How come he was even thought to be a contender? The splash leads of both the Times and the Guardian won’t make happy reading at the home office this morning. For the David Nutt resignation looks set to be followed by others raising questions over whether ministers are ever serious when they ask experts for advice. Adding to their problems is the home secretary’s appearance with Adam Boulton on SkyNews yesterday when he appeared to totally lose it under close…
South Shields Sanddancers Is there really plotting going on? On Wednesday we ran a thread based on a comment from our reliable north eastern Labour contributor, HenryG, suggesting possible moves over the leadership involving Peter Mandelson and South Shields MP and foreign secretary, David Miliband. Last night while all the focus was on Mr. Griffin the “Mole” in the online newspaper, The First Post, carried more speculation noting that this weekend Peter Mandelson is travelling to South Shields to give…
What do we think of HenryG’s tip? The overnight thread has been dominated by a comment by the usually well-informed HenryG that could have an important bearing on the Labour leadership. He wrote simply: “..I’m hearing that Mandelson could be about to shift support away from Brown into David Miliband’s direction. Not sure how that is going to manifest, or when or if it’s just whispers that do the rounds.“ Make of this what you will. Henry has set it…
Guardian Could he move to Number 10 AND keep his peerage? For months now it has been blindingly obvious to me, at least, that the Labour party would fare better if the business secretary with a whole string of other titles, Lord Mandelson, became Brown’s successor. He’s light years ahead of the internal competition in terms of his sheer political abilities and communication skills that with him in charge then his party would do better whatever side of the general…
And could that make it more dangerous for Brown? The only full post-Tory conference poll, from Populus in the Times on Tuesday, got crowded out of the news agenda because of the developing MPs Expenses saga following ths Sir Thomas Legg letters. Yet I wonder whether the move by Labour to 30% might just indicate a trend? We’ll need some more surveys, of course, but it was a sharp jump very much against what was expected – particularly the ICM…
Will Brown’s ratings go up or down? The Irish bookmaker, PaddyPower is now offering a monthly market on which way Brown’s YouGov approvals ratings are going to move. This is based on the monthly Sunday Times YouGov survey, the next one of which should come this weekend. Previous results can be seen here and looking at what’s happened in the past four months I think that PaddyPower price of 5/4 on it being in the 20-30% range looks great value….
And is it made worse by the decision on Jacqui? Almost all the front pages this morning are devoted to the second eruption of the MPs expenses scandal and, in particular, the focus on Mr. Brown. We wait to see whether the further inquiries of Cameron will produce bad headlines for him but for the moment the fact that the PM is going to have to pay a slab of money back is not going to help his chances of…
SkyNews Could this affair explode again? It’s been a bit of an up and downer for former Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, this morning. With minutes of the report on last December’s arrest of Damien Green there’s news that no further action will be taken against her on her expenses. The investigation into the Green arrest has concluded that the documents that were being handed over to Green “did not contain information which threatened to undermine national security or Government effectiveness”…