Jon Snow
The coalition is a week old and with the benefit of hindsight appears a strangely natural consequence of the long weeks of electoral campaigning we have been through, writes Jon Snow.
Gary Gibbon
Andy Burnham, like David Blunkett, John Reid and Tom Harris, has spoken out against a Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition.
Gary Gibbon
It’s a well-attended PLP meeting – MPs are struggling to get into the committee room. Gordon Brown is up first. His trio of election strategists – Peter Mandelson, Douglas Alexander and Harriet Harman – then speak. Charles Clarke has gone in to take his medicine.
Gary Gibbon
(UPDATED: now with video of Ed Balls interview.) To the QE2 centre in Westminster where Gordon Brown sat on a platform flanked by Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson, a lecturn either side of them. I thought the PM might be about to chair a debate between the two consorts, but alas not. It was an international education conference (which…
Gary Gibbon
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has decided to give a slightly more explicit message of support than the mealy-mouthed evasion he managed after seven hours thought, last night.
Gary Gibbon
Alistair Darling comes out in favour of Gordon Brown, though I hear Jack Straw and Harriet Harman may currently be in No. 10 and they still haven’t done the supportive TV statements that some thought were coming some time ago.
Gary Gibbon
(UPDATE: Now includes video of Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon interviews.) This plot desperately needs new names and we wait to see them. Geoff Hoon, as a former chief whip, knows his way round things, knows very well that previous plots fizzled out and lacked organisation. He would not lightly put his name at the…
Gary Gibbon
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.
Gary Gibbon
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…