Purnell's speechwriter pushed for trashing Brown

7:34pm

Not so long ago, James Purnell released a speech on Microsoft Word format. This excites Tory researchers, who inevitably get hold of it, as they can interrogate the document - look for any revisions and, of course, the author. The "author" of the Purnell speech was one Phil Collins, who used to do work for Tony Blair. The smarter Tories (and I include Purnell's shadow, Chris Grayling, amongst them) would have realised this is bad news. Collins is one of the more clued-up Labour people, who gets what Brown doesn't and can find a vocabulary to reach out to the people now deserting Labour in droves. So news that Collins has been sent packing, due to a disobliging (but entirely accurate) piece he wrote about Labour's current state of affairs, is truly news to cheer the Tories. The more distance Brown puts between his party and the ideas that won it three elections, the larger the Cameron majority will be.
 
PS I'm back from Afghanistan now, but not quite back in Britain. Will send that full report I promised soon!
 

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Drags on the ticket

6:14pm

The last couple of days have flagged up problems that are going to bedevil McCain and Obama respectively in the general election campaign.

McCain is going to have to run in the shadow of an extremely unpopular president from his own party. At every opportunity, the Democrats are going to try and tell people that a vote for McCain is a vote for a Bush third term. But McCain can’t jettison the President entirely as he needs Bush’s help to raise money and rally sections of the base of the Republican party that McCain can’t reach. McCain’s dilemma was highlighted when he and Bush raised money last night. His campaign only allowed him and the president to be seen together for about 90 seconds.

Obama’s biggest problem in the general is going to be avoided being pigeon-holed as outside the mainstream. One of the tools his opponents will use to do that is his church and his Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Obama likes to emphasise that Wright is his former pastor as he’s now retired. But his church is going to carry on causing trouble for him if last Sunday is anything to go by. Video shows Hillary Clinton being mocked from the pulpit and the preacher, who is white, railing against white feelings of entitlement and superiority.

The question is will McCain or Obama suffer more from these associations? My bet is that McCain will find it easier to escape Bush’s shadow. 

More on the US elections over on Americano.

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Hello, it's Gordon here. I just wanted to explain...

4:21pm

When I saw this story I had to check the date but it is not an April Fool, Gordon Brown really is cold calling members of the public who write him critical letters.  PR Week, where else, reports that this is Stephen Carter’s latest ‘brainwave’:

'Carter thought it was a good idea to have Brown call people personally,' said one insider. 'Carter will choose a letter or email at random, have one of his team at Number 10 prepare a res¬ponse, then get Brown to call.'

The potential for this to go horribly wrong is huge. Brown has already rung someone at 6am by mistake and it is not hard to imagine him getting into a shouting match with one of the people he calls.

If the PM rings you do let us know. We’d like to offer a case of champagne to the first Coffee Houser who can provide a genuine recording of one of these calls.

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Will New Labour survive a general election defeat?

3:38pm

Let’s assume that, as currently seems likely, the Labour party loses the next election by a fairly substantial margin. The question then is does Labour conclude that the best route back to power is trying to knock the Tories off the centre ground or tacking to the left.

As Matt notes, the temptation for a party after a heavy defeat is always to return to its ideological comfort zone—to imagine that a dose of the old religion will win back the public rather than just re-energising the faithful. Indeed, already the vast majority of prescriptions for how Brown can get back on track involve a significant shift leftward, a let Labour be Labour strategy. (Two honourable exceptions to this are Denis MacShane’s Telegraph piece urging the government to cut tax and spending and the article by Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, the former Mandelson and Blair staffer, in this week’s magazine.)

If Labour do decide to cast off the shackles of New Labour then that is good news for the Tories as I suspect that the public is not crying out for reheated socialism. It’s also why that the next leader of the party—if Brown makes it through to the election—is unlikely to come from the Blairite wing of the party. The 14 to 1 on Jon Cruddas looks increasingly attractive.  

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In the magazine this week

1:44pm

Fraser Nelson and Charles Moore report from Afghanistan. Rod Liddle explains how Britain can win Eurovision. Irwin Stelzer previews the US election and Bryan Forbes asks when did we start treating all motorists like criminals?

In the books section, Magnus Linklater assesses Hugh Trevor-Roper’s posthumously published book on the invention of Scotland. Also do read Leo McKinstry’s review of Patrick Bishop’s first novel. At the back of the book, Deborah Ross gives her verdict on The Sex and the City movie and Stephen Pettitt celebrates a new wave of masterful British productions. 

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The new landscape

11:52am

As John Prescott is fond of saying, the plates are moving. Two left-of-centre commentators today turn their attention to Labour’s predicament in ways that only emphasise its depth. Steve Richards – always essential reading – sets out the case for electoral reform and freely admits that only parties that are desperate take this issue seriously. Blair, he reveals, once told him that it would be “quixotic” to embrace PR or another variant shortly after winning a landslide by first-past-the-post. I suspect that Steve is right and that a lot of subterranean discussions are going on between Labour and the Lib Dems on this issue. One can only hope that Nick Clegg has re-read Paddy Ashdown’s diaries recently and its account of Blair’s promises that never came true. Remember, Nick: they mean it when they say it.

In the Guardian, meanwhile, Peter Wilby urges Labour to abandon “triangulation”, the wooing of Middle Britain and all the methods of the Blair era and to find its socialist soul once more in Opposition. Then, he concludes, it can come back into power in 2013 or 2014 with head held high. Hmmm. I seem to remember many Tories arguing the revolutionary defeatist position in the mid-Nineties. In 1995, Lord McAlpine, a former Tory treasurer, cheerfully advised the Tories to “go into the wilderness” for a period. Some wilderness. Some period.

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Not the headline the government wants right now

10:56am

This is the story leading The Guardian web site:

House prices: Nationwide reports fastest fall since 1991

Nationwide are reporting that house prices fell 2.5 percent month on month and the price of the average home has dropped 4.4 percent compared to last year. (To put that in perspective though, the average house price is still 10 higher percent than they were in 2005).

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Labour pains

9:02am

Guido flags up David Hencke’s story in The Guardian which reveals that Labour has only five weeks to find £7.45 million to pay off bank loans and money owed to some of the donors recruited by Lord Levy. Just to compound the problem, if Labour can’t find the cash then various individuals—including Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman—could find themselves personally liable for the party’s debts. 

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The spokesman's revenge

6:49pm

Scott McLellan was an awful White House press secretary. As you watched him get beaten up day after day by reporters you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was a Bush loyalist promoted way over his head.

When McLellan stepped down in April 2006, few expected to hear much more from him. But his new memoir has rocked Washington. In it, he criticises the Iraq war, complains that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove worked out their stories together about the Valerie Plame leak, is scathing about Condi and suggests that President Bush did take cocaine as a young man. (The Politico has the full scoop)

Many are speculating about why an apparent loyalist like McLellan has written such a harsh book. I think the answer might lie in the fact that the press secretary is, at times, an outsider in the White House—there’s a great West Wing episode about this. To indulge in some pop psychology, it seems that McLellan has gone away and reflected on why he should have defended day after day a bunch of decisions and policies that he didn’t have a role in making. It is that frustration that is coming out in the book.

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Remembering Frank

6:22pm

Clive has a nice little musical tribute up to mark the tenth anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s death—and no, it is not someone singing My Way. Do check it out.

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