Has this become Brown’s Bournemouth gift to Cameron?

After FPTP and the WLQ political anoraks are going to have to get used to another acronym – BJ4BW the new short-form for “British Jobs for British Workers” which is, of course, illegal under EU law.

There’s lots of comment in the Sundays this morning on the political impact immigration and the number of immigrant workers in the UK with the Independent on Sunday commentator, John Rentoul, focussing on the origins of Brown’s BJ4BW phrase which featured prominently in the PM’s conference speech just six weeks ago.

This is the heart of Rentoul’s argument “..But what were Brown’s people thinking of? There are Googlable instances of the BNP using “British jobs for British workers” as far back as 1986. I remember the National Front using the slogan in the 1970s. It is indelibly associated with the anti-immigrant far right. Yet Brown did not appear to be aware of the association – in which case he is either shockingly naive or deliberately playing with the fire of BNP language..Either way, it was a terrible judgement..It gave David Cameron permission to return to the scene of the Tories’ bloodiest defeat in the 2005 election campaign.. He (Brown) got away with it at the time of his conference speech because as the new guy he was entitled to the benefit of the doubt. There were puzzled faces and feelings of unease, and now we know why. He was playing with fire, and last week the whole place went up in flames.”

The PBC Lib Dem hustings. Just a reminder that the first of our online hustings with the two Lib Dem leadership candidates takes place today starting at 11am. Chris Huhne joins us at 11am for an hour. I will open up a new thread at about 10.45.

Nick Clegg has also agreed to appear in a similar session on the site. We have a date which will be announced when I get confirmation.

Mike Smithson