Gordon brown

With the Baroness Scotland housekeeper mini-scandal still in the air, I hear a delicious rumour. I’m told that in a surreal extension of Labour big tent policy, Gordon Brown approached Shami Chakrabarti about the job of Attorney-General. The hammer of the government’s civil liberties turned down the offer. But the latest events provide the  perfect opportunity for Gordon to offer it to her again. Of course he would have to ennoble her first. This would leave Shami in the Lords to act as a convenient thorn in the side of the Tory Party should it win the next election.

For the Kremlinologists among us, Andrew Grice has an insightful article in today’s Independent on the growing support for Ed Miliband in the Labour Party.  He kicks it off by asking the pivotal question when it comes to the Brothers Miliband – “Will Ed Miliband eclipse brother David?” – and follows that up with some affirmative evidence: “…the word in Labour circles is that Ed is no longer trailing in his brother’s wake. Indeed, some senior figures believe he has already overtaken him in the game that increasingly occupies Labour minds as the party appears to head for a general election defeat – its future leadership stakes… …friends are quietly

On July 2nd, Gordon Brown told the House of Commons: “I have always told the truth and I’ve always told people as it is…we don’t want to have the 10 per cent cuts the Conservatives are talking about.” The Tories’ extremely destructive Treasury mole has leaked documents proving that Labour has been planning substantial cuts in front line services since before the budget. The DEL figures, printed below, are key: suggesting that a cumulative 9.3% cut was planned for 2011-2014, and Paul Waugh is right to point out that these revelations may explain why the government delayed its comprehensive spending review. This leak is such a coup for the Tories

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Cherie Blair will campaign for Gordon Brown at the next election. She told Tim Walker that “I will personally get involved in the electoral campaign”. The idea of Cherie campaigning for Gordon is rather comic. Relations between the two were famously tense. At Tony Blair’s last conference as Labour leader, Cherie was heard to say ‘that’s a lie’ when Brown said how much of a privilege he had found it to work with Tony. As Tony Blair quipped in his speech, he never had to worry about Cherie “running off with the bloke next door”. Personally, I’m intrigued by how much campaigning the other

The question of Gordon Brown’s leadership won’t go away, but there’s a feeling that nothing will happen for a while yet. Andrew Grice writes in The Independent today that the coup might come in December: “Labour’s hard left and the trade unions are the dogs that have not barked. The assumption is that they stick with him for fear of something worse, and calculate that their best hope would be to exploit a backlash against New Labour after an election defeat. I am told that their mood is now changing. Some left-wing MPs and union bosses are coming round to the view that they would have an overriding duty to

“What did he mean by that?” is the question one is left with after reading Derek Simpson’s interview with the Mirror. Simpson tells the paper that New Labour is dead and that “if you could convince me there is somebody who could take over and go down the Old Labour route without hesitation I’d share the view that if Gordon is not prepared to do it he should stand aside and let that person do it. That could save the Labour government.” This is, to put it mildly, rather off message and Unite have rushed out a statement this morning saying that Brown has Simpson’s “full support” and is the

I had the pleasure of chairing the Editorial Intelligence/Policy Exchange/Policy Review/Cass Busines School (Phewee!) debate on the future of the quangocracy last night. I was expecting little common ground between Douglas Carswell, the Tory hammer of the quangos and an audience I thought would be packed with his ideological enemies. But it wasn’t like that at all.  Carswell was a very entertaining turn, describing the House of Commons as “monumentally spineless and useless”. His view was that select committees should be given the job of holding quangos to account, including making them justify their budgets on an annual basis. This, he said, would at least give give MPs something worthwhile to