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
So Gordon Brown is through this storm. And he has Peter Mandelson to thank for it. For one moment on Thursday night, the government hung by a cashmere thread. But Peter Mandelson rallied David Miliband, the moment of maximum danger passed. The Prime Minister is a weakened figure sitting in the Cabinet this morning. He…
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…
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…
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…
Jon Snow
Today heralded the great domestic political clash of the titans: Peter Mandelson versus Ken Clarke. Each a big beast in their own party, it would have been the first time they had collided since Clarke took over the business portfolio in opposition to Secretary of State Mandelson. The latter has announced a rescue package for…