James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Today’s Guardian reveals that Brown, unsurprisingly, plans to hang on until the last possible moment before going to the country. Brown hopes that two years will give him time to turn thing round or—more realistically—that something will turn up in this period. More immediately, though, all eyes seem to be on Jack Straw who is,
There’s a seductive narrative emerging that places all the blame for Labour’s problems on Gordon Brown’s personal and presentational failings. It has obvious appeal to those Labour MPs who believe that if Brown would go all would be well and to our personality-driven media. But as Matt writes in The Sunday Telegraph, “It is certainly
Over on Americano, a guide to McCain’s VP shortlist and some thoughts on the state of the race between McCain and Obama.
David Miliband was on Adam Boulton’s show today and described reports that he is manoeuvring for the leadership as ‘fiction’. But his denial of interest in challenging Brown left him plenty of wriggle room : “I am not in the market for any job other than the one I have at the moment.” If Miliband
The Sunday Times reports this morning that David Miliband is readying himself for a run at the leadership. A source close to Miliband tells the paper that “David is not going to do anything until a vacancy arises, but he is ready to go for it. There will be no public display from him in
There is a classic letter from Alistair Campbell in The Times today disputing Cherie Blair’s account in her book of how Campbell swore at her hairdresser. Sir, Before “you’re only a f***ing hairdresser” replaces “we don’t do God” as my most quoted remark, could I make clear that while I did say “we don’t
John McCain and Barack Obama have been involved in a fierce back and forth about Obama’s willingness to meet with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. McCain claims that Obama’s willingness to do this shows that he does not have the judgement or the experience to be commander in chief, while Obama argues that McCain’s refusal
Gordon Brown has survived the first 30 hours after Crewe and Nantwich. In public, the cabinet has remained supportive and even among backbenchers those prepared to openly call for leadership contest are few and far between. Behind the scenes, though, things are different—just look at the string of anonymous quotes in today’s papers. But no
Peter Riddell is rightly regarded as the dean of the Parliamentary press corp. He is not a man prone to exaggeration or over-excitement which is what makes the conclusion to his column this morning so important: Ministers and MPs have to decide whether to continue with him, or to change leader again in the hope
One of the reasons that most pundits still think that Gordon Brown will survive is that there is no obvious alternative to him. Personally, I’m sceptical as to whether anyone could now deny the Tories an overall majority at the next election barring some unforeseen event; the public mood really does appear to have shifted
Update: In the comments, Emily points to a BBC interview with Ed Balls that I missed. So, I owe Mr Balls an apology. However, I would be even more impressed if Balls went and did one of the big set-piece interviews this weekend. One of the least appealing aspects of the Brownites is how they scarper
Clive points out that John Prescott is a late addition to the line-up at the Festival of Ideas in Bristol. Maybe, Prezza is going to reinvent himself as the new Labour philosopher.
Before we get back to discussing Crewe and Nantwich and what happens next, I’m going to have a little rant about London traffic and the price of taxis. This morning, I was doing in an interview near Marble Arch and then going to have lunch at half twelve with Clive Davis on Greek Street. The
Here are a few things that I think we’ve learnt from last night’s result: 1). The Tories are now the best closers in British politics: In London, the local elections and last night the Tories did significantly better than the final opinion polls suggested they would. This suggests that the Tory ground game is now
Considering the size of the swing to the Tories last night, it no longer seems silly to talk about a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown. But Michael White’s analysis this morning neatly sums up why an actual challenge—as opposed to talk of one—is still unlikely: “Can Labour MPs and their union paymasters, busy flexing their
If on April 29th, when Labour announced the date of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, you had told people that the Tories would win the seat by 7,860 votes you would have been laughed out of town. This result shows just how much in politics has changed in the last few weeks. The Tories have
John Curtice has just crunched the numbers for the BBC and found that if this swing happened across the country at the next election, there would be 497 Tory MPs and only 100 Labour ones. Clearly, this isn’t going to happen. But it will concentrate the minds of Labour backbenchers.
The Returning Officer has just declared the official result and Edward Timpson is the new MP for Crewe and Nantwich. This is a massive defeat for Labour and will make many Labour MPs distinctly fearful about their own prospects.
No one is disputing that Labour has taken a mighty kicking tonight but we are going to have to wait until a little bit after 2am for the formal declaration. Turnout was high at 58 percent, but the word is that Tory Nantwich turned out in force while Labour Crewe stayed at home. This suggests that the
The one consolation for Gordon Brown about tonight’s result is that the MPs are all leaving Westminster for the Whitsun recess and so the opportunities to plot will be limited. Alternatively, MPs could get it in the neck from their constituents and local parties about how bad things are and return to London steeled to