Jon Snow
Gordon Brown will announce an inquiry into the Iraq war this week. My sources tell me that this will not be chaired by a judge, senior or retired. It will be chaired instead by a historian. The hot tip in Whitehall is that it is likely to be the respected Churchill and Holocaust scholar Sir…
Gary Gibbon
This was Gordon Brown in Mrs Merton mode – “let’s have a heated debate.” On electoral reform, there is nothing the government can do this side of a general election. The Prime Minister is effectively planning the next Labour general election manifesto in which a commitment to electoral reform, some type of additional vote system…
Jon Snow
Gordon Brown will signal today whether the political classes “get it” when it comes to combating the expenses scandal in parliament. “Getting it” extends well beyond expenses to full-blown reform of our system of governance, as I have written here before.
Jon Snow
So to policy now that the personality of the prime minister has, for the time being, been parked. So what to expect? Mostly obviously, I guess, we look to proposed changes in Post Office ownership, now to be kicked into the long grass. A possible end, too, for the ID scheme (estimated cost: £5bn), and…
Gary Gibbon
At the heart of the Prime Minister’s address to the PLP in 30 minutes’ time will be an analysis of last night’s results which tries to say “it is not all over for Labour.” The Prime Minister will say there are signs in the European Parliament election results that the Tories have not made a…
Jon Snow
There is what feels like a nasty coalition between the media and the political classes. There seems to be an acute desire to bring whatever it is to the boil and then lance it (mixing metaphors). But I’m not sure there is actually anything very specific to bring to the boil beyond the residual right-left…
Gary Gibbon
Just spoken to two leading rebels and they are sounding less than confident they will get their prey tonight. The Parliamentary Labour Party meeting at 6pm is chaired by Tony Lloyd, the Manchester MP who is chair of the PLP and is standing by Gordon Brown. One rebel said he expected Mr Lloyd to call…
Amid the chaos, it appears Team Brown are clinging on to one hope: the economy. As the prime minister himself has just said: “People are beginning to see the difference… there are already some instances of the economy showing results.” There’s some irony here. In a previous abortive attempt at blogging I posted about electionomics…
Gary Gibbon
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…
Jon Snow
To answer my own initial question: Purnell has broken from the pack. He has done what David Miliband, conceivably Andy Burnham, and maybe John Hutton (of whom more in a moment), might have done and must have been thinking of doing. Purnell has plunged a knife that has been waiting for such an exercise for…
Gary Gibbon
New rumour is that Gordon Brown didn’t actually decide to keep Alistair Darling in place until this morning and that an early morning conversation with Peter Mandelson swung it. That won’t do much for Mandelson/Balls relations, which had been patched up since Lord Mandelson’s return to government. Ed Balls will be feeling frustrated that his…
Gary Gibbon
Alistair Darling saw the Prime Minister last night for a long conversation and made it plain he didn’t think he should be thrown out of the Chancellorship. The chancellor was offered a number of jobs but turned them all down. I believe Mr Darling left still not entirely clear whether he had won his right…
Jon Snow
Crumbs! An act of personal political courage – or of scheming personal political advancement? At this point almost impossible to judge. I don’t know James Purnell well. He was once a pivotal bag carrier, speech writer and muse inside Tony Blair’s Downing Street. Hence a Blairite, almost certainly well aware of, and wary of, Gordon…
Gary Gibbon
The Cabinet reshuffle is under way. Most of it will happen by phone because ministers are out in constituencies where they we’re putting in some time campaigning. This is Gordon Brown’s moment to assert his much diminished authority .
Gary Gibbon
There will now be a pause in hostilities, until polls close tonight. Then the rebels trying to bring down Gordon Brown hope to start a drumbeat of protest, a “softening up exercise” one of them called it.