Interviews

One of the defences that Labour types are mustering over Unite is, bascially, that it's better to be funded by a body which represents some two million workers than by Ashcroft type figures who may have their own personal agendas. In which case, the question is: do Charlie Whelan and his coterie really represent the views and interests of Unite's members?  And, in answer, it's worth pulling out two snippets from today's papers. EXHIBIT A, courtesy of Danny Finkelstein: "A Populus poll of Unite members last year showed the majority preferring David Cameron to Gordon Brown and opposing Unite donations to Labour.

So what next for the new, more human, Gordon Brown (as seen on TV)?  Well, according to today's Times, there are some ministers who want him to take the show on the road.  The idea is to let voters tackle Brown directly - but about the topics Piers Morgan kinda skipped over: the economy, MPs' expenses, Afghanistan, and all the other big stuff.  And the hope, in turn, is that this "masochism strategy" will make the public respect Brown more. Would it work?  Well, just like the Morgan interview and its wider impact, that's something which is difficult to pre-judge from the confines of Westminster.

Brown is very lucky to have a friend in Piers Morgan. He did him a great service in the ITV interview tonight - and while it would have made CoffeeHousers nauseous (if they watched it), it will be the best television the PM will get this year and probably ever. Mark my words: the Labour Party will not produce anything that shows Brown in such a sympathetic light. It was powerful, I'd say, because it was not party political propaganda: Morgan genuinely likes Brown and did his utmost to project the human side of him. Those hours of coaching from Alastair Campbell paid off. He kept smiling in a credible way - telling anecdotes in exactly the way that he does, in private, when he's trying to charm people.

Strange that there's really only one major political point arising from Gordon Brown's interview in the Standard today.  But, then again, maybe that is the point.  Like the PM's interview with the News of the World a few weeks ago, the emphasis is far more on the personal than anything else: his relationship with Sarah Brown, the death of his daughter Jennifer, his upbringing, and so on.  We even learn why his handwriting is so bad ("due to the way he was taught to write at school," apparently).  And with a TV appearance alongside Piers Morgan in the schedules, it does seem that Brown is keen to present a more human front. As for that political point, it's Brown's confirmation that Tony Blair will play a "major role" in Labour's election campaign.

Here, CoffeeHousers, is my take on this morning's Cameron interview: 1. General demeanor: excellent, articulate, confident. The complete opposite from Brown. It does make you think that he should wipe the floor with Brown in the TV debates. 2. “Last week we saw William Hague and George Osborne going to Afghanistan together. First shadow Chancellor, the man who is going to be in charge of the money, on the frontline seeing what is going on in Afghanistan”. Indeed, but the NHS pledge and deficit cut pledge imply deep cuts to the military. To govern is to choose, and Cameron has made his choice: NHS spending before the military.

Well, well, well - Darling's Times interview, which James reported earlier, sure is a significant moment, and one which more than deserves a place on the spending cut timeline which I put together last week.  In fact, let's see what it would look like alongside a few of the most recent entries: 9 December 2009: Pre-Budget Report 2009 forecasts Public Sector Net Borrowing of £176 billion, and Public Sector Net Debt of £986 billion, in 2010-11. 10 December 2009: Alistair Darling puts in a bizarre performance on the Today programme, claiming that the PBR implies that departmental budgets would remain “pretty much flat.” 10 December 2009: The IFS works out that the PBR implies departmental budget cuts of around 19 percent over three years.

As Andrew Sparrow says, it's well worth reading Iain Dale's interview with John Bercow in the latest issue Total Politics.  It's a fun read, mostly because the Speaker is remarkably candid – a quality that's normally to be admired in a politician.  But I can't help thinking that he made a mistake in admitting this:   "I received various approaches from various senior people in the Labour party saying: 'Aw, you know, we'd love to have you on board. We think you're being discarded by the Conservatives. We think you'd be quite at home with us.' Senior people, not in a formal setting, but people sidling up to you – ex-ministers, current ministers, backbenchers, whatever.

It has taken eight years, but Tony Blair has finally leveled with the British public and admitted that the WMD thing didn’t really matter: he wanted to depose Saddam Hussein anyway. That's what he has said in a BBC interview, presumably to pre-empt his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry. His chosen confessor: Fern Britton. His medium: BBC1 on Sunday. It has been trailed to the newspapers, including tomorrow’s Times. As it says: "He said it was the 'threat' that Saddam presented to the region that was uppermost in his mind. The development of weapons of mass destruction was one aspect of that threat. Mr Blair said that there had been 12 years of the United Nations going 'to and fro' on the subject, and he noted that Saddam had used chemical weapons on his own people.

A quick post to point out that Fraser's interview with David Cameron - to which CoffeeHousers contributed questions - will be appearing in tomorrow's issue of the magazine.  We'll also be making the article free to all website users tomorrow morning, so you can read the full thing then.  In the meantime, here's a selection of the quotes within it, so you can get a sense of what the Tory leader had to say for himself: Thoughtful radicalism: "What you need is thoughtful radicalism. Prepared radicalism. It needs to come from a solid and strong base. Compare Margaret Thatcher’s trade union reforms with Ted Heath’s.

Reading the transcript of Gordon Brown’s interview with the FT one is struck by how little of a domestic policy message Brown has. Say what you like about Labour’s mantra in 2001 and 2005 of Labour investment versus Tory cuts but it was clear. By contrast, Brown’s attempt to explain his new dividing lines to the FT is distinctly muddled. Brown’s main line is that things could have been a lot worse without the government’s action. But that is, of course, a hypothetical. It also seems doubtful that the public will share this view or forget who was Chancellor in the decade before the crisis. Brown then moves on to what he thinks will be the battleground for the next election.