Another bad start to the week for Brown

It's not a great start to the week for Gordon Brown, as he prepares for relaunch no.29. After the pummelling he received from John Prescott, Cherie Blair and Stephen Byers over the weekend, more (former) Blairites have entered the fray. Foremost among them is Lord Levy, who's conducted a series of interviews to hawk his new book. Here's what he had to tell the Telegraph, when asked whether Brown should resign:

“You don't really need to ask me that question ... you need to look at the polls and

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Byers remorse

Just after Christmas, Stephen Byers declared Tony Blair to be history and that Labour needed to unite behind Gordon Brown if it was to win the next election. Byers was asking that the policy ideas that he and fellow Blairites put forward be seen not as mere mischief-making but as genuine contributions to the debate. 

One suspects, though, that Brown sees Byers’ article in The Sunday Times as the former rather than the later. This is Brown’s loss as the reforms that Byers is proposing to the tax system—raising the personal...

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Working-class hero?

From Prescott's interview in Sunday Times news review, this description of his home jumps out. "Here is not a working-class hero... but an Englishman in his castle, complete with turrets, eight bedrooms, servants' staircases and electric gates".  This recalls what Littlejohn said a while ago:

"There have been times I've regretted ever inventing the nickname Two Jags.  It helped turn Prescott into a figure of fun, disguising the fact that he is in reality a loathsome, Soviet-style political thug on the make.  The satirical version of The Red Flag — 'The working-class

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What they spend your money on

The Portcullis column in The Sunday Telegraph has a quite astonishing tale of how the Department for International Development uses its money:

“Diligent Tory researchers have established that the ministry spent £8,500 on a survey to find out what sort of gifts British couples buy each other on February 14.”

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The writing's on the wall

There is a housing development in Brockley, south east London, with an extraordinary piece of graffiti. “Thanks to Gordon Brown, I will never buy a house,” it says, and in super-large lettering no less. It is not without economic rationale. Brown’s easy-money policy at the Treasury led the Bank of England to chase a dodgy inflation measure - therefore, making credit too cheap, and, therefore, inflating an asset bubble. Also Brown’s failure to reform planning laws put an artificial restriction on supply of UK housing in the face of ever-rising demand. But is...

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