What now for Alan Johnson?

I am one of the first to be glad that the government is now performing a U turn on the subject of ID cards,a scandalous waste of money introduced on the back of terrorism fears.

It was down to Alan Johnson in the poison chalice chair to make the announcement.Some may argue that this was Gordon Brown's way of enacting revenge on a potential competitor.

Mike Smithson writes that

Alan Johnson’s main claim to the leadership, beyond not actually being Gordon Brown, is that he is an honest man of the people. If this announcement is mere political posturing to make him more palatable to the civil liberties Left, whilst not addressing their core concerns, I suspect he will do his ambitions more harm than good.

adding that

I think Johnson needs to go further if he wants to gain political capital out of this. Abandoning the Identity Database for UK citizens would score him real points, and by (for example) making it purely a register of non-UK citizens resident in the UK he could paint it as an immigration issue, with the Tories and Lib Dems on what I would expect to be the less popular side.

Gordon survives for now

It appears that Gordon Brown with the help of humility for the time being at least.

He seems to have told his MP's that he will listen and learn yet the overwhelming reason is that there is no one with the courage to stand against him and a new leader would see an instant general election.

Those MP's trailing out of the meeting will be therefore shocked to see the latest Come Res poll in the Independent that suggests with Alan Johnson at the helm the party could compete against the Tories.

It's not online yet but the results show that

Alan Johnson could close the Tory-Labour opinion poll gap from 16% to 10% and deny David Cameron a working parliamentary majority.

Is the tide turning?

The results of the European elections will start coming in shortly but after his rousing speech to activists in East London this afternoon,he is in no mood to go.



Furthermore the BBC's Nick Robinson thinks that the tide may be turning.

According to Nick there are five reasons.

1.There is no sign of that list of rebel backbenchers

2.that James Purnell is not planning to do a Geoffrey Howe

3.Hazel Blears' resignation statement will focus on policy

4.Neither is Caroline Flint planning a resignation statement and

5.John Cruddas has stood up for him,

Unlike of course Lord Falcanor who on the BBC politics show says that the only way to achieve unity is for Brown to go.

But after this morning we know that Lord Mandelson is standing firmly at his side

Bring back Tony

There is an interesting article in the Mail on Sunday featuring some so called comment from Tony Blair about the current crisis.

According to Simon Walters he

believes Gordon Brown's political future is doomed because of 'the darkness in his heart' and his 'lies' - and feels Mr Brown has no one to blame but himself.

Of cause there is no way that these comments would have been said publically but the Mail says that

privately he shares the view held by Labour rebels that Mr Brown will lead the Party to a disastrous defeat at the next Election.

In fact Channel 4 news' poll reported yesterday that 53 per cent of Labour members think the party would be better off if Tony Blair was still leader.



I am pretty sure that many in the party will be regretting the events that tore down Blair and would be thinking that him still being in charge and with Brown coordinating the respoinse to the recession from No 11 things would be a lot brighter for the party.

It's happened but it is Purnell

So it has happened.

A cabinet minister has resigned tonight and has called on Gordon Brown to stand now.

The surprise is that the name is James Purnell.By all reports he has been buiding up to this for some time,was persuaded by cabinet colleagues that it wasn't a good idea but decided today that enough was enough.

What will happen now?

Well Brown has probably now been mortaly wounded.It is difficult to see how he can come back from this but it may well open the door for Alan Johnston to make a move now the contest is on the cards.

This is part of the letter that he sent

I owe it to our Party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more not less likely
That would be disastrous for our country. This moment calls for stronger regulation, an active state, better public services, an open democracy.
It calls for a government that measures itself by how it treats the poorest in society. Those are our values, not David Cameron's.
We therefore owe it to our country to give it a real choice. We need to show that we are prepared to fight to be a credible government and have the courage to offer an alternative future.

Meanwhile as this story moves along,there is a rumour that David Miliband may also go tomorrow,that's according to an unconfirmed report from the Spectator.

So bad so who would want to lead the party

Alex Barker over at the Westminster blog believes that for now the Prime Minister is safe

Earlier this evening, a despondent enemy of Gordon Brown explained to me why the prime minister’s position is safe.
Labour’s situation is so bad, it has left the rebels without a cause. There was hope last summer that new leadership could revive the party’s fortunes. Now not even the most zealous critic of Brown believes Labour can win a fourth term. You can see why someone would risk rebellion to lead Labour to victory. But which senior figure will lead a mutiny for the sake of damage limitation?

Sinister events in Westminster

Guido wonders who leaked the news of Jacqui Smith's departure to the media and speculates that there may be more to this than meets the eye

Are we just at the rolling cock-up stage of government? It is hard to see who on the government side benefits from leaking this now apart from a deliberate Machiavellian internal saboteur. Someone with skills in the dark arts of spin who might have decided it is time, for the sake of the survival of his beloved New Labour, to bring down the curtain on Gordon Brown. Jacqui exiting in a messy way puts the reshuffle speculation front and centre and adds to the sense of Brown’s government on the verge of collapse on the very eve of an election. It takes a crisis to precipitate a solution.

Back to reality for Labour

The past three weeks has seen a hiatus in what you would term real politics yet next week sees the European and local elections.

There is quite a remarkable leader in the Times this morning which suggests that Gordon Brown might have only days as Prime Minister.

A week today the country goes to the polls for European and local elections that will almost certainly result in an historic drubbing for Gordon Brown's Labour Party.

adding that

The likes of John Denham and Jack Straw, David Miliband and James Purnell, John Hutton and Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon and Alistair Darling must spend the next week asking themselves what they will do in the event of a shattering defeat.

For the paper the choice is clear.Either some must resign and probably trigger an leadership campaign which will be won by Alan Johnson or they close ranks around Brown on the basis that economic recovery will save him in 2010.

The question is now whether any of them is prepared to act. For a long while they have steadfastly maintained, at least in public, that the cost of removing the Prime Minister from office was greater than the benefit. Perhaps the verdict of the electorate will steel one or more of them to speak the truth about power.

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

The knives are out for Brown again

The last time he was under pressure,his handling of the banking crisis saved him but it is difficult to see how he is going to survive another attempt


More embarrassment for the premiership of Gordon Brown with MP Bob Marshall-Andrews telling the Evening Standard that

"We are inevitably going to lose the next general election. It is quite inevitable."

Marshall Andrews has always been seen as rather a maverick in the party and maybe the leadership will not be too concerned.

However more of the heavyweights are joining the cries.

Ken Livingstone today told LBC Radio that the Prime Minister was "doomed". "I wouldn't bet my own money on Labour winning. The thing that's a weakness for Brown is that all these people like Bob Marshall-Andrews, who said when [Brown] comes in he'll blossom, they're now saying that he's had it.

and Charles Clarke has just appeared on the BBC saying that

recent events have made him "ashamed" to be a Labour MP.

adding that he had

"worked half my life to get Labour into a position where it could be a good government and I do see that fading away".

I have a feeling that the consequences of the Gurkha vote are going to run and run and may well be the signal for another round of leadership speculation in the Labour party.

This post from Labour List maybe sums up the feeling from within

The Gurkha defeat doesn't make for pleasant reading for those of us who delight in irritating the rest of the blogosphere by supporting our Labour Government.

First - it's embarassing. Governments with majorities in excess of 60 should be able to muster the bodies to defeat any opposition motion - in fact, the last one lost was in 1978, when the government didn't have a working majority.
Secondly, the rebellion contains a lot of very moderate and respectable voices from our party. People like Andrew Smith, Keith Vaz and Stephen Pound are not rebels for all seasons: when they stand up and say that there's something wrong, they deserve fair hearing.
Thirdly, the sight of Cameron and Clegg standing together in the most literal sense outside of Parliament is the starkest sign yet of the crystalization of a political idea in the public mind: that the government is beleaguered, desparately unpopular, and is seemingly set upon certain courses that garner almost universal opposition.
Fourthly - and perhaps most importantly - it was entirely unnecessary. The government could easily have taken the opposite decision on the Gurkhas; in fact, I'm baffled as to why it didn't. There is no obvious and pressing reason why only a certain number of Gurkhas who retired before 1997 can settle in the UK, and I can't see what political or policy victory the government thought it could have made out of contending otherwise.

Where are the leaders? asks Richards

Steve Richards stirs up the Labour sucession battle in his column in the Independent this morning.

With Yvette Cooper rumoured to be being pushed to stand against any Harriet Harman move he points out that

Cooper is married to Ed Balls. Suddenly we have the prospect of husbands and wives along with brothers – the Milibands – battling it out in a contest of fraught emotional intensity. I am exhausted already. Goodness knows what it must be like as an aspiring candidate with close members of your family breathing down your neck.

However this early positioning could well be in vain as he says an election is at least a year away.

So much so that the real potential candidates have not surfaced yet,

Of the aspiring leaders, Ed Balls, is the only one who has played a major role in shaping economic policy, but that was behind the scenes. He remains a pivotal confidant on economic matters, but still below the radar.

Miliband was never after Brown's job

Whilst on the subject of challengers to the Prime Minister,the New Statesman this week interviews David Miliband currently on a fact finding tour of Afghanistan but last year propelled into the leadership speculation by his article in the Guardian.

The foreign secretary is

a politician of unusual integrity - and that can be part of his trouble. He believes that, in diplomacy, "you do not say one thing in private and another in public. You do not say one thing to one group and something else to another."

And this may have led to the events of last August when

A grave problem for him is that his high intelligence, and sarcastic wit, can be mistaken for arrogance.

Talking to Jason Cowley he maintains that he was not making a bid for the leadership

People were very worried. We'd just lost a by-election, and the whole party wanted the government to pull together and pull through. What I did was about cabinet ministers fulfilling their responsibility to speak for the whole government and to speak for the party.

Harman planning a cue

This morning's Independent claims that deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman is planning a strategy to take over from Gordon Brown when the Prime Minister is finally toppled.

According to an article by Nigel Morris, Deputy Political Editor

Last week Ms Harman launched an outspoken attack in a cabinet meeting on the culture of greed in the City, calling for a retrospective clawback of the bonuses paid to executives in banks bailed out by the taxpayer.

and he adds that

Her comments, which rapidly became public, put her at odds with colleagues who argued that bankers’ contracts could not be torn up and that such action would wreck Labour’s reputation for being business-friendly. It also went far beyond Mr Brown’s preference for a clamp down on future bonuses rather than those that have already been paid.

With a run of disastrous polls it is not sup rising that the senior members of the party are looking to a post election future.

It is becoming highly unlikely that the next Labour leader will be Prime Minister but the attractions of Harman playing the Michael Howard role must seem attractive to the party whilst new blood rises through the ranks

Oxford Reds

With many columnists writing over the weekend that last week's events marked the end of Labour,it wasn't long before the speculation starts over their new leader.

Mike Smithson ,as ever, is quick off the mark postulating that to shadow a new Oxford PM,the part will need one of their own.

Step forward three candidates,Ed Miliband,Ed Balls and James Purnell who all have attended that great institution.

As Mike points out

All three read the same degree, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, that David Cameron (Brasenose) did at Oxford and all three are said to be working hard building alliances within the party so that they can launch their bids when the vacancy occurs.

And that all Labour PM's who have commanded a large majority ie Blair and Atlee also attended.

Ummuna the next leader of the Labour party.

Interested? The New Statesman's Martin Bright certainly is as he writes about the Labour party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Streatham.

Aged 30,Chuka Ummuna,attended the After New Labour event which took place in London on Sunday.

Bright describes him as

an impressive lawyer who is already being talked up as Labour's Barack Obama and the party's next leader but one.

and

a bold young politician with an easy public presence. If he wins the Streatham seat he will be fast-tracked into what is still likely to be the shadow cabinet. He has none of the cautiousness that characterises the fortysomething generation that now dominates (numerically at least) the Brown government. He is no Obama yet. But he is prepared to depart from the current government line in a way that would simply not have been acceptable for a candidate in the buttoned-up Tony Blair era. He believes, for example, that there should be a higher top rate of tax for those earning more than £100,000 a year, and believes that the institution of Prime Minister's Questions should be abolished or reformed.

One for the future and one to watch

How to find 71 MP's

Sky News is reporting that a number of MP's have requested leadership nomination forms ahead of Labour's conference in Manchester in just over a week

Sky sources say the group of MPs are attempting to trigger a leadership contest against Gordon Brown.
This latest development is likely to renew speculation over Mr Brown's ability to lead his party.
To prompt a Labour leadership contest a prospective candidate would currently need 71 nominations at the party conference.

So the speculation will be are there 71 MP's willing to put their heads on the block.

Nick Robinson is not convinced though,writing befor this news broke he said that the

"centre of gravity moved in Gordon's favour

and that

MPs have come to realise, they say, that it's not Gordon Brown that's the problem but "the economy stupid" and he's the best man to sort it. In this respect, and this one only, the polls are helpful for Mr Brown. The public does not say it wants a change of Labour leader nor that the party's position would be improved if there was one.

Time for back me or sack me

Frankly, it is coming to the time when Labour needs to address the Gordon Brown problem whether to back him or sack him.Even the Tory leader has come to this conclusion interviewed in the Telegraph this morning.

So I say to the Labour Party, the Foreign Secretary and everyone included – make up your mind – back the guy or sack the guy. Behaving as you are for the moment is bad for the country.”

Andrew Rawnsley says that although the part is sick of him,they cannot find a Brutus and seemingly after Charles Clarke's intervention last week that seems the case.

One of the reasons why a Brutus cannot be found may be the fate of Brutus.For he was declared a murderer by the Emperor Octavian and after defeat at the second battle of Philipi he committed suicide.

Whatever happens the open warfare that has afflicted the Labour party must end quickly.Reports of fall outs between Balls and Miliband,the sniping of Darling and yesterday Harman are deflecting the party away form its task of governing the country.

Now it seems that it rests on his conference speech but as Rawnsley points out,

I doubt very much that it will be the speech of his life. There was nothing in his stolid address to Scottish business leaders last week that suggested Mr Brown has suddenly discovered the elixir of inspiration. He is 57. He has been thundering away at conferences for many years. He is neither going to forget how to deliver a platform speech nor is he going to learn how to make a sensationally better one.
He is unlikely to be catastrophically awful and is no more likely to be awesomely brilliant. He will do enough to get a ritual standing ovation from his party. He will not be able to deliver the transformative performance that is demanded if Labour is to have a hope of narrowing the 20-point poll advantage to the Conservatives.

So do we then wait until the possible disaster of the Glenroths by election?

Unfortunately as Rawnsley points out

Paralysed between fear of the consequences of moving against him and despair about carrying on with him, the Labour party is imprisoned in the worst of all worlds. It is clear that it ought to make a collective decision either to back its leader or to sack him. It is also clear that it is currently incapable of doing either.

"I couldn't imagine his timing was accidental"

An interesting post from Martin Bright over at the New Statesman.

He is talking about the article with Charles Clarke that has caused so much controversy this week.

He says of the article

We had a long-standing request with Mr Clarke for a piece about Labour's travails and he chose this moment to accept our offer. I shouldn't imagine his timing was accidental

. and of its content

His analysis of the uses and abuses of "Blairism" is sound. His description of the mood of the party is pretty accurate. But I would like to know what he means when he says that he and and others will not "permit" the disaster to happen. It also confirms we in my belief that Clarke and others who were sceptical about a Brown premiership should have put up a candidate last year.

First Darling now Harriet's on the offensive

Another remarkable intervention from a cabinet member this morning.A week after Alistair Darling's appearance in the Guardian,Harriet Harman pops up in the Times which reports that she

Ms Harman admits that the Government is suffering badly from the downturn. “When people feel that their lives are more of a struggle than they used to be, then that expresses itself in dissatisfaction with the Government

and continues

“The main reason why we are low in the polls is because people are facing difficult circumstances.” The Chancellor was, she believes, right to suggest that the global economic situation is worse than it has been for 60 years. “I could not disagree with anything that he said,” she said. “It is a very major external economic shock because of the coming together of the credit crunch and food and oil prices. We have got to act, and our actions have got to be particularly focused on those who cannot sit out the recession.”

She also adds as did Darling that the party has failed to get its mesaage across

“We have had to say something different from what we have been saying for the past ten years. We have had a message, which is, ‘Unemployment is getting lower, GDP is rising, you are continuing to feel that your prospects are sound' - and that last bit has changed. We need to have a different conversation with the country now.”

However one consoltain for Brown is that she thinks a new leader would be a distraction.
Some consulation you might feel in a week when the message again did not get across and the economic indicators continue to contradict his message.