ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Tony Blair's handsome tribute to Gordon Brown

'My friend of twenty years... strong... sound in his convictions... every quality to mark him out as a great Prime Minister for our country... his best is as good as it gets...'

Tony Blair (who didn't mention Harriet Harman) only gave a short speech and disappeared off the stage with a video separating his departure and Brown's speech.

...Blair back on after video to embrace Brown.  Massive Union Jack on the video screen.

Please let it be true... Harman elected Deputy Labour Leader

3.15pm: Harriet Harman attacks Cameron as weak and opportunistic - rejects his finger-wagging about the family - his support for marriage and wearing of yellow rubber gloves - Cameron is only interested in women for one thing, she says - their votes.

3.05pm: Iain Dale's response - Thank you, Thank you, Thank you

2.55pm: Blears went out first - Peter Hain next - Surprisingly Benn next - Then Cruddas (who led on first round first preferences) - FINAL PERCENTAGES WERE HARRIET HARMAN WITH 50.3% AND ALAN JOHNSON 49.7%.  She won on the back of members' votes - Johnson led on trade unions and parliamentarians.

2.40pm: Both Sky and BBC News 24 are saying that Harriet Harman has been elected. The 2IC of Labour is now an opponent of the Iraq war.

On Radio 4's The World This Weekend Nick Robinson has just speculated that Harriet Harman might have been elected Deputy Labour Leader.  Only Jon Cruddas has been to the left of the woman who was ejected from her Work & Pensions perch in 1998 after comprehensively failing to master her brief.  During the contest Ms Harman has adopted positions on the Iraq war, nuclear power and Trident that are clearly at odds with the Brown-Blair years.  The speculation is only that but if confirmed it would bring a smile to Mr Cameron's face.

Fasten your seat belts

I hope that there will be no Brown honeymoon.  I hope that he'll handle his entry into Number Ten as badly as he botched his last Budget.  There must be a real danger, however, that he'll enjoy a good couple of weeks - he might even enjoy a few good months.

He'll certainly sack some unpopular Cabinet ministers.  He'll have lots of attention and will probably announce some popular initiatives.  In charge of the Labour machine he'll step up attacks on David Cameron and try to misrepresent results from the policy review process.  There's a real possibility that he'll erase our 3.5% average opinion poll advantage and possibly establish a small lead of his own.

Labour strategists are desperately hoping that Tory MPs, commentators and, yes, bloggers will over-react to these choppy times.  They hope we all might interpret a temporary improvement in Labour fortunes as something more permanent.  We mustn't over-react.  In the mock pledge card below (click to enlarge) I've listed some of the reasons why - if we hold our nerve as a party over the next few months - we can be optimistic in the medium term about our party's prospects.  I'm not saying that everything is perfect in Project Cameron (regular readers of this site know that I'd like us to stay truer to our traditional beliefs and to be more serious about issues of social and international justice) but the party has made a lot of progress in the last two years and we must not jeopardise our advances over the summer months.

If I was Gordon Brown...

...I would probably have tried to do some sort of deal with the LibDems.  At the moment it's not playing too well for him - with the LibDems accusing him of going behind Ming's back to offer Paddy Ashdown the NI job -  but the Brownites may be calculating that, in the medium-term, it will make their man look less partisan and something of a bridge-builder.  The fact that Ming had private talks with Brown is certainly good for the Tories and gives us our 'Vote LibDem, Get Brown' campaign for Tory-LibDem marginals.  It appears that LibDem MPs in southern seats were most appalled at the prospect of being seen to team up with Labour.

Here are a few other things I would do in my first week as Prime Minister (if I was Mr B):

1. Sack Tessa Jowell and Patricia Hewitt.  They are the unacceptable faces of Labour sleaze and incompetence.  I would also put personal loyalty aside and sack Des Browne, too.  I would give big promotions to Miliband and Johnson and Cabinet positions to the likes of James Purnell and Liam Byrne to show that my Government would have a fresh dynamic.
2. I would offer the British people a referendum on the EU Treaty.  A new poll from Open Europe says that 83% of Labour voters want a vote.  It would also do me a lot of good with The Sun and The Daily Mail.
3. Call for Guantanamo Bay to be shut down as soon as possible.  [A timetable for withdrawal from Iraq might be a temptation for Mr Brown but this would be a safer way of distancing the new Prime Minister from America without undermining the Iraqi government].
4. Write to all of those people who signed the Number Ten Road Pricing Petition with these words:

"I think there are a lot of potential benefits from road pricing but I want to lead a Government that genuinely listens to people. That's why I'm writing to you to say that there will be no national road pricing scheme for ten years.  Thank you for signing the petition and I hope you will use other petitions on the Downing Street website to communicate what you want from my Government.  It won't always be possible for me to agree to what you want but I will always pay close attention to what you say."

The pollsters on polling: In this era of constant electioneering do governments still recover from the mid-term onwards?

We've asked three of Britain's leading opinion pollsters, Stephan Shakespeare of YouGov, Andrew Hawkins of CommunicateResearch and Ben Page of Ipsos MORI, five questions on polling:

Yesterday we revelled the answer to the first question: Blair is still in office. The public have yet to see Brown in Downing Street. Then there's the silly and party conference seasons. When will be a good time to start taking the headline polls seriously again? You can see the answers our experts gave here.

Our second question is: The traditional view is that governments are most unpopular in the middle of their terms and their popularity generally increases closer to elections. In this era of constant electioneering does that historical pattern still hold true?

Watch what our panel said below but here's a quick summary: Ben Page, yes it has, look at the last two Labour Governments, but you can't say it always will be; Andrew Hawkins yes it is true but every Parliament is different and Stephan Shakespeare says that in a time of constant electioneering we cannot always assume a party's popularity will return.

Open thread on the Newsnight Deputy Labour leadership debate >>>

You can vote for your favourite candidate on the Newsnight website... in terms of performance I voted for Alan Johnson - by far the most charismatic and persuasive.

11.12pm: Cruddas, Harman and Johnson support some sort of amnesty for illegal immigrants.

11.10pm: Alan Johnson is only candidate to oppose taxpayer funding of politics - all support limits on election spending - Cruddas supports cap on individual donations.

11pm: Cruddas only 'no' to Trident and only 'yes' to ending charitable status for private schools.  All in favour of nuclear power stations.

11pm: Hain and Harman attack stop and question press stories from the weekend.

10.50pm: Harman, Blears and Cruddas say that they wouldn't vote for the Iraq war if they knew then what they know now. Hain and Benn say they won't revisit the decision. Alan Johnson takes the most Blairite position by ignoring the WMD issue and focuses on Saddam's dictatorial record and contravention of UN resolutions.

Gordon Brown almost certain to be unopposed

At the time of writing Gordon Brown needs the backing of just one more MP to be certain of succeeding Tony Blair as Labour leader and our Prime Minister.  The BBC asks if that is good or bad for him.  My hunch is it's bad.  He's not going to get the coverage a horse race contest would have generated nor will he be seen to crush the left and, in the process, style himself as the defender of Middle Britain.

Update: It's now certain. John McDonnell has conceded and will be on Newsnight tonight.

By sixteen-to-one Tory members think Brown will be a less effective leader than Blair

Are Tory members complacent or are they justified in their overwhelming view that Gordon Brown will be a less effective leader than Tony Blair?  By sixteen-to-one (64% to 4%) those Tory members surveyed by ConservativeHome thought that the Chancellor would be a less effective leader than the outgoing Prime Minister.

Other findings:

• 24% believe that the Labour leadership election will keep the party in the headlines and give Gordon Brown an opinion poll boost but 70% do not believe that Gordon Brown will provide Labour with any long-term boost in the opinion polls.
• 38% think that the Labour leadership contest will be divisive and voters will see the old Labour left reasserting itself.
• 28% think that David Miliband should have challenged Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership.

Here are some of your verbatim observations attached to the survey:

• "David Miliband does not want to be the captain of a sinking ship. When Gordon Brown explodes or implodes, Miliband will step in as its saviour."
• "Gordon Brown will have no honeymoon at all. We will have a Callaghan-like three years with a failing Labour administration clinging on until the last moment."
• "There will not be a resurgence of the Left (as an identfied political force) for two decades, but its insidious influence (eg institutional egalitarianism and redistribution of rights) will remain."
• "The rump of 40-50 hard left MPs, all in safe seats, will be shown up as the potential power brokers in a Labour minority or coalition administration."
• "The Tories will see a dip in the polls because we won't have publicity... This will lead to plotting against DC, wasting our chance to consign Labour to opposition for a decade..."
• "GB is not new; any bounce will be minimal; he is the co-architect of New Labour and cannot see why it has gone wrong."
• "There should be a general election, NOT an internal Labour party election, or automatic handover."
• "Gordon Brown has no mandate over English issues."

Gordon Brown for Britain

               >>> CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE SHORT VIDEO  <<<

Cameron's quiet today: "Tory leader David Cameron was unusually coy about his views of Gordon Brown as he visited a green waste recycling plant in his constituency."

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PA is reporting a good Newsnight poll:

"Prime Minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown is seen as more arrogant and less in touch with voters then Tony Blair and Conservative leader David Cameron, according to a Newsnight poll. The Chancellor is expected to become the next premier, but appears to have an image problem with some of the electorate, the poll commissioned by the BBC current affairs programme suggests."

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George Osborne's official statement on the launch:

"Was that it?  After ten years of waiting, all Gordon Brown has given us is re-heated slogans and a promise to listen – when all the evidence shows he’s incapable of acknowledging his mistakes. The last ten years were the Blair/Brown years, so he cannot be the change Britain needs.  It’s same old Labour, same old spin.  That has become crystal clear today."

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Peter Franklin has an interesting take on the speech, and urges Cameron to also chase the "striver vote":

"I've heard this somewhere before, I kept thinking. On one level this was hardly surprising. The speech was composed of bog standard political platitudes that could have come from any mainstream British politician. However, there was something about the precise choice and framing of the platitudes that was distinctive, and yet far from original. And then it came to me, another speech, delivered four years ago by none other than Iain Duncan Smith."

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Open Europe's response to the speech:

"He’s also right to be very cautious about signing up to any new treaty. Many other EU leaders have failed to listen to the no votes in France and Holland, and they now plan to push ahead regardless and transfer significant new powers to the EU.  Brown should certainly go to the key EU summit on 22 June to make sure Tony Blair doesn’t lock him into something which the voters don’t want."

and the European Foundation's:

"Following Tony Blair’s announcement to leave office by 27 June 2007, but noting his promised attendance at a major European Council Summit on 21-22 June, The European Foundation demands that Gordon Brown must pressure Blair not to commit to the Constitutional Treaty before his departure or leave the UK position open to further EU obligations."

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Dizzy Thinks points out that GordonBrownForBritain.com has just gone live. It includes a voting facility on what policy areas he should be focusing on and a Google map of where he takes his campaign (rather similar to Where'sGordon?).

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Gordon Brown has just finished his launch speech and long Q&A session in the Imagination Gallery (the rest of his itinerary was revealed on ToryDiary yesterday).

The room was crammed with journalists and Brownites and chaired by Jack Straw. The event didn't go smoothly - one of the autocue screens blocked Brown's face from the camera for his whole speech. He twice muttered to Straw that he could take every question rather than just a few and was being extra nice to the journalists, it all seemed very false.

To make it worse, Tony Blair competed for attention on the BBC's split screen by speaking at the simultaneous launch of a Sir Bobby Moore statue at Wembley.

Before the speech George Osborne articulated on BBC News 24 what is probably the strongest line of attack on Brown:

"When you look at the things people are really fed up with, like the collapse of the pension system, like the failure to get money to the frontline of the health service, Gordon Brown is more responsible for that than any other politician including Tony Blair."

This post will be updated with news and commentary throughout the afternoon.

Deputy Editor

Going down with Gordon Brown

Gordon Brown launches his leadership bid today.  ConservativeHome has produced this light-hearted video to remind the British people of his failings...

In summary, those failings are...

• A decade of stealthy taxation that has seen Britain's tax burden rise above that of Germany - endangering our long-term competitiveness;
• Record levels of private debt;
• The £100bn+ raid on pensions;
• Huge levels of government waste from the Dome to the Olympics - from tax credits to the NHS computer fiasco;
• The fact that Brown cannot escape responsibility for all of Blair's failings - he has been central to the spin and squander of the last ten years.  The recent prisons crisis being a good example and the deceitful nature of his recent Budget.
  

You can put 'Going down with Gordon Brown' on to your iPod by clicking here.

And please send a link to the video to all of your email contacts...

Brown to launch leadership bid in Basildon and Stevenage tomorrow

Mr Brown's message: I am going to be Prime Minister for Middle England.

When we have more location details we'll post them.  It's 2.30pm Stevenage and 5.30pm in Basildon.  Please don't go and disrupt these events by holding placards about Gordon Brown's stealth taxes, pensions raid, working credits fiasco, wasteful public spending, private debt mountain...

11/05 update: It looks like there will be a walkabout in Stevenage's town centre followed by a
short informal speech.  Afterwards he's planning to go to Basildon's leisure centre at around 5pm. Do take some time off work to make him feel welcome.

11/05 afternoon update: Brown will be in Harlow at 4pm.

Blast from the past Brown

With Blair widely thought to be announcing his resignation tomorrow, Alan Duncan will today give a speech attempting to assuage any lingering doubts that Gordon Brown is up to his neck in this unpopular government. Speaking to consultancy Sovereign Strategy, his main soundbites will be:

• "He is not a fresh start: he is the blast from the past."
• "Every imaginable aspect of the last 10 years of government has had to pass through Brown's all-controlling hands."
• "Brown is not just the perpetrator of spin and propaganda: he is their principal architect."
• "There isn't one of his budgets which has been free of deceitful trickery, and he cannot escape responsibility for a single day of the last 10 years."
• "In many areas of government, Brown has been more in charge than the Prime Minister himself. There is no way Brown will be able to dissociate himself from Labour's record - he is the record."
• "The man who destroyed your pension and doubled your council tax will soon have nobody else to blame but himself."

Scroll down ToryDiary's Countdown to Brown? category for more on the man. Meanwhile, Jon Cruddas, now backed by Tony Robinson in the competitive Deputy Leadership race, has released a poll of Labour Party members showing that half of them believe the elections results last week were bad and that their party needs to change some policies and the way they operate.

Deputy Editor

Cameron versus Brown on ITV1

ITV1's Sunday Edition programme won something of a coup this morning when they secured campaign trail interviews with both David Cameron and Gordon Brown.  Below are some observations from the interviews but they will probably be remembered for Gordon Brown's clear indication that he has no indication of calling an early General Election.

Location, location, location: DC was interviewed on a farm; GB on a train.  The train location meant that GB kept being shrouded in black as his carriage passed through a tunnel.  He turned in a lo-energy performance compared to David Cameron's engaged and charismatic interview.

Thursday's elections: DC was pressed again and again on winning in the north.  He emphasised his hope for progress in Greater Manchester, Bolton and Bury.  He said that the Tories were putting up more candidates than Labour in the North West and Yorkshire.  Introduced by Andrew Rawnsley as Britain's next Prime Minister GB conceded that Thursday's results would partly be a judgment on his performance.

Party change: DC (paraphrasing): 'I've put Tories back in the centre ground by reforming candidate selection, changing the Tory position on NHS opt-outs and putting the environment at the heart of the party's agenda although the necessary changes I have made are not on the scale that was necessary for Labour. I have a big idea - social responsibility.  I've never had a grand plan to become Prime Minister from when I was at school.  Greg Dyke would have been a good mayor and the LibDems had suffered "a failure of imagination" on the issue.  GB gave little clue as to how his leadership would be different from Tony Blair.  He said that Labour had achieved much in the last ten years - the end of stop-go and investment in public services being the highlights - and now needed to tackle today's challenges.

New FT, New Chancellor...

The FT has a crisp new look today and carries an article about the possible line-up of Gordon Brown's first team.  The article follows yesterday's news that David Miliband will not be challenging Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership.  Mr Miliband's reward, speculates the FT's James Blitz, might be the office of Foreign Secretary although Mrs Beckett has only been in the job for one year.  Mr Blitz expects John Reid to stay in place.  There has been a thaw in relations between Brown and Reid in recent months and there is little sense in introducing new instability into a department that desperately needs some continuity of strategic leadership.

The most interesting decision for Mr Brown will be the appointment of his own successor.  Alistair Darling has been the long-term favourite but there is now some concern that having three Scots in the top four jobs in British government won't exactly help the Labour Party with its English problem.  Mr Darling might be passed over as a consequence and Ed Balls or Jack Straw might become Chancellor of the Exchequer.  Jack Straw, Brown's campaign manager, would then have held all three main offices of government outside of the very top job.  The FT says that the City would probably welcome Ed Balls as Chancellor.

Blitz also expects some big promotions for young turks Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, James Purnell and Ed Miliband in order to suggest that a Brown administration will have vitality.

This resuffle speculation follows last week's blogtalk that the Tories might play musical chairs themselves.  Dizzy speculated that Liam Fox might be moved.  That would be a very risky move as Dr Fox is the champion of the right within the shadow cabinet and his emphasis on energy security represents an alternative way of selling David Cameron's climate change agenda to people who are sceptical of the state's ability to combat global warming.

Brown's law

First Gordon Brown ignored the advice of civil servants and embarked upon his devastating raid on the nation's pensions.  Now we learn from The Sunday Times that he ignored the advice of the Bank of England when, from 1999 to 2002, he sold much of the nation's gold reserve.  His pig-headedness cost the nation an estimated £2bn.

Hardly a day goes by at the moment without a damaging headline about Gordon Brown.  This website isn't complaining - oh no - but it is interesting that stories that previously couldn't be sold to newspapers are suddenly getting splashed across front pages - day after day after day.  Both the pensions and gold sale stories are not new stories.  The Tories have been trying to get the nation angered at them on many previous occasions.

What has changed is that the media are now in herd-like pursuit of Brown.  Probably because they want a leadership contest.

I suggest therefore that we should institute Brown's law and Brown's law states the following:

"80% of the size of a story depends upon the mood of the journalistic pack and 20% on the intrinsic importance of the underlying news event."

Or perhaps it should be 90% to 10%?

Click on the graphic on the right to see a Sunday Times chart on the disastrous timing of Gordon Brown's gold sales >>>

Related link: Gordon Brown and the real New Labour project

Three homes Meacher for leader (please)

ConservativeHome has decided to nail its colours to the mast and give Michael Meacher its full backing to become Labour's next leader.  His article in today's Times - 'No More New Labour' - spelt out his manifesto:

• A return to the politics of old-style redistribution;
• A reversal of Michael Howard's 'prison works policy' through a "drastic" reduction in the prison population;
• Parliamentary ratification of all Prime Ministerial appointments to the Cabinet;
• The ruling out of the military option against Iran;
• A minimum 60% cut in carbon emmissions by 2050.

It'll be as if Tony Blair never happened.  Mr Meacher is typical of the 'others must live more simply environmentalism.'  The Daily Mail has previously exposed how he has three homes for his own personal use within a large property portfolio.  This is what he wrote twenty years ago:

"Housing is not, or should not be, a status symbol, an object of conspicuous consumption, or a source of market power or wealth.  It is a place where individuals and families should be able to live and inter-relate in mutual happiness.  Too many people have second homes or too large homes for their needs, while too many others are homeless or overcrowded or even lacking basic facilities."

Incredible hypocrisy.

Blair - our deadliest-ever political opponent - has confused the electoral landscape for more than fifteen years.  The end of his time in Number Ten will be a huge opportunity for Conservatives if Old Labour views come to prominence during the leadership election.  Labour still do not appreciate how central he was to their success.

Iain Dale has more on the increasingly negative race for the Deputy Labour Leadership.

Brown's failings are encapsulated by the pensions affair

These are bad times for Gordon Brown.  Opinion polls suggest that David Cameron's lead will grow as soon as he succeeds Tony Blair, his Budget flopped with voters, his nose excavation habits have become a pick of YouTube (thanks to Guido) and his former Cabinet colleague Charles Clarke is desperately organising a leadership challenge to him.

His latest troubles stem from his 1997 decision to ignore civil service advice and carry on with his disastrous raid on Britain's pensions.  A memo headlined in Saturday's Times revealed that Mr Brown was warned that pension providers could lose £4bn-a-year, that the low-paid would be hurt and that there would be a big impact on share values.  In so many ways this pensions drama is a cameo for the sins of Gordon Brown's whole decade in Number 11 Downing Street:

• Arrogant: Gordon always knows best (or at least he thinks he does).  His Cabinet colleagues have long complained about his arrogance.  His former top civil servant compared him to Stalin two weeks ago.  Because of his waving away of civil service warnings on the pensions crisis we now know that arrogance is not something he has learnt in office but a fault from the very beginning of his time in Government.
• Short-termist: For a short-term revenue windfall Gordon Brown did long-term damage to Britain's pensions sector.  The same can be said of the complicated tax system that he has created.  The sly and stealthy taxes have brought extra money into the Treasury in the short-term but at the long-term expense of Britain's competitiveness.
• Sly: The civil service advice was released at the end of the parliamentary session - leading opposition politicians to claim that he was trying to hide the bad news.  The news would probably have been forced out by Freedom of Information requests but Brown may have acted now in order to 'bury the bad news' before the leadership contest gets underway.  Brownites would like us to believe that the era of spin will end when their man replaces Tony Blair as Prime Minister but Mr Brown has been as guilty of New Labour's defining weakness as his long-time neighbour.  Every one of his Budgets has hidden the bad news.  This year's Budget was no exception.  A 2p cut in income tax was proclaimed but lots of stealthy tax rises were only discovered in the days that followed.
• Unrepentant: Gordon Brown won't ever admit when he's wrong.  Although his pensions raid was clearly the wrong thing to have done he still won't admit it.  "A stealth tax aimed to hit those who have worked hard and saved for their future was pushed through, and then, when the full scale of his failure is finally revealed, there is not a hint of an apology," notes George Osborne in today's Mail.  Brown is also unrepentant about the complex maze of benefits and tax credits that he has created and the persistence of poverty despite massive and wasteful expenditure.

Some leading labour modernisers are desperate for an alternative successor to Tony Blair to emerge but the supertanker that is the Labour party seems unable to engineer a change of course.  After years and years of Tory leadership crises its fun to watch Labour enjoying one of their own.

Noon update: CCHQ has released a document highlighting Brown's reluctance to answer certain types of probing Parliamentary questions that other Ministers don't mind answering, and Philip Hammond (who is quite busy at the moment!) has picked up on how he apparently wanted to take £8bn out of annual pension funds rather than "just" £5bn:

"Gordon Brown’s betrayal of pensioners in the 1997 budget was carried out not only against Civil Service advice but even against the will of the Prime Minister. "This revelation today shows that if it hadn’t been for Tony Blair’s insistence on watering down Gordon Brown’s tax raid, the damage would have been even worse than the £100 billion hit that pensions funds have already suffered."

Tories seek to establish true cost of Gordon Brown's attack on pensions

The Conservatives have been quick to jump on the news that Gordon Brown was repeatedly warned by civil servants about the long-term impact of his £5bn-a-year raid on private pension provision.  Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Philip Hammond, is seeking an independent inquiry by the Government Actuary to establish the true cost to savers of the changes made by Gordon Brown in his very first Budget:

“Gordon Brown must explain to the House why he acted in defiance of his top civil servants who warned that his tax reforms would cost pensions funds billions, leaving a black hole in many of them.  The Chancellor has effectively concealed information surrounding these plans from Parliament for the last ten years.  The extent of disregard he has shown towards pensioners, past and present, is unbelievable. The Chancellor’s been telling us for the last ten years these tax changes didn’t have a negative effect on pensions funds.  The documents now prove this is not true.  An independent inquiry by the Government Actuary into the total cost of this stealth tax to Britain’s pensions funds is urgently required.  The way in which Gordon Brown ignored advice that these measures would undermine pensions funds, his persistent denial of what these papers now confirm, and the sneaky way this bad news release was managed, all pose yet more questions about Gordon Brown’s fitness for the highest office.”

This morning's Times published the all-too-accurate warnings of civil servants about the likely impact of Gordon Brown's proposed reforms:

• "The lower paid would be worse off under the new rules
• Pensioners due to retire would lose out immediately
• Businesses would struggle to adjust to the change
• It would cost pension providers £4 billion a year
• Pension benefits would be cut
• Shares could drop by between 6 per cent and 20 per cent
• The value of existing pension funds could fall immediately by £50 billion
• Local authority schemes would need topping up, leading to higher public spending
• The Department of Trade and Industry would be “gravely concerned” about having to bail out pension schemes driven into insolvency."

Conservatives establish 'Operation Miliband'

The category for this post is 'Countdown to Brown?' because of the longstanding expectation that the Chancellor will move from Number Eleven to Number Ten when Tony Blair steps down.  There is increasingly feverish attempts by the Mandelson-Byers-Clarke-Milburn axis to change that and the only candidate they appear to have is David Miliband.  Is that the best Labour can do?  Gordon Brown has his many weaknesses but is surely a better bet for Labour than the geeky Environment Secretary who will never out-Cameron Cameron?  Labour probably have more chance with Brown - contrasting Brown's seriousness with Cameron's inexperience.  You can also be sure that all hell would follow any successful attempt by Blairites to deny Brown the crown.

Up until now CCHQ's strategy has been built on the expectation of a Prime Minister Brown but, according to The Telegraph, they have now established an anti-Miliband unit:

"The Tory response to Mr Miliband's recent burst of speeches and media appearances has been to commit a small group of staff to the sole task of tracking his past and future utterances.  The anti-Miliband unit will scrutinise his latest speeches, media appearances and comments on his blog.  It will also dig into problems he has faced in his South Shields constituency. A Tory source said: "We would be crazy not to be watching him. It is obvious that a challenge by Miliband cannot be ruled out."

The article Mr Miliband has written for this morning's Telegraph (and, I think, New Statesman) certainly reads like a mini-manifesto for the next stages of the Labour project and, perhaps, a leadership pitch.  He divides the last sixty years into three main phases.  After the war we lived in the 'I need' phase - a phase of history where government helped to provide people with healthcare, education and basic security.  In the 1980s we entered the 'I want' society and the Thatcherite agenda facilitated that hunger for material well-being.  Now, Mr Miliband suggests, we are entering the 'I can' years where people produce and decide - as well as consume and defer.  He gives the examples  of citizen journalism, home energy production, community justice panels and co-operatively-managed parks and public spaces as examples of the 'I can' era.

Milibandism all sounds a lot like David Cameron's social responsibility and localism agenda (The Telegraph leader-writers certainly think so) and imitation is certainly the sincerest form of flattery.  Miliband may be able to steal Cameron's ideas but he cannot match his charisma.

The Brown Tories

In his column for today's News of the World (not online), Fraser Nelson says that he knows "quite a few right-wing people" who prefer Brown to Cameron.  He writes:

"They see the Chancellor as a man who understands economics, hard work and enterprise.  And they see the Tory leader as a decadent rich kid, whose idea of fiscal management is to put the whole Budget on his gold card."

Fraser distances himself from these 'Brown Tories' but he is right to say they exist.  I know one or two of them myself.  I guess the leading examples of the 'Brown Tory' tendency are Paul Dacre and even Rupert Murdoch.  Both appear to have a sympathy for the earthiness of Gordon Brown and their sceptical view of Cameron may be rooted in class.  I don't know.

The affection for Brown seems to be psychological rather than empirical but you have to hope that experience will eventually pull the wool from the Brown Tories' eyes.  At some point these poor souls will surely realise that this 100 tax Chancellor cannot be relied upon to cut taxes... that this man who failed to fund prisons cannot be trusted on security... that the Chancellor who abolished the married couples' allowance is no reliable friend of the family... that this great centraliser won't transform himself into a great devolver...

Anyhow - my guess is that there are going to be more Cameron Labourites who see the Conservative leader as more likely to complete Tony Blair's reform programme.

Wednesday's Budget wasn't about tax or the economy - it was about the character of the man who aspires to be our Prime Minister

As today's YouGov poll shows - Wednesday's Budget has not fooled the British people.  The Conservative lead is higher since Gordon Brown got to his feet than it was before.  Wednesday's Budget has done nothing to alter the course of the British economy or the growth of the British state.  Under Gordon Brown, Britain has become a much more European-style economy with high levels of tax and spending and with a huge increase in dependency.  If only we had an Opposition willing to deliver a fundamental change of course (but that's a topic for another day).

The 2007 Budget did nothing to repair the damage that Gordon Brown has done to UKplc.  But it did - hopefully once-and-for-all - prove that the Chancellor is every bit as manipulative as Tony Blair.  This was a Budget where all the tax rises were hidden and the tax goodies trumpeted. 

George Osborne got it right yesterday during the Commons debate on the Budget:

"If people want to know what this Chancellor would be like in No. 10, they should look no further than yesterday’s Budget—stealthy, sneaky and unable to tell the truth. He is not the man who can restore public trust in Government, because he is the reason why people do not believe a word that they say any more."

It is a lasting legacy of the New Labour project - a project that we must never tire of describing as the Brown-Blair project - that hardly anyone believes a word from any politician.  One challenge for Mr Osborne is to devise a new way of handling the whole Budget process so that it is transparent and that announcements will become more believable.

Where is the 'Stop Brown' blog campaign?

Last night we learnt that David Cameron would enjoy a notional lead of 15% if Gordon Brown was Labour leader.  If that didn't upset the Chancellor this morning's FT must really have got him worked up.

Lord Turnbull, who was Mr Brown's Permanent Secretary at the Treasury for four years before becoming Cabinet Secretary, accuses the Chancellor of "Stalinist ruthlessness" and using his department to treat ministerial colleagues with "more or less complete contempt."

According to the FT's Nicholas Timmins Mr Brown holds a “very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues”.  “He cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process,” Lord Turnbull said.

This is not, of course, the first time that people who have worked closely with Gordon Brown have found his conduct wanting.  A Downing Street insider (perhaps even Blair himself) once told Andrew Rawnsley that Mr Brown was psychologically-flawed and Charles Clarke launched an extraordinary attack on his Cabinet colleague after resigning last year.

Labour MPs must surely now be considering the once-impossible thought that Gordon Brown is not the man to succeed Tony Blair.  Unlike Iain Dale, I do not worry about David Miliband.  Someone recently told me that Mr Miliband looked like the sort of boy who would be bullied in the school playground.  I don't think he could best Cameron.  If I were Labour I'd be very interested in the idea of John Denham.  The idea - floated on PoliticalBetting.com a little while ago - may be Labour's last and best hope.  Articulate, respected by colleagues, representing a southern seat, very knowledgeable about crime because of his Chairmanship of the Home Affairs Select Committee and only out of the Cabinet because of his decision to resign over the Iraq war, Mr Denham could be a credible opponent to Mr Brown.  He would be a man much more likely to represent a breath of fresh air.  Interesting times.

This is certainly the time for a powerful Labour blogging community to emerge.  On Comment is free yesterday, Mike Ion argued that left-of-centre blogging was on the rise and could be a big factor in the deputy leadership race.  My advice is this: the most powerful Labour blog will be the one that begins a Stop Brown campaign and now.  The US left wouldn't have waited this long.  Labour's grassroots shouldn't wait for Milburn and Clarke to act - they should begin a netroots movement now.  Perhaps we Tories should be mounting a Save Brown campaign?

The trio of problems facing Labour today

• Nigel Griffiths, Deputy Leader of the Commons, has resigned from the government over Trident, Jim Devine, PPS to the Health Minister, is expected to do the same later this week.
• Charles Clarke has fuelled infighting by urging David Miliband to stand for the Labour leadership, and deliberately not endorsing Brown.
• Sir Hayden Phillips appears to be standing firm on the principle of caps on individual donations, including those that come via trade unions.

Deputy Editor

This isn't going to help Brown enjoy his honeymoon...

Read the story here.

Portillo thinks Brown is a good bet to win next General Election

"Despite the opinion polls, it is hard to see how the Tories are going to win. Brown looks a good bet for the next election. He may not secure an overall majority, but he should survive in Downing Street."

That's Michael Portillo's conclusion in today's Sunday Times.  The former Tory Cabinet minister identifies two key reasons for his prediction: (1) an inadequate Tory team, and (2) a lack of appeal to aspirational or working class voters:

"Today’s Tory team lacks strength in depth. George Osborne is good but not yet weighty. David Davis is substantial, but is not part of Cameron’s project to transform the party. David Willetts and Oliver Letwin lack any sort of common touch. There is no Campbell or Mandelson. There is no Norman Tebbit either. The Conservatives have yet to find a person or a device to attract back the working-class voters who were an essential part of Thatcher’s winning coalition... The Tories are searching for some other idea that appeals to voters who aspire to do better for themselves: a modern equivalent of Thatcher’s policy of selling council houses to their tenants. But after years of thinking, no good idea has come to the Tory mind."

The one thing that Mr Portillo does think could come to the rescue of the Tories is the economy:

"If I were the chancellor, I would fear the economy more than the Tories.  The downturn in the United States, led by falling house prices, is ominous. Now that is really significant, because economic weather regularly moves across the Atlantic. Maybe we can forecast, after all, that June 2010 will be dark and squally."

Michael Portillo might be right to worry about the US economy but there is no automatic guarantee that the Tories will be trusted to lead Britain out of a recession.  Although the Tories are - according to some polling - more trusted on the economy than Labour it is a result of a fall in support for Brown; not a rise in confidence in George Osborne's team.  A recession may give Brown the opportunity to persuade the electorate that this is not a time to take risks with an untried economic team: hold on to nurse for fear of something worse.