A Milburn warning and a leadership challenge

Former Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn returns to the fore in the Indy this morning.

The arch Blairite ,never considered a fan of the Prime Minister,warns the party not to shift left and says

the old top-down approach to governance will no longer work". He believes the Prime Minister's focus on the economy has left a dangerous void on other domestic policy issues, and he predicts that Labour will lose the general election expected next year unless it develops a wide-ranging, forward-looking agenda

The attach comes as the Spectator's Matthew D'Acona will reveal today that Charles Clarke another former minister with scant regard for Brown is set to launch a leadership battle if as expected the party does badly in the Euro election next month.

The idea, is for a former Cabinet minister - "probably Charles Clarke" - to test the water and see if he can secure 30 or so signatures from Labour MPs. says D'ancona

Milburn for Chancellor?

This morning's front page of the Telegraph claims that David Miliband is already tauting for members of a future Miliband cabinet.The surprise is that it is former minister and ultra Blairite Alan Milburn.

The former health secretary who left the Blair cabinet to spend more time with his family is being seen as the next Chancellor.A critic of Brown,there have been rumoours that Gordon himself is looking to bring him back into the cabinet

Peter Hoskin writes of two potential problems for such an appointment

whilst Milburn is popular with the Blairites, he is anathema to the Brownites and to the left of the party (remember the unions' response when he was appointed as Labour's general election co-ordinator for 2005?).

and secondly

Milburn has been away from the political frontline for some time now. He was last a member of the Cabinet in 2005. Will the public be happy seeing him at the helm of the British economy, particularly when it's going through a particularly rocky period

But could this be the dream ticket for the party? Alan Johnson for Home Secretary perhaps?

Rumours of a putsch

Is there any truth in the rumour that Alan Milburn will attempt a Putsch after the expected Labour defeat in Crewe.

According to Mike Smithson who has his ear to the ground

Word reaches me that the former Health Secretary and fervent Blairite, Alan Milburn, is planning to mount a leadership bid to topple Gordon Brown in the aftermath of Labour’s likely heavy defeat in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election.
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this but it comes from somebody I trust who has very close links within the party. Clearly something is going on out there and this weekend would be the ideal time to strike.
Milburn, of course, has never been a friend of Gordon Brown and there were rumours during 2006 and 2007 that he was going run against Gordon to force a proper leadership election.

What the weeklies are saying

The Economist looks at Jack Straw's white paper on constitutional reform,

tinkering with its ancient and inscrutable constitution might not strike outsiders as a particular priority.

the bill is described as

Timid. A proposal that Parliament must vote on whether troops are committed to war is hardly radical: Mr Blair held a vote before the Iraq war and it would be politically difficult to go to war without one in future. Mr Straw held out the prospect of giving MPs greater say over public appointments and the date of general elections, but details are yet to emerge. Other ideas, such as restoring the right to protest outside Parliament and allowing the Union flag to be flown on government buildings at any time, are mostly symbolic.

Over at the Spectator,Alan Milburn gives his first interview since Gordon Brown moved into No 10

I thought the most helpful thing would be for me to keep quiet,’ ‘But now, I feel I’ve earned my passage. Let’s face it, there have been plenty of opportunities to rock the boat during the last few months

He agrees that Brown,although maybe too late has become a Blairite but

What Gordon needs to do when he talks about this “new politics” that places power in the hands of people, is to announce a policy that gives that huge symbolic lift.’

and his answer

by dramatically cutting the size of Whitehall. I would slash it over and above what is being done by a quarter.’

The New Statesman asks is Boris a fake?.Brian Cathcart tells us

a man with a lurid history of verbal incontinence is playing the 21st-century election game, with all its gaffe-traps and correctness tripwires - and he is winning.

Meanwhile at the Spectator David Selbourne writes

Britain has lost its identity and its sense of nation, The citizen is treated as a mere ‘consumer’, liberty reduced to the ‘freedom to choose’, politicians held in contempt and hostile forces such as Islamism appeased. The stakes could scarcely be higher.

In a must read article he says

A lot of this is owed to ‘Blairism’ and its corruptions of the body politic; much, too, to the previous Conservative period in office. The main parties, reduced in organisation and membership and with their inherited principles in dissolution, have themselves paid a high price in public recoil for what they have done to the country. Yet, compounding their misjudgments, each seeks the same chimerical ‘centre ground’ where stand the idols of Empowerment, Opportunity, Aspiration, Competition, Modernisation, Choice and so forth. It is the ground not of a Normandy beach but of a quagmire in Notting Hill.