Labour will possibly have had three, but I don't think this rapid turnover is because the quality of political leadership is declining. It is rather a by-product of a national obsession with celebrity which in turn demands a style of political leadership based on glitz and "personality" rather than solid achievement.

For me, the accession of Gordon Brown represented a chance to put an end to all this rubbish. The most baleful legacy of his apparent failure will be to condemn the United Kingdom to twenty or thirty years of showbiz politics.

The week ahead in view

This week the blog welcomes a new regular feature courtesy of budding cartoonist Slob. Not surprisingly his first contribution focuses on Nick Cleggover and the Lib Dem conference which began yesterday.

The vision comes into view

Is the Brown government finally starting to set out a distinctive political agenda? Here's my column from today's Newcastle Journal.

***

When he stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister less than 15 months ago, Gordon Brown told us his would be “a new government with new priorities.”

Ever since then, though, the country has waited in vain for some demonstration of how exactly he planned to renew the government, and how its priorities would be different.

Most people, including myself, have moreorless given up hope of hearing the answer, concluding that Mr Brown’s administration has no real purpose beyond staying in power as long as possible.

But this week, at five minutes to midnight in political terms, some straws in the wind began to emerge. Could Gordon, at long last, be about to set out his long-awaited “vision?”

What kicked it all off was an article in the obscure and normally uncontroversial Parliamentary Monitor, an in-house Commons magazine read exclusively by MPs, their staff, and people who attend party conferences.

Among other things, Mr Brown said it was time to “adapt and rethink New Labour policy” and admitted that something needed to be done to kick-start social mobility.

The Prime Minister’s spin doctors attempted to play down the significance of those words, but in a speech to the TUC the following day, his deputy Harriet Harman went much further.

Her address, saying the government needed to start tackling the inequality of opportunity between "rich and poor" and "north and south” had the Tories foaming at the mouth about a new “class war.”

So what’s happening? Well, it was understandable that Team Brown would try to make light of it all.

The worst thing that could happen, going in to what really is a make-or-break conference season for the Prime Minister, is for expectations about his big speech the week after next to get out of hand.

But nevertheless, I think we are finally seeing the genesis of a distinctive Brown agenda, although whether it will do much to rescue his political fortunes is very open to doubt.

Labour will probably call it “fairness first.” The Tories will brand it a “lurch to the left.” Either way, it is, at last, authentic Gordon.

Mr Brown’s comments in the Monitor contained more clues as to what he’s going to say in Manchester a week on Monday than the average Agatha Christie novel.

“We need to be honest with ourselves: while poverty has been reduced and the rise in inequality halted, social mobility has not improved in Britain as we would have wanted,” he wrote.

"A child's social class background at birth is still the best predictor of how well he or she will do at school and later on in life. Our ambitions for a fairer Britain cannot be satisfied in the face of these injustices."

“At our conference in Manchester and in the weeks that follow, I will set out how I – and our party, and our government, and our country – must rise to conquer those challenges and to ensure fairness for all.”

The theme was picked up by Ms Harman on Wednesday when she said she wanted everyone to "get a fair crack of the whip" whatever their "socio-economic class.”

It was entirely predictable that the Tories would cry “class war!” with Shadow Commons Leader Teresa May saying focusing on class and background was "outdated and distracts from the real issues.”

If Britain was a genuinely classless society, she would be right. But whereas class distinctions did begin to blur in the 70s and 80s, the whole point about social mobility is that it has since ground to a halt.

Ms Harman is doing no more than point out a very obvious truth, albeit one that, Darlington MP Alan Milburn aside, New Labour has refused to talk about for most of the past decade.

All of this ought to be music to the ears of Labour supporters in the North-East – assuming they are still listening, that is.

Narrowing the gap in economic growth rates between the North and South used to be an explicit aim of government policy, but it was quietly dropped once they realised how difficult it would be – and that it would involve spending large amounts of money in the poorer regions.

These days, it is rare to find explicit mention of the North-South divide in Labour ministerial speeches, but Ms Harman appears to have bucked that depressing trend.

Sure, it needs to be backed up by some action – but if it’s a sign that regional inequalities are back on the government’s radar, then it’s certainly a start.

The wider politics of all this are unclear. The Tories will doubtless try to characterise it as a “core vote strategy” on Labour’s part, claiming they are vacating the much-prized “political centre ground.”

But to my mind, that analysis falls into the Blairite trap of arguing that any departure from the “Middle England” agenda of the previous Prime Minister spells electoral doom for Labour.

What Messrs Brown and Harman are saying is no more than what used to be known as good old-fashioned “One Nation” politics – the idea that economic and social divisions are quite simply bad for the country as a whole.

I think Mr Brown is quite capable of making a reasoned case for this without looking like some throwback to the 1970s Trotskyist left.

As I have written before, the growth in inequality that has occurred under a party whose whole raison d’etre was to help the worst-off is the biggest single blot on Labour’s record over the past 11 years.

If they can start to turn that around in their 12th and 13th years in office, they will at least have done something to redeem themselves.

It is unlikely, if we’re honest, to alter the result of the next election on its own. But if Labour is destined to lose, the party will at least leave office with its head held higher.

The “fairness agenda” may not gain Mr Brown more support. What it will do is gain him more respect.

Siobhain McDisloyal

I have been as critical as anyone of Gordon Brown's failure over the past 15 months to set out what 12 Labour MPs* writing in Progress magazine term "a convincing narrative." But as I have written in my Newcastle Journal column to be published tomorrow, the Prime Minister - and Harriet Harman - have had some good things to say this week about tackling inequality and social mobility, and the emergence of a "fairness agenda" over the past week offered some small hope that this long-awaited narrative had finally started to take shape.

So to my mind, Siobhain McDonagh's call for a leadership challenge to Mr Brown today is singularly ill-timed and presents a gift-horse to the Tories at the start of a critical conference season for Labour.

If the Prime Minister had hoped to mount an effective fightback over the next two weeks, based around some of the ideas he and his deputy have been airing this week, then Ms McDonagh's intervention this afternoon has probably killed it. Instead, the Labour conference in Manchester looks set to be dominated by yet more speculation about the leadership.

I hope she is bloody proud of herself.

* For the record: Janet Anderson, Karen Buck, Patricia Hewitt, George Howarth, Eric Joyce, Sally Keeble, Stephen Ladyman, Martin Linton, Shona McIsaac, Margaret Moran, Tom Levitt, and Paddy Tipping. I would say that only three of these (Anderson, Howarth and Joyce) are out-and-out Blairite loyalists, so speculation that they are part of a concerted Blairite plot is, in my view, probably misguided.

Spot on, Gordon

I generally think Gordon Brown should steer clear of involving himself in English sporting matters. Although I am sure it is well-intended, the public seem to think it's rather insincere and I am not at all sure that the players appreciate it either.

I remember feeling desperately sorry for the Prime Minister when he attempted to shake hands with one of the England rugby team during last year's World Cup and was ignored. Although in my view the player in question displayed the height of rudeness, the truth is Brown would have been well-advised not to have put himself in that situation.

All that said, however, it is very hard to disagree with Brown's comments on the non-availability of terrestrial highlights of last night's England-Croatia game, in which the national side suddenly appeared to rediscover its self-confidence after months of dire performances.

Seven years ago, I watched England and Michael Owen demolish Germany 5-1 with Gill and an old university mate who was staying the night at our old house - a truly memorable evening. Last night, when we should have been watching England and Theo Walcott demolish Croatia, we were forced to make do with Ainsley Harriott on "Who Do You Think You Are?" instead. No disrespect to Ainsley, whose revelations about being descended from a white slave owner were indeed shocking and compelling, but it didn't quite compare.

Pay-TV station Setanta, which now inexplicably owns the rights to England matches despite having an audience of little over 1m, had apparently agreed beforehand that it would show highlights on its free-to-air channel. But they then went on to take the complete piss by showing highlights of the Wales and Scotland games first, and not showing the England highlights until well gone midnight.

Unfortunately, we sold the pass on "Crown Jewels" sporting events such as World Cup matches being shown on terrestrial years back, largely as a result of pressure from Rupert Murdoch. Highlights are a different matter though. It should not be beyond the power of the regulators to ensure they are shown the same day.

As for England's great performance, and today's coverage of it in the national press, I think I can feel a Private Eye apology coming on....

"This newspaper, in common with all other newspapers, may have given the impression that Fabio Capello is a hapless buffoon who was leading English football into a new dark age. We now realise that Mr Capello is in fact a managerial genius who is worth every penny of his zillion-pound salary and is certain to win us the World Cup in 2010."

Fear of the fear of crime

I don't often use this blog to promote my current day-time interest HoldtheFrontPage but this story which we ran today courtesy of the Oxford Mail really touched a nerve with me, as well as raising a wider political question.

I too was one of that generation of local newspaper reporters who would spend literally hours each week talking to local police sergeants and inspectors on the phone or sometimes even in person as they reeled off scores of local misdemeanours for use in the paper.

Since the "professionalisation" of police press offices began in the mid-90s, that source of information has dried up, with the Mail's investigation revealing that just 22 out of more than 6,000 reported crimes during July were being passed on to reporters.

At first, I assumed this was sheer laziness on the part of police PROs who thought they had bigger fish to fry. In fact it seems it's part of a deliberate police spin operation to reduce the fear of crime by not telling the public it is happening.

This of course has wider political implications. If all the crime that takes place in any local area was reported in the local paper, as it used to be, would not the government be coming under greater pressure to do something about it than is currently the case?

It's probably beyond the scope of the Oxford Mail's investigation, but it does beg the question whether in this case the police were acting on their own initiative, or whether they were themselves under pressure to reduce the fear of crime for political reasons.

Black hole humour

I didn't really think the world would end when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva this morning, but I did enjoy this story from the inimitable Daily Mash.

Scientists believe they will have less than four seconds to spot the mysterious Higgs Boson particle before their bodies explode, atom by atom. A black hole will open up in what used to be Geneva, spreading rapidly across Europe, angrily devouring Belgium and reaching the outer London boroughs by 3pm.

Cambridge physicist Dr Tom Logan, explained: "At this point you will be stretched out slowly until you resemble a very thin piece of spaghetti about 250,000 miles long. It will hurt like fuck."