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Tuesday 11 May 2010
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John Reid is not the only Labour figure who is critical of a deal with the Lib Dems. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA
Twenty four hour news wants instant resolutions, but senior Liberal Democrats are now saying the deal may not be secured today, and any final deal will have to go to a party conference at the weekend. The Queen may be kept on hold.
But the balance is now tilting back to the Liberal Democrats striking a deal with the Conservatives, partly because there is a sense that some Labour negotiators are less keen on a deal than the Conservatives.
Senior Liberal Democrats are also picking up signals that Labour is too divided to strike a deal. John Reid and David Blunkett, the two former home secretaries, speak for more than themselves when they criticise the idea of a deal altogether.
The official line is that the cabinet backed the deal unanimously, but I am not sure that this represents a true account of opinion In a bid to shore up the Labour coalition, Alan Johnson, the current home secretary and Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, came out in favour of the deal.
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Friday 7 May 2010
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Gordon Brown arrives back at 10 Downing Street as the country looked set for a hung parliament. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Can Labour cobble together enough support to form a government?
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Wednesday 5 May 2010
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The "dreary steeples" of Fermanagh and Tyrone, mocked by Winston Churchill (above), could take centre stage in a hung parliament. Photograph: Rex Features
Are the "dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone" about to take centre stage in British politics?
Winston Churchill famously dreamt up this disparaging remark to say that little had changed in Northern Ireland after Europe had been shaken to its core by the first world war.
But the rest of the United Kingdom may be looking to those steeples in the coming days if voters elect the first hung parliament since February 1974. Continue reading...
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Monday 3 May 2010
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The battle of the party election broadcasts continues. Ross Kemp, who played Grant Mitchell in EastEnders, stars in Labour's final broadcast, which will be aired tonight.
Entitled Sixty Seconds, the video features Kemp pleading with people to spend 60 seconds to protect their jobs and the economy by voting Labour:
This election isn't a beauty contest. This is about what's best for you, your family and your country – and who you really trust to look after them for the next five years. You probably have lots of important things to do on Thursday – a full day's work, picking up the kids, paying the bills.
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Who said Labour has lost its sense of humour? The party has produced this witty personalised video lampooning David Cameron's "big society" in which people will be invited to join the government of Britain.
Labour believes the big society is a PR makeover of an old Tory idea to shrink the state. It says that Burke's "little platoons" were all very well in the 18th century when high-minded charitable groups helped relieve poverty. But Labour says they are wholly inappropriate in the 21st century when only state action can tackle inequalities.
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Whoops! Amusing to watch the TV types, and the Conservatives, executing a delicate U-turn this morning as they discover their narrative – the undecideds break decisively for the Tories – is failing to come good. The Guardian/ICM poll and the YouGov/Sun tracker both showed yesterday evening that David Cameron did not have the big momentum his acolytes had claimed only 24 hours earlier.
Cameron's weekend interviews setting out the order of legislation now look what we call previous.
Both Sunday night polls, if the swing is reproduced nationally, show Labour coming out as the largest party in terms of seats, thus releasing Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg from his commitment to give the Tories the first chance to form a government.
It may be an utterly daft electoral system, but it is the one the Tories enthusiastically voted for in the Commons only a month and a half ago. The Tories, let it be remembered, did not just vote to keep the current system, they did not even want to give the voters a chance in a referendum to decide if they wanted a change. Continue reading...
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Wednesday 14 April 2010
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Hat tip to the great Paul Waugh who has spotted that the Labour party has been screening different election broadcasts in England, Scotland and Wales.
Those of us who live in England were treated to a rugged looking Sean Pertwee starring in The Road Ahead. Stick on the correct road with Labour, rather than risk a dangerous looking country lane under the Tories, went the message. A few crumpled newspaper headlines in a dustbin, spotted by Pertwee, illustrated Labour's central argument: that the Tories made the wrong calls in the recession.
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Monday 12 April 2010
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Gordon Brown at the launch of Labour's manifesto today. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
It was slick, Gordon Brown was relaxed and, for once, the jokes weren't forced. The launch of the Labour manifesto this morning showed that the party still has fire in its belly even if David Cameron won the prize for a pacier first week of campaigning.
The venue, the smart new acute wing of the Queen Elizabeth hospital in the marginal Labour seat of Birmingham Edgbaston, sent a powerful message. The Tories, Labour was saying, might gripe about Britain's record £167bn fiscal deficit. But just look what we've built with the money. (Of course that's not technically correct because future generations will be paying off the costs of new hospitals through the PFI scheme.)
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Wednesday 31 March 2010
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Philip Gould provided the polling advice leading to Labour's 1997 landslide win which saw Tony Blair walk up Downing Street cheered by by flag waving supporters. Photograph: Tim Rooke/Nils Jorgensen/Rex Features
Lord Philip Gould has reached guru status in Labour circles, deservedly so since he is a great reader of the public mood. So his thoughts on the eve of the election are worth reading.
Gould has recently been ill which means he is not quite as front line as in the past, but he is doing quite a few focus groups for Labour. His analysis will be influencing all the big Labour players. His thinking permeated much of Tony Blair's speech yesterday.
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Tuesday 30 March 2010
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"So guys, was that OK?" Tony Blair will probably mutter to his old friends in the Sedgefield Labour party. "Boy, that most certainly was OK," they will reply.
What they probably don't realise in the Trimdon Labour Club is that two people will have been mesmerised – and a little frightened – by Blair's performance. David Cameron and George Osborne, who always regarded Blair as unbeatable, will see his speech as the most effective attack on them in nearly four years.
And when was the last time the Tories were subjected to such a forensic dissection of their values, policies and approach? That would of course have been Blair's last speech as Labour leader to the party conference in Manchester in 2006. Continue reading...
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Monday 29 March 2010
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Vince Cable pictured next to Alistair Darling, left, and George Obsorne, right, in tonight's television debate. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA
So who won and were there any knock out blows? The consensus tonight, at Westminster and in the Twittersphere, is that "King Vince" was the runaway winner of the first major televised debate of the general election campaign.
Vince Cable won the biggest laughs and the most applause as he tweaked both Alistair Darling and George Osborne in the Chancellors' Debate on Channel 4. Perhaps his finest moment came in his closing statement when Cable said:
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Friday 26 March 2010
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Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have repaired relations. Photograph: PA
It is a little before 6am UK time somewhere on the 23rd floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Brussels. The stone-cold eggs and bacon on the breakfast table in Gordon Brown's suite look as appetising as a banquet served up by Travellers Fare in its heyday.
Gordon Brown has probably had six hours sleep, and your correspondent, present to conduct an interview for Saturday's paper, even less. Brown has a large bottle of fizzy water by his side. Others round the table nibble at toast.
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Alastair Campbell: even better looking than in his last photo. Photograph: Odd Andersen
I've been away in Brussels which means I've been unable to respond to a couple of billets-doux from my new blogging pal, Alastair Campbell. Since I last blogged about our blossoming online friendship on Tuesday, Alastair has taken the trouble to post two blogs about his "new best friend" and his "old mucker" at the Guardian.
Our relationship is a complex one and so Alastair is resisting the temptation to set out his true thoughts. This may come as a surprise because he knows all about crushes. In a famous blog earlier this year Alastair asked whether Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, was harbouring a secret crush on him.
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Tuesday 23 March 2010
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Alastair Campbell has penned a witty blog mocking the Guardian. Photograph: David Levene
As we sit in our garrets tapping out endless words on our computer screens, we humble journalists sometimes wonder whether members of the great and good take any notice of our work. Well, it turns out that a truly aristocratic member of Labour's great and good has taken note of my piece in yesterday's Guardian about the Tories' plans for the general election.
Alastair Campbell has taken time out from his busy post Downing Street career as a novelist -- and sometime adviser to Gordon Brown -- to pen a lengthy blog which takes issue with my article. The former Riviera Gigolo is clearly mellowing in his late middle age -- yes it is difficult to believe this dishy chap will be 53 in May -- because the blog is beautifully written and humorous.
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Monday 22 March 2010
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These are bad times for Stephen Byers. It may come to nothing, but there is dark talk that he should be suspended from the parliamentary party, or even the party itself for bringing Labour into disrepute.
Some in Downing Street think he is doing more damage to the party than Tony Woodley, the joint general secretary of Unite.
Either way between the BA picket lines and Byers announcing he is a cab for hire, Brown is losing more precious time than he would like voters to devote to taking "another long hard look" at the Tories. Continue reading...
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