Politics

Labour’s failure to fill the summer news vacuum has now become a news story in itself. Ed Miliband comes back from holiday to find the Sunday papers full of stories about Labour grumbling, shadow Cabinet reshuffles and the like. But there’ll be no dramatic return by Miliband. There are no plans for big set piece speeches or a whistle-stop tour of Britain. One reason why Miliband himself has been so quiet this summer is that conference is already dominating his, and his team’s, thoughts. As I say in the Mail on Sunday today, they view conference as crucial to their efforts to persuade the country that Miliband is Prime Ministerial.

As the Gibraltar situation rumbles on, those familiar with the situation blame the Spanish Foreign Minister José García-Margallo for Spain’s bully-boy tactics. I’m told that he’s far more gung-ho on the matter than Prime Minister Rajoy on the matter. What makes the Foreign Minister’s behaviour particularly galling is that he began his career as the representative for one of Spain’s African enclaves in the Spanish parliament. If Melilla can be Spanish, then Gibraltar can be British. But as Danny Finkelstein points out in The Times today, one senses that Spanish politicians would rather have the Gibraltar issue than Gibraltar. If they really did want Gibraltar to become part of Spain

Tom Watson might be preparing to fly half round the world to continue his fight against Rupert Murdoch. But Ed Miliband has still not named a replacement for Watson as Labour’s campaign coordinator. It was thought that the contest for this role was between Michael Dugher, who was part of Watson’s team and is the choice of the Labour machine, and Douglas Alexander, the shadow Foreign Secretary, who ran Labour’s 2010 general election campaign and David Miliband’s leadership bid. Vernon Coaker, who is in line for promotion from the Northern Ireland brief in the coming reshuffle, was also considered a contender. But Patrick Wintour reports that two new names have

Hell, it’s been tough, but I think I’ve pulled through. I went out this morning to buy some cigarettes and there were plenty of people about, doing stuff — so the world has not changed beyond recognition these last couple of days. Everyone else seems to have made it. I hope you made it OK, too, without the need for counselling. Here we all are, huddled together, clutching at each other for warmth in the post-apocalyptic gloom. But we’re still standing. We managed to survive Caitlin Moran’s 24-hour boycott of Twitter. Moran is a journalist who decided to boycott Twitter because, incredible though it might seem, people keep saying nasty

Ties between the Tories and the Republicans have rarely been weaker than they are today. The hiring of Jim Messina, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, is another sign that the Tories are more interested in the technical effectiveness of the Obama machine than they are in anything that the Republicans are producing. I suspect that the Republican most likely to revive Tory interest in the GOP, its idea and its electoral strategy, is Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey. Christie is neither a southern Republican nor a Tea Party man. Rather, he’s a north eastern Republican with a more emollient attitude to government. Christie is up for re-election in New

Ed Miliband is rumoured to be on the verge of sacking shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg, who is simply no match for Michael Gove’s flair and intellect. I hear that Vernon Coaker, who was Children, Schools and Families Minister under Brown and Balls, is in line for promotion. Coaker is a former teacher and seasoned political pugilist, so he would certainly brighten things up. But the damp Twigg has not given up, not yet. As is his wont, he has penned a letter to the Times Education Supplement. And, as ever, it is not a success. Among the usual bleats about Gove being a rabble rousing ‘ideologue’, I noticed this line: ‘Like a shark in

David Cameron is committed to an EU referendum if he’s still Prime Minister after the next election. We also know that he’d like to lead the ‘In’ side if he can get a good enough deal. Given this, the fact that the FT is reporting that Ivan Rogers, the PM’s Europe adviser, is the frontrunner to be Britain’s ambassador to the EU is particularly disappointing. Rogers is a cerebral chap who knows the EU and its institutions back to front. But what he is not is someone who is a natural at driving a hard bargain. As one insider says, ‘he’s not a tough negotiator like Cunliffe’, a reference to