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
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.
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.
Jon Snow
How convenient, the Whitsun break. Have you ever wondered how many weeks the political classes absent themselves in a year? But the problem today is not absenteeism. In some cases it’s a lack of it.
Jon Snow
I am very struck by the huge response to both Snowblog and Channel 4 News this week – high-quality contributions and a number of very personal comparisons with what is happening in regard to disclosure of MPs‘ arrangements. Stan, as you return to work today after nine months without a job, I wish you well.
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…