Gordon brown

Amidst the public riot over parliamentarians' expenses, the story of Hazel Blears remains oddly fascinating. And story is the operative word, given that she appears to be the sole cabinet minister singled out for opprobrium despite the fact that several of her colleagues have enjoyed equally shady and profitable dealings with the Fees Office. Since she's had the gall to criticise the Prime Minister you can see why Downing Street is Chipmunk Hunting, making it clear that her actions were "unacceptable" and all the rest of it. But if Blears is guilty - or guilty enough to be forced out of the cabinet - then surely Alastair Darling and Geoff Hoon shoul also be for the chop?

Watching Newsnight tonight it felt like a dam had broken. Three MPs from the main parties having an open discussion about the future of politics post-Speaker Martin, Jeremy Paxman relaxed and cracking jokes about the growing groundswell of support for Chris Mullin to become speaker: it was all rather extraordinary. The three MPs, Chris Mullin, Douglas Carswell and Norman Baker were all unusually courteous and differences of opinion were argued about amicably. All very peculiar. One thing they all agreed on was the importance of strengthening the select committee system. Actually, I think some of these committees do a very good job. But they do not have enough power and the appointment of their chairman and women still relies on party patronage. Perhaps this will change now.

It was an honour to write the Spectator politics column this week. You can find my thoughts on the collaspe of Labour morale here.

The real question for Labour now is how the party will rebuild itself. This has important democratic implications: we have witnessed how an over-mighty government can operate without the scrutiny of a strong oppoistion over the past decade and it is often not a pretty sight. But there is a serious problem for the Labour Party here. If the collapse continues for much longer there will be no one of any seniority or experience left standing. Some will think this is no bad thing and that the Labour Party needs a completely fresh start. But I have always felt there is considerable talent in the younger generation of Labour politicians and it would be a tragedy if the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. There has to be an argument for that generation to take control now.

Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour,  I have always thought Alistair Campbell's own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies's "moment of madness" to Gordon Brown's "psychological flaws", the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare. I wrote about this tendency a few years ago but recent events have brought me back the subject. It was telling that Damian McBride's emails contained references to Frances Osborne's state of mind - as if it would be a bad thing that she was upset by her husband's political misfortunes.

Hazel Blears knows exactly what she's doing by intervening in print during the Labour Party's darkest spring. Think of it the other way around. Ministers know that when the Prime Minister pledges 100 per cent support then it's curtains. It's a sign of the declining authority of Number 10 that this rule has now been inverted. Cabinet loyalty is assumed. It should not have to be asserted. Hazel Blears is stating the obvious, which is very dangerous indeed. Of course the government was on the wrong side of the gurkha debate, of course it is failing to communicate with the voters, of course the YouTube performance was a disaster. But Cabinet ministers are not supposed to say these things.

This month's Standpoint carries a powerful piece by Nick Cohen about the recent bad behaviour in the court of the Prime Minister. I will say no more than that.

Just to clarify. I didn't intend to suggest in my last post that Damian McBride's smear tactics would have been excusable if they had worked. Sorry if I gave that impression. I was simply trying to explain the thinking behind the operation. The smears were unacceptable in any circumsatnces The Prime Minister's belated apology suggests that he now knows how toxic this has become. He is right to be angry because McBride has put his government at the mercy of a maverick right-wing libertarian blogger. Quite why he and the people around him became quite so fixated on Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), is completely beyond me.  But they were genuinely obsessed, that much is clear. And if Staines has further emails to drip feed he will be able to torment the government for some time yet.

The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride's pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour's chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people would think twice about voting for a government that permitted such a culture to exist in Downing Street. The poison expressed in McBride's infantile stratagem has fed back into the bloodstream of the party  he was supposed to be serving (let's not pretend for a moment that he was acting as a civil servant in this.

It's Easter Sunday and I have better things to do than think about sleazy emails. I'm unlikely to be able to post again about this again today, but I have much to say on the subject and Iain Dale in the Mail on Sunday has already quoted my previous comments about the thuggish company the Prime Minister sometimes chooses to keep. This is very serious for the Prime Minister, especially now Charlie Whelan's name has been associated with the emails. The Tories have asked Gordon Brown to apologise and he probably should. I have always marvelled at the latitude Brown gave to his lieutenants. This has allowed him to distance himself, if necessary, from their activities.

The tawdry tale of Damian McBride's "juvenile and inappropriate" emails about Conservative politicians is pretty grim as it is. But it is just possible to imagine how the situation might be worse. What if someone even closer to McBride were on the circulation list, for example? Someone like Charlie Whelan, for example. That would be truly dreadful. And what if the emails were circulated even further, dragging in others, like Whelan, with close links  to the unions who will fund Labour's next election campaign. Now that is so awful it is almost beyond imagination. Gordon Brown's loyalty has always been his best and worst quality. There are many within the Labour Party who feel McBride should have been shown the door long before his latest indiscretion.

At the height of the internal Labour Party coup against Gordon Brown just before the last Labour Party conference even the Prime Minister's greatest detratctors agreed that he did the international economic stuff rather well. I remember one senior Blairite heavyweight suggesting that after his removal, Brown should be allowed to occupy a new role as a roving economic ambassador. Since then, his reputation for economic competence has undergone an assault from which few would recover. But, whatever his opponents might say (and Fraser is right to say that it was largely done with smoke and mirrors), the G20 summit ended up as something of a triumph or Gordon Brown.

It wasn't so long ago that senior Labour politicians were suggesting that Gordon Brown should use the coup of the G20/Obama visit to bounce straight into an election. It seems bizarre now, but such was the confidence of the Labour Party in those early days of the economic crisis that there were close allies of the Prime Minister urging him to go to the polls this spring. Their only concern was that it might be too late. The ideal time for those urging a snap election (the second in a series of elections that never were) was February. Now, the idea that Brown will do anything but wait until the last minute seems inconceivable, but anything's possible. The other point that now seems obvious is that President Obama is no longer such a novelty.

The brutal truth about politics is that a whole career can often be telescoped into a single defining event. The judgement of history can be particularly cruel on  unlucky Prime Ministers. Ted Heath’s reputation is dominated by the 1972 miners’ strike, Jim Callaghan is synonymous with the “winter of discontent” and Anthony Eden, perhaps the most ill-starred of all post-war PMs, will be forever associated with a single word: “Suez”. All those years of vaulting ambition, grinding thankless work and genuine public service reduced, in the end, to those two damning syllables. And how thin sometimes is that line between success and failure. Who remembers John Major for his remarkable 1992 election victory rather that the crushing 1997 defeat?

A good mini-scoop from the Independent on Sunday based on an article from Peter Hain. News stories based on articles by politicians are often the last refuge of a political journalist who has run out of road. But this piece by Jane Merrick and Brian Brady is an exception. The former Work and Pension Secretary is putting his head above the parapet on this one and issuing a rousing call for the Labour Party to return to its true values. He makes similar points in his interview in the Sunday Telegraph, although that newspaper chose to make a little less of them.