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When Gordon's travelling circus is out of town, it always entertaining to watch just how much more talkative and disloyal the politeratti become. One nugget has surfaced this morning about life inside Downing Street.
People in Westminster have been talking for a while now about tensions between the two top guys at the top of Number 10 - Stephen Carter, the former advertising man who heads political strategy, and Jeremy Heywood, Number 10's ex-Morgan Stanley Permanent Secretary. Only last week the FT mentioned Heywood sometimes despairs at Carter's "management speak".
On Friday morning, it escalated. There were sore heads all round after the expenses debacle - where was Gordon at the time of the vote? what were those meetings? - and all 200 staff gathered in Downing Street, where they were addressed by Mr Heywood.
According to one witness, he began by saying: "I had hoped Stephen Carter could be here this morning, but he has got tickets to the semi finals at Wimbledon." It was taken as a sign of open warfare...
Gordon Brown borrowed £2.7 billion to get himself out of a political hole over 10p tax, bringing himself perilously close to breaking the fiscal rules he created in 1997, that public borrowing should not rise to "unsustainable" levels. It would be very embarrassing if this rule was bust. So was Brown now trying to fiddle the definition of "unsustainable" on the Today programme this morning?
Asked by John Humphrys whether pumping money into the economy had broken the rule, Brown replied "We have not broken the rule, the rule is over a economic cycle. You don’t look at each individual budget; you look at the rules over the economic cycle….." He then added "The sustainable investment rule is over the economic cycle."
Tories dispute this, with George Osborne saying this morning "When Gordon Brown was Chancellor, he said his sustainable investment rule applied every year. This morning as Prime Minister he suddenly announced it only has to be met over the course of a long economic cycle."
So who is right? According to the Fiscal Policy Treasury website: "The sustainable investment rule: public sector net debt as a proportion of GDP will be held over the economic cycle at a stable and prudent level... The Chancellor has stated that, other things equal, net debt will be maintained below 40% of GDP over the current economic cycle, in accordance with the sustainable investment rule."
So no mention of the annual target. In the latest Treasury report setting out its key Public Service Agreements, published in December 2007, it says that "to meet the target with confidence, at the end of every fiscal year of the current economic cycle, public sector net debt must be below 40 per cent of GDP." But again, this isn't quite a commitment.
Alistair Darling said in the budget speech to Parliament. "Borrowing for investment within the fiscal rules means that we will meet our second fiscal rule the sustainable investment rule in each year and over the cycle." But this is an aspiration and prediction, based on the forecasts he went on to announce, rather than committment.
Smoke and mirrors may yet mean Gordon can wiggle out of this one....
Update: Gordon just admitted there was confusion this morning, and the rule has to be met every year.
Both parties to Gordon Brown's interview with John Humphries on the Today programme did their best to make it as painful as possible.
After intense and irritating hectoring by Humphries - which Brown appeared unable to rise above - he seemed to get in a bit of a funk. It's been said before, but often Brown sounds like he is wilfully ignoring questions. Today he was responding to Humphries' questions about Tuesday's 10p u-turn by talking about the orginal 2007 budget decision.
But the low point came towards then end, when he began to sound like he was almost pleading for his job. There was more than a touch of desperation to the line that is now leading news bulletins, "There are many people who could take over but I think I can steer this economy through difficult times."
Why mention life After Brown? Does this mean he's thinking about it? Is he worried about people positioning themselves? What does he know that everybody else doesn't? Or is this reverse psychology, in an attempt to shut people up by making them think through the consequences of ditching him?
Or was it just a meaningless accident?
A "friend of Brown" in the Times: “If we lose Crewe then I think a few of us will be telling him to think about quitting,” a former minister and friend of Mr Brown told The Times.
An insider to The Times on why the mini budget now: “The political dynamic changed after the locals,” said one figure closely involved.
Peter Riddell on the mini-budget: So the Treasury will have to raise a very large amount next year. This means either higher taxes or lower spending since higher borrowing cannot be continued. The public finances are not in a healthy state after the sharp rise in public spending since 2000. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that an £8 billion adjustment will have to be made at some stage. Now, with the economy slowing, is the wrong time. But a painful corrective package cannot be put off for ever.
"Roy" in a comment tonight on Red Box at 22.25pm: Crash Gordon - not Flash just Moron
Tamsin Dunwoody, Labour's Crewe candidate, pressed on Channel 4 News on "whether Gordon Brown is an asset or liability": Gordon Brown is our Prime Minister. I'm here meeting people out on the streets and dealing with the issues that affect them.
Labour MPs to the BBC's James Landale: Backbenchers rushed around, clenching their fists in relief, assuring me that at last common sense had prevailed...In the members' lobby, just outside the chamber, a senior member of the Cabinet came up to me, cocked his hand behind his ear and said with all due smugness: "Listen to that - the sound of Tory foxes being shot."
Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research: Some of the beneficiaries of this move will probably have to pay higher taxes in the future, but the Chancellor is probably putting off worrying about the future until another time.
Times leading article: On the substance of the shift, Mr Darling has probably made the correct decision.
Neil Harding, Labour supporter in Brighton: This is no way to run a government. This is a transparent ploy to save Gordon Brown and win votes for the Crewe Byelection. On the road to fair taxation this demonstrates that where there is a will - there is a way and change can happen very quickly indeed - just like when the Tories abolished the poll tax and put VAT up to 17.5% on a panicky day in 1990.
Hopi Sen, Labour blogger: Simple. Obvious. Benefits people who weren’t expecting to pay less tax who are facing rising bills. I like this tax announcement
ITV's This Morning have already removed the footage of Gordon Brown "opening up" over his children's privacy from their website, in which he talked about this "struggle to have two young healthy children".
Far from being a deliberate strategy to humanise the Prime Minister, Team Brown are claiming Fern Britten ignored a specific agreement not to ask about his children. There is anger all round, it appears, even though Gordon appeared to come off quite well...
At the close of polls, some Labour sources are suggesting that the Tories are doing extremely well - and could reach up to 47 per cent, up from 40 per cent last year. Tories reject this, say that's impossible but concede 43/44 is possible. We're heading for a good night for the Tories.
The Tories have upped their council seats benchmark in the last 24 hours. Whereas yesterday they predicted council seat gains in the "double digits", now they say a minimum of 120 and going up to 150/160. 200, they insist, is "very difficult". A number of Tory sources claim there is a high turnout in the outer-London donut, which would indicate good news for Boris (both Conservative Home, Betfair and betting website politicalbetting.com are calling London for Boris).
Both parties agree that Labour has lost Reading
Remember, the expectations game is still being fought and these suggestions may bear no relation to the final result.
The political classes are twiddling their thumbs waiting for news. We are in a fact free zone, amid suggestions of high turnout in London. So here's something to chew on in the meantime while we wait, very much buried in Kevin Maguire's New Statesman column. No 10 whisper is of how Alan "Mr Quiffy" Johnson rejected an uncunning plan by the Supreme Leader's newest consigliere, Stephen Carter, to anoint the Health Secretary as deputy prime minister. Perhaps the well-groomed mod couldn't take seriously a plot devised by a string-puller fighting a one-man war to rescue the tank top from Frank Spencer. Or maybe Mr Quiffy realised that Hattie Harperson and Jack "The Lad" Straw would kill for the post.
And here's Ben Brogan's tale of Labour whips losing their temper with "disloyal MPs" An MP calls to tell me about a curious incident he witnessed in the Commons chamber last night. He says Tommy McAvoy, stalwart of the Whips' Office, gave Diane Abbott a public dressing-down about her "disloyalty to the Government". Now, it is true that the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington is a serial rebel who will vote against lunch it serves to annoy the leader of the day. But a hairdryer treatment is normally delivered in private, not at the Bar of the House.
 At the end of a bad day for the Prime Minister, it was astonishing to hear Peter Hyman, former Blair speechwriter, say on Newsnight that Labour party members are telling him that it's time for the party to spend some time in opposition. And that these people felt perhaps David Cameron wouldn't be such a bad Prime Minister. Not exactly helpful...
Daniel Finkelstein over at Comment Central has the transcript
 A senior Labour backbencher MP - not at all a 'usual suspect' - has just given the government both barrels on scrapping the 10p rate. I was struck by how angry up he was. He claimed that over recess, "nine out of ten people" were raising this on the doorsteps and this is bigger than the row over the 75p pension rise.
Interestingly, he suggested Labour high command are making it worse. They have just sent out another briefing paper to MPs "defending the indefensible" by saying 80 per cent will be better off (what about the other 20 per cent who are all the lowest paid). This is the third such document this week, he huffed, yet there is no clear message coming from the Treasury and Number 10 about how they will help. He suggests a one off payment for those affected.
The only bright spot for the government is that many Labour MPs will be unable to support an amendment tabled by Frank Field (who says politics isn't personal). Something tabled John McFall, chair of the Treasury Select Committee and longtime Brown supporter, has the potential to prove much more troublesome.
Kate Hoey, the Labour MP for Vauxhall, had agreed to turn up to a Boris Johnson campaign event at the Harriet Pickering ballet school in her constituency this morning, but pulled out at the last moment due to ill health. (Thanks to Rosa Prince for revealing this). Any suggestion she was backing a non Labour candidate would result in her explusion
Despite her protestations to the contrary, the ramifications of this -- at a time where party discipline appears to be faltering -- would have been large. I've just spoken to her (she sounded very croaky - I suspect the ill health claim is genuine - update: though she was lunching a guest in a Commons restaurant this lunchtime) and said she was supporting a gymnastics projects in her constituency and would have done the same had Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrat candidate, asked to come down. She said: "Boris told me that he was going to visit a gymnastics project run by Harriet Pickering. It's a project in the building supported by the London Development Agency that I referred to the police (this story, I think), but that's a different story. I said fine, I will come down because I support the project and would have done the same for Brian Paddick. I'm now not going (because of ill health) but would have popped along if I was well because I see no reason for not going if any mayoral candidate was due to visit. This is you lot (the media) wanting to have a story. What about Gordon Brown appointing non Labour Party members to the Cabinet (he hasn't - just to the government). Are we not supposed to speak to people from other parties?
Clearly Hoey has issues with Ken - why else would she report LDA projects to the police. Asked whether she was backing Ken Livingstone, she said: "I'm a Labour Party MP. What more do you want." Doesn't sound to me quite like a full throated endorsement, but she hasn't done enough to be kicked out. Watch this space, as someone called Angela once said.
 Gordon's US trip (wheels down Heathrow 5.30am yesterday) was nothing short of surreal. The contrast was striking between his genuine overseas triumphs (meeting the candidates, smoothing things over with Bush, setting a strong lead on Zimbabwe) with the accelerating stream of bad news from back home over the Labour 10p revolt.
The benefits of these trips for the travelling media is the exposure we have to the Prime Minister for extended periods of time. And what is fascinating about Brown is how hard he finds it to disguise his emotions at any point of the day. Nowhere is this more true than when he smiles. By my reckoning, he has three types of facial manoeuvre in his repertoire which sadly for him betray too much about his state of mind. They are:
 The please like me smile: Painfully visible during the Good Morning America interview, just as it was the week before on American Idol. A widget inserted by aides into his brain has been activated, instructing his facial muscles to change position. It is a hopeless smile, one that doesn't believe in itself, makes him look most like a machine. It doesn't feel genuine, because there is also:
 The genuinely happy smile: Rarely in evidence but visible on this trip after he returned from his lunch at Harvard where Larry Summers, the former President, praised his speech. Gordon looked so happy clambering on the plane and telling people about his day with the Boston liberal elite including the Kennedys. Tired but pleased. Seen in public after the birth of his children. It does exist.
 The controlling his anger smile: There is a particular fixed grin Mr Brown uses when he is getting angry. The ease with which he became tetchy, particularly when asked about the Labour rebellion, was a big takeaway from this trip. I guess he starts to smile as a way of trying not to come across as riled. Unfortunately it only acts like a huge neon sign to indicate he is getting cross.
 Another day, another holding pen. A man with a big gun is making sure we sit still in Andrews Air Force base for more interminable security checks ahead of our flight to Boston (Embassy / consular failings meant we are not able to accompany the PM on convoy despite promises in New York. What happened to the power of 'Downing Street wants'?) So we snatch our fun where we can, and this morning it arrived in a white cap and red slippers. Pressing our noses up against the security frosted glass, il papa waved in sympathy at  the British press from the (plush Al Italia) plane steps. Next to it was parked the "James and the Giant Peach regional touring theatre" aircraft which we will be boarding shortly.
 The Washington Posts's superb sketchwriter, Dana Milbank, was sitting in the Rose Garden. With apologies to the Post's copyright lawyers, here is his piece this morning, whch you can also read here.
You know times are tough when the American president and the British prime minister start talking about the good ol' days of the Blitz.
President Bush and Prime Minister Gordon Brown found themselves in such a situation yesterday as they faced the cameras in the Rose Garden. Unpopular wars and economic crises have dragged both men to standings not seen since the World War II era: Bush is now the most consistently unpopular president since Truman, and Brown's support has plunged faster than Neville Chamberlain's after he appeased Hitler.
And so it was, perhaps, inevitable, that the beleaguered pair would start off their news conference talking about Winston Churchill and the "Special Relationship."
"I appreciate our special relationship with Britain," Bush said upon taking the podium.
"It's my profound belief that over many decades no international partnership has served the world better than the special relationship between our two countries," Brown reciprocated, recalling "the darkest days of the Second World War when the strongest transatlantic partnership was forged."
Reporters knew what the two were up to. "Some people
Continue reading "And what did the US make of it?" »
 Whatever the problems back home, the Washington leg of the US trip seems a success. The audiences with the three Presidential candidates were a personal and diplomatic triumph for Brown (and the Embassy), and the fact Mr Brown had the pulling power to see them at the height of the campaign impressed many. Later in the day, Brown looked at ease alongside President Bush, who heaped praise on him in a mutual back stratch in the White House Rose Garden.
But the most significant thing about yesterday was the Prime Minister's sharp change of personal approach to President Bush. Last summer, Downing Street let it be known Mr Brown would not be as buddy buddy with the President as Tony Blair. Suited and booted at Camp David (Bush famously prefers dress down) Mr Brown bordered on the undimplomatic, referring to their "free and frank" exchanges in the press conference. Washington took note. Yesterday there was none of that. In his opening remark, he said the world "owed a huge debt of gratitute for rooting out terrorism" and called him excellent, pioneering and ambitious.
So why the big change? Has Gordon Brown just seen the light and realised it is not in Britain's national interest to be so conspiciously frosty to the US President? Or is the change because unlike last Summer Brown is now in a position of weakness and doesn't have the political capital to pick this sort of high-stakes fight again? We can only speculate
 A fairnbalanced report from the New York Times this morning previewing the Brown visit, quoting the words of Simon Heffer, no less, to introduce the British Prime Minister to its readership. Opening with the phrase "Lambasted at home by foes across the political spectrum", it talks of the "barely muted disdain in some quarters of the Bush administration" over the troop withdrawal in Basra. Nice to see its reporters have already made their mind up.
More revealing is this morning's Washington Post, which talks about what the McCain / Clinton / Obama meetings mean for the candidates. That the meetings are going ahead is impressive - Kevin Rudd, the new Australian leader, only got a phone call with Obama. The Post says: Philip Gordon, a Brookings Institution expert on Europe who advises the Obama campaign, said that while Bush has moved to accommodate European countries during his second term, he believes Brown ``is looking for a new kind of American foreign policy after January 2009. 'Bush and the U.S. relationship has been a burden for Brown,'' Gordon said. ``He can really turn the page with a new administration.''
Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, suggested that the page could be turned with a Republican administration as well. ''Prime Minister Blair and President Bush came from different political backgrounds'' but forged a strong alliance, he noted. ``I think there's tremendous potential for Brown and McCain.''
 Gordon Brown did well today at the UN Security Council, delivering a tough message on Zimbabwe and putting President Mbeki  on the spot over his handling of the crisis. But the triumph was slightly undermined by several unflattering photographs of GB showing him with his eyes shut during the Security Council meeting. An esteemed colleague wonders how Tony Blair managed to survive ten years in power without nodding off in front of a camera. Apparently Brown's new image consultant brought in to help with his visual presentation, brought in from the BBC, was in radio, not TV.
 Gordon Brown wants to supercharge the special relationship on his trip this week. Sounds exciting. Yesterday, he told viewers of the CBS Evening News he wanted to "bring Europe and America closer together" (suddenly ogling Tony Blair's 'bridge to America'). Today he revealed how in an article in the Wall Street Journal with .... a blizzard of micro-initiatives.
There's nothing quite reading "Sixth..." in an article by Gordon Brown.
The list includes: encouraging the "Make your Mark" global entrepreneur week, funding for some student travel to the US, a review of the rules governing charity donations to encourage co-operation and - a real Brown favourite - teaching the world to speak English through a British council initiative.
Meanwhile the Pope has already stolen the show by talking about this shame about the scandals in the US Catholic Church, while Barack Obama's "bitter" comments are dominating the headlines. Brown will have to be bolder if we wants to make an impact amongst the American public.
Page 7 of the Observer wont be good for morale in Labour this morning. There has been a witchhunt molehunt in recent days (always an excellent use of time) to identify the sources of Rachel Sylvester's Tuesday column which included allegations of a bust-up between Jack Straw and Ed Balls. "Sources close to Brown" think they have identified a culprit - Michael Wills, Straw's mild mannered deputy, and deliver this public rebuke. Alleging Wills had fallen out with Ed Balls, the source close to Brown said: He is constantly disappointed at Gordon not taking his advice. He consistently wages war on anyone [Balls] whom he sees as constraining Gordon's image.
The allegation, therefore, is that Wills deliberately engaged in an act of petty political sabotage because he wasn't the centre of attention. Ouch! Wills denies it was him, and the piece does not offer any proof beyond the above words. There is no way of knowing conclusively: but the publicly-administered rough justice will not go unnoticed. (Nothing has happened to Tessa Jowell for her misstepps this weekend which have caused some agony).
For now the answer to this question is no
Gordon Brown and his child-frightening smile were introduced to the Amerian public this week on American Idol, not (sadly) to sing but to pledge mosquito nets for Africa. Below is the best of the US reaction and beyond - I'll add through the day as I find more.
The Search (LA): Why is it that—when Gordon Brown announced from 10 Downing Street that the British government was donating $200 million to the fundraiser—all I could think about was how curiously large Gordon Brown’s ears were?
Sean Hannity blog (TV pundit): I've just been watching on the news our Prime Minister pledging $200,000,000 on the American Idol program. I didn't realise that Gordon Brown was so personally wealthy that he could afford to give away that much of his own money. Although, it has just occured to me that it might not have been his money to give away, and that maybe I've just watched the PM grinning like an idiot on US TV, while he gives away £100,000,000 of UK taxpayers money. Of course I should be happy, as Brown's genorosity [SIC] with our money obviously means there are no problem in this country that the money could be better spent on, and that I now live in a utopian idyle.
American Idol Snark: The Prime Minister of Great Britian then decides to mop the floor with us Americans by donating a whopping $200 MILLION DOLLARS! The total goal for IGB was only $100 million. He has a stipulation though - all the money will go towards malaria nets. Gordon Brown is my new hero. First he shows us all up on our country's broadcast, then he lists his conditions. Long live the Queen!
Newsday newspaper: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who actually acts like he's parodying himself. It's a bit odd... but the UK's got a pretty good record in terms of helping Africa, he says they're giving the equivalent of $200 million to help fight poverty.
Reuters entertainment blog: "He hardly fits the bill as an American Idol, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown won fans for an extraordinary pledge to buy 20 million anti-malarial nets for use in Africa and other parts of the developing world."
Archbishop Cranmer (UK): He would never risk it on X-Factor, or at a party conference, or on a political broadcast, but for the audience of US talent show American Idol Prime Minister Brown ended with: "Thank you and God bless you all’. With his plastic smile and strange jaw movements, it was an invocation of the blessing of the Almighty upon his pledge to buy 20 million mosquito nets for malaria-hit countries, because there is ‘nothing more amazing than saving a life".
As reported this morning, there is a growing rebellion over the decision made a year ago to scrap the 10p band, effectively doubling tax to 20p in the pound for about five million people on incomes of under £18,000. This morning's report adds: Some MPs were stunned yesterday to receive text messages from the whips asking whether their support could be counted on for the passage of the Finance Bill, which implements the Budget in legislative form.
The whips are worried about the Budget being passed? Jeez...
Labour loves its quangos, but it would rather you didn't ask how much.
The UK's 827  non departmental public bodies -- from the UK Film Council to the Wine Standards Board to the Darwin Advisory Committee -- cost the taxpayer more than £31 billion last year, employing 95,000 people.
Until 2006, we were able to see how much each one cost, how many staff they employed and the name and salary of the person in charge.
No longer. In the past few days, the Cabinet Office has published the latest guide to these bodies (the 2007 edition covering April 2006 to March 2007, so the data is almost a year old and refers to the Blair era).
Whereas last year's ran to 372 pages (they have all been over 200 since 1997), this one is just 27. Detailed information about each body has been replaced by charts of cost, gender and ethnic balance by sponsoring department.
For example, whereas previously this report would say the Higher Education Funding Council cost a massive £6 billion in 2005-06, was run by Steve Egan who earned £120,000 and employed 240 staff, now we are told only that the Department for Education and Skills (as it was in March 2007) has 18 bodies costing £18 billion. And that's it.
And this from a Prime Minister who promised a more transparent style of government
Update: A reader draws our attention to the words of Gordon Brown, as Shadow Chancellor, in 1995: "The biggest question … is why our constitution is over-centralised, over-secretive and over-bureaucratic and why there is not more openness and accountability. The real alternative is a bonfire of the quangos and greater democracy."
... while Gordon is at the Nato su mmit.
But will she be facing William Hague, Theresa May (please please please) or Francis Maude (don't ask).
This morning's Times reported that senior figures in Downing Street believe that if Mr Livingstone wins it will be by the narrowest of margins. We reported that Gordon Brown had all-but written off Ken Livingstone’s chances of winning the London mayoral election, according to close allies.
Why would Gordon Brown say such a thing? Five theories:
1. Because Gordon Brown means it and thinks Ken Livingstone is going to lose
2. Because Gordon Brown doesn't mind if Ken loses (not least because of past disagreements) and / or wants Boris Johnson to win because of its potential impact on Project Cameron
3. Because Gordon Brown is playing an expectations-management game
4. Because such statements help to motivate Ken voters in an election where turnout is all
5. Because it is a sign of discord between No 10 and Team Ken
In an interview with The Times's Tom Baldwin and three other international newspapers, President Bush was asked about US-UK relations.
Mr Bush said that the relationship with Britain was “never as special” as during times of war, citing the alliance between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as “the current relationship — the more modern relationship — between Tony Blair and myself”.
He also heaped praise on President Sarkozy for sending more troops to Afghanistan - but said nothing about Brown and Britain's commitments. Is this a problem or a blessing?
Gordon Brown will take much of the flak for leaving the u-turn over a free vote on legal changes for embryo and fertility research. But should Geoff Hoon really be shouldering the blame as government Chief Whip?
"Friends" of Alan Johnson certainly think so, and are saying as much in private as we report. Certainly many MPs think Brown Central should have seen this coming much earlier, and it was handled in the worst posssible way by making it as though the Prime Minister had caved in to the Catholic Church.
Which he probably did.
If there was ever a chance of Charles Clarke returning to Cabinet under Gordon Brown, it seems to have gone out of the window. So what the heck, it seems, he's had another pop at GB in a podcast.
- On Brown and the EU: “The ridiculous farce of the EU signing ceremony was absurd and weakened his position immensely."
- On climate change: "I don’t think it’s obvious that the government at the moment is seizing the green agenda in the way it needs to, and I find it embarrassing actually ... The fact is that if you look at the European Commission White Papers on these areas, on energy, for example, the generation of renewables, we are in an absolute pathetic position compared to many other countries, and we need to do far more. So that area is not being fulfilled."
- On his criticism of Gordon Brown: "I remain critical in an important sense, in that we have to have a clear direction on these issues, and I don’t think we have."
- On Gordon Brown’s dithering: "I think he is not decisive enough in too many areas. I remain of that view."
- On the date of the next election: "The election will be in May or June 2010, because as you get close to May 2009, the prospect of being certain of winning will recede, and so the election will be delayed. Far better to say now that the election is going to be in May/June 2010, exactly what John Major did, and a perfectly reasonable thing to say. And say: let's use that two and a half years to elaborate on the policies we are going to carry through. The danger, and I think you describe it accurately, of floating the idea of a spring 2009 election is that it just closes everything down, and we just kind of stumble along ... We haven't yet got a clear appeal and direction to say what we're going to do. So if you turn out to be right in what you said, it will be a disaster, because we'll stumble along, stumble along, stumble along, not change very much, then get hammered."
As others have acknowledged, this comparison of the backroom teams of Labour and the Tories by Fraser Nelson in today's Spectator, is well worth reading.
Unusually for any modern set-piece political speech, there was no news story from today's address by GB to Labour's Spring Conference, either in the pre-briefing or final text. Perhaps that is because the real story of today was the style and manner of the speech itself.
Very different in tone from his poor first conference in September, he has sharpened both his language and how to communicate what he stands for. More fluid, coherent and (again unlike last September) no major attempt to please people beyond the hall*. (Just as well, since the rolling news is focused firmly on Prince Harry after the first 20 minutes.) A touch of gentle humour. It benefited by being, for once, not an election speech.
Today's message: while Tony Blair stood for aspiration and reinforcing the safety net, Gordon's credo is social mobility and "unlocking all of the talents of all of the people". In a word, opportunity.
In many ways this is a much more ambitious, challenging aspiration than Blair's but it is also one that will require more state intervention. Apprenticeship schemes. Skills. Early years plans. Micro-strategies. How do you unlock the talents of someone who is third generation on benefits? It is probably more expensive. Perhaps even impossible. It gets a "medium/high" on the leftie-rating scale.
Today's speech was also significant for what it was not. Unlike last September, there was no lecture on Britishness, no sabre-rattling on security, no homily about his parents and upbringing and no more "moral compass". Several over-focused-grouped clunky phrases are clearly on the way out, including the awful public services "personal to you", which featured 14 times in September but came up just once today.
Stephen Carter and his army of Trinny and Susannah makeover experts have been hard at work. As a result we saw a little bit of New Gordon. They will probably be pleased with their work.
*He didn't entirely succeed in winning the hall: his continued failure to back union calls for agency worker safeguards disproportionately annoys those at spring conference.
To the Welsh Labour conference: "Colleagues, when I come to Wales, it always feels like coming home."
From the Downing Street website this afternoon:
Gordon Brown welcomed the Lithuanian President, Valdas Adamkus, to 10 Downing Street today for bilateral talks. The discussions focused on Lithuania's regional issues, the EU and Afghanistan. The PM also congratulated Lithuania on its 90th anniversary. Mr Adamkus was Lithuanian President from 1998 to January 2003 and was re-elected in June 2004.
Steve Richards, in his Independent column this morning, gives the clearest explanation of where Gordon is - and has been - on choice in public services. It's a nuanced position - and as such hard to communicate - which is probably why the messages coming out of the Treasury and Downing Street have seemed at times contradictory. I remember him telling me during the explosive second term that nobody could be against "choice" in theory. He joked that a candidate in a US election had adopted the slogan "Choose Freedom", as if anyone would argue "against freedom". Similarly, he was not "against choice". His concerns related to resources, the need for surplus provision in order for choice to be effective, and the way in which Mr Blair was rushing to achieve his objective with a sometimes indiscriminate bias in favour of the private sector.
Mr Brown was never opposed to the use of the private sector and was quite capable of deploying it indiscriminately himself, as the recent catastrophic case of Metronet and the London Underground demonstrates.
Gordon Brown's officials reduced to tears in the Red Lion. The Prime Minister shouting at Downing Street typists. Chaos inside No 10. Micromanaging and an inability to delegate. The paper logjam in No 10.
From the paper that brought you "Stalinist" Brown, the Financial Times today speaks to those around Brown.
MPs may grumble, but David Cameron has seized the initiative. He is ordering his frontbenchers, and firmly asking his backbenchers, to declare much more about their expenses. He wants them to reveal the salaries of family members, the names of all their staff and to list the amounts claimed in rent and mortgage payments (in a form reproduced below the fold). On the Wintertons, Cameron called their behaviour "indefensible" but hinted that further punishment can come only after a formal investigation (strangely, no Labour MP has yet complained to the Standards Commissioner). Cameron implicitly criticised the Commons authorities and the Speaker for their choice of individuals to conduct the expenses probe, including David Maclean (the anti-FOI campaigner ... and don't expect a result before the autumn, by the way). He demurred from going too far, joking that he still wanted to be called by Michael Martin at PMQs tomorrow. There's the rub: few are prepared to speak critically of the Speaker because of his vast power over their lives.
But what Cameron achieved today was to successfully communicate that the Tories understand that there is a problem here and are ready to deal with it.
We wait to see how Brown responds. At lobby, his spokesman announced that he was writing to the Speaker to ask for greater transparency on expenses, but we haven't seen the letter. Let's see if he is busy photocopying Cameron's form.
Continue reading "Expenses: At half-time, Cameron 1, Brown 0 " »
 Chequers weekend parties are in full swing. Yesterday it was the turn of the biographer Lady Antonia Fraser; the Clinton friend and author Richard North Patterson (who has just completed an eerily prescient novel about the US presidential race); his partner Dr Nancy Clair; and a sprinkling of (presumably Labour) MPs. The jolly comes complete with a tour of the house by Sarah Brown and a decent lunch. These names have emerged by accident, of course, and the public will not be allowed to know the identities of the rest until at least April. If at all. But certainly last year's hints that Gordon would not copy Tony in this regard do not seem completely accurate.
From our man on the Heathrow tarmac, Greg Hurst: overheard at 1.45am today between two members of the 25-strong business delegation who travelled with Gordon Brown to China and India, after touching down and waiting for their sleek cars. Businessman 1: "I see the markets took a battering yesterday; down 6 or 7 per cent." Businessman 2: "Well, now the captains of industry are back in the country, we'll see if we can turn it around."
Day one of the monster Lisbon treaty debate, and William Hague gives the chamber a much-needed break from Bill Cash by riffing on the subject of the first President of Europe. We pick up the transcript shortly after the Shadow Foreign Secretary has reminded the chamber that T Blair is looking as though he might want the post: "We can all picture the scene at a European Council sometime next year. Picture the face of our poor Prime Minister as the name “Blair” is nominated by one president and prime minister after another: the look of utter gloom on his face at the nauseating, glutinous praise oozing from every head of government, the rapid revelation of a majority view, agreed behind
Continue reading "The moment President Blair's motorcade hits Downing Street" »
 Five days living with Gordon Brown seems to have put colleagues in a grump. The BBC's Nick Robinson can't work out what Gordo's grand words actually mean. Benedict Brogan from the Mail calls Brown "wearisome in the extreme". And Sky's Adam Boulton says that Gordo's headline-grabbing announcement that he wants honours for foreign sportsmen amounts to little, because the honours system is already open to foreigners.
 No shortage of politics about today - developments on Northern Rock, the start of the Europe debate, a statement on MoD data loss - but the UK political machine is never quite the same when the Prime Minister and his travelling circus are out of town. But Govardhan Brown (as he is known to Hindus) has no shortage of things to do out in India, not least "throw off the shadow of Tony Blair [and] carve his own space in the global arena with a keynote speech on Monday morning," according to the Times of India.
Just an average Monday for our Gordo then.
Two discordant notes from the newspapers on the Indian subcontinent, however. There is simmering anger about proposals to change the visa system that would limit visits to three months and that the Times of India says are "hurting Indians". Also, they have picked up on the comments made by Phil Woolas, the Environment Minister, who said at the weekend that the Indian Government wasn't doing enough of climate change. The riposte: "The cynical view here is that the difference in the British views on China and India is that the former now buys more anti-pollution equipment from the UK and Europe, but not India. In reality, India and China both have the same approach to climate change."
David Beckham was in Downing Street tonight for a meeting with Gordon Brown. Ben Brogan has questioned why the Prime Minister felt the need to obfuscate when asked directly about the meeting this morning, during the press conference. Alistair Darling smiled knowingly at the question but the Prime Minister looked stern and talked about "no specific plans", the broganblog reports.
A Downing Street spokesman said the meeting was a “genuinely private matter” and that Beckham had been invited at the behest of Mr Brown.
Fine, but then flick over to a post on the Mirror website by Bob Roberts, the paper's political editor. He reveals he was standing outside Downing Street "for a quick chat with David Beckham and a little exclusive story about Goldenballs' secret talks with Gordon Brown."
Updated .... Enthusiastically embracing the never-wrong-for-long concept of the internet, the Mirror has pointed out that they were not actually invited inside Downing Street, but "in Downing Street" meant were standing in the cold outside for nuggets from Beckham. That said, news of the meeting was slipped out in advance in their excellent exclusive on Saturday.
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