It’s a supreme irony that on this day of Whitehall whirlwind, there’s actually been the first hard evidence that the economy might be on the turn. After the worst recession for at least four decades, one closely followed indicator is suggesting the economy actually grew, in May, for the first time in 14 months
Gary Gibbon
The temperature dropped both metaphorically and meteorologically in Westminster this afternoon. Lord Mandelson remains an unlikely bouncer guarding the Prime Minister’s front door, and his soothing presence on the lunchtime bulletins reassured some that there couldn’t be a major Blairite plot if he wasn’t part of it.
Gary Gibbon
Rumours are flying around about more resignations this afternoon. It would be surprising, but then the word febrile doesn’t do justice to it. Ministers are on the Green where I am standing outside the Commons giving robust defences of the PM. But the ally of Gordon Brown who let it be known off the record…
Jon Snow
A political crisis This is a political spectacle none of us has ever seen before. The government is reshuffling itself. Hazel Blears has just shuffled herself out of the Cabinet. She’d have been fired anyway over her second homery and non-payment of capital gains tax. Two other ministers, one of them another woman, are expected…
Gary Gibbon
Brownites have been quick to point to Hazel Blears’s resignation and say “it’s a plot”. But while there is a mutual support group, there have been conversations and in some quarters serious plotting, the Blears resignation I understand didn’t actually form itself in her mind until she saw in this morning’s Daily Telegraph that No…
Gary Gibbon
Hazel Blears has chosen the eve of the local election to let it be known that she is quitting the Cabinet. It is an extraordinary act of disloyalty and agression. Leave aside the fact that she was probably going to get the boot anyway. You just don’t behave towards a Prime Minister like this.
Gary Gibbon
Oops. There goes another one. Tom Watson, the Cabinet Office minister and one of the prime minister’s most trusted advisers, has told Gordon Brown that he wants to stand down from the government. He will stay on as an MP. Tom Watson is known as a blogger, former whip, a man who knows the Labour…
Gary Gibbon
Friends of Jacqui Smith are insisting her departure is not part of a coordinated Blair Babe walk-out from government to precipitate the downfall of Gordon Brown (Patricia Hewitt and Beverley Hughes announced today that they were standing down as MPs at the next election ). This is much more about the first, longest suffering victim…
Jon Snow
Ever since she was discovered to be claiming a room in her sister’s house in Nunhead, south London as her primary residence, home secretary Jacqui Smith has been in trouble. Her husband renting a couple of porn movies on the taxpayer didn’t help. But in truth the first woman home secretary, the second youngest holder…
Gary Gibbon
Sources closes to the PM are now confirming that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is to go in the next reshuffle.
Jon Snow
I first set eyes on Gordon Brown at Edinburgh University in 1970. We were both involved in student protests in our respective universities and I’d been invited from Liverpool University to give a talk to him and his fellow protesters on the campus in Edinburgh.
Jon Snow
This is a heck of a day – today, Tuesday 19 May. We’re in the midst of a full-blown constitutional crisis. The Speaker is suddenly resigning (2.30pm). Gordon Brown has summoned an emergency press conference at 5.30. There is a febrile political atmosphere. Nobody knows what the course of events will be.
Jon Snow
The Telegraph editor-in-chief, Will Lewis, has been telling friends of the extraordinary night his newspaper went to press with the first of its revelations. In the middle of the evening he gets a call from the prime minister, Gordon Brown. Mr Brown is well aware of what is about to happen. His call is not…
Jon Snow
Legal sources I have spoken to tell me there could be a case to answer under both the fraud act (over the specific claim) and under the theft act. If it came to it, there’s a real danger that the Metropolitan Police may be put off investigating former Labour minister Elliot Morley by the chaotic…
Jon Snow
Yesterday in Downing Street I asked Gordon Brown whether Saudi Arabia is still funding the Taliban. I was attending a news conference he was hosting with Pakistan’s President Zardari. Mr Brown did not address my specific question. Sidestepping the Saudi aspect, he described the MI6 financial units that are now hard at work tracking Taliban…