Jon Snow
What the AV debate tells us about the condition of UK politics
Will the debate over whether to adopt AV stimulate the malaise surrounding interest in politics, asks Jon Snow.
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Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson on social housing post-Grenfell
Beyond of course, the enormous personal tragedies of the Grenfell fire, one of its wider legacies has been to shine an unforgiving light on Britain’s social housing. The former Home Secretary Alan Johnson grew up in the slums of North Kensington, eventually bulldozed to make way for Grenfell. For his generation, a council home was…
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Jon Snow
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Gary Gibbon
Johnson’s departure gives Balls the economic reins
Our Political Editor says that Alan Johnson’s resignation involved “affairs of the heart” – but there was little love lost until recently between the two Eds now at the top of the Labour Party.
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Gary Gibbon
Royal wedding sparks Labour photographer joke
If the Royal couple, Prince William and Kate Middleton, need a photographer, Labour Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson has a suggestion, as Gary Gibbon blogs.
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Did Cameron get violent crime figures right?
David Cameron says violent crime almost doubled under the last government, but is he quoting the figures selectively?
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Jon Snow
My Ministerial Bashing Agenda
I am grateful to David Raynes for his response to yesterday’s Snowblog concerning the way politicians deal with bad news. He’s quite right. It is quite possible that the reason the Minister doesn’t want to give me, or anyone else, an in depth interview about the ‘shambles’ in the Home Office drug area is because…
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Jon Snow
My battles for answers over Mephedrone
Jon Snow blogs about his interview with Home Secretary Alan Johnson on Mephedrone
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Gary Gibbon
Cabinet ministers involved in new plot to oust Brown
Phones ran hot between backbench MPs, junior ministers and at least two Cabinet members, it is claimed, over the Christmas break about how to bring the PM down.
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Gary Gibbon
Brown ‘gets it’ on immigration: from expenses, to extremism?
Gordon Brown’s speech today is an acknowledgment that there is a vacuum in the public debate on immigration and that the government has not been doing enough lately to fill it.
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Jon Snow
Dealing with drugs needs new thinking and new courage
Alan Johnson’s gift to personkind might be to re-engage Professor David Nutt and join with him in calling a halt to a bankrupt method of handling the drugs disaster
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Gary Gibbon
Brown ‘unlikely’ to lead Labour at next election
A former Cabinet Minister tells me it is “exceptionally unlikely” that Gordon Brown will lead the Labour Party into the next election. Labour rebels acknowledge that some support for the project has gone but claim some new blood is coming in, in particular from the soft left. The argument runs that the “opportunity cost” of…
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Gary Gibbon
ID cards: a diminished announcement
Alan Johnson has finished his review of ID cards and says he is going ahead with them… so it’s ID cards full steam ahead? Not quite. This was originally meant to be a scheme that would end up in compulsory cards. There would be votes in Parliament before we got there, 70-80 per cent voluntary…
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Gary Gibbon
Hutton’s resignation reflects Labour’s despair
The John Hutton resignation is not a naked political attack, like James Purnell’s. But it is symptomatic of something even more serious than Labour’s divisions – Labour’s despair. John Hutton doesn’t rate Gordon Brown that highly – his private comments on Mr Brown are legendary and profane. But he can’t quite see the point of…