Labour party

Lord Mandelson argues in the Evening Standard that Labour’s legislative programme has the Tories running for cover. The forthcoming debate should prove this thesis to be nonsense. 7 minutes of largely rehashed policies, including all the old favourites – equality, the ‘smarter’ state and so forth, is unlikely to give Cameron sleepless nights. I suspect Mandelson knows this as there is little substance to his argument. The article contains more insinuations than an episode of Midsomer Murders. Mandelson writes:     ‘David Cameron seems to be getting a little rattled. Following his flustered performance at PMQs last week, he seems shocked and disconcerted to be facing a political fight again.

The public's judgement on Gordon Brown will probably come with the general election, but CoffeeHousers may have fun with this webpage in the meantime.  It has been created by the clean-up-politics organisation Power 2010, and will let you grade Gordon Brown in the aftermath of tomorrow's Queen's speech.  Naturally, the grades run from A ("Top of the class") to F ("Brown fail"); you can leave comments; and Gordon will receive a school report in December.  I suppose it's meant to help close the democratic deficit between Downing St and the rest of the country – but it could just help some folk let off a little steam...

Over at his blog, Nick Robinson has put together a useful digest of the different attitudes towards Brown's premiership inside the Labour party.  Putting it briefly, he thinks Labour MPs fit into three distinct "camps": 1) The plotters: "...believe that Mr Brown is taking their party to certain oblivion and are still desperately searching for ways to remove him and to install a new leader by January." 2) The quitters: "...agree with [the plotters'] analysis but have given up hope of installing a new leader who just might do better." 3) The fighters: "...are beginning to hope that a recovery might just be possible." It's a neat outline, albeit one which is pretty intuitive.

That Gordon Brown is still the prime minister proves that it isn’t only Peter Mandelson who is a fighter not a quitter. It became clear this week that Brown will fight to the bitter end, and that Labour’s election strategy has emerged through him. Labour depicts the Tories as Bullingdon boy toffs and crazed Thatcherite cutters; Brown is the stern, serious figurehead, the still small voice of calm at the vanguard of Labour’s arguments on immigration and the economy.   Matthew d’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column details how Brown has returned to the fore this week and delivered policy statements aimed exclusively at maintaining Labour’s core support.

So, what is The Spectator coming to? Dishing out trophies to Harman and all these Labour types? Has the editor's chair made me crawl up to people like Harman and Darling? Am I angling for a political seat? The comments to my earlier blog post raise some excellent points - about politics, polemic and The Spectator itself. I thought they deserved a response in a post rather than a comment. The Spectator's tradition of honouring talent on all sides of the political divide in its annual awards is a long one:  La Harman was our 24th Parliamentarian of the Year. While Harman was speaking, Boris and I were holding her trophy and looking at the names that hers would be engaved next to.

That Labour held one of its safest seats is newsworthy either indicates how desperate the party’s predicament is or that it is a very slow news day. Anything other than a Labour win, and a substantial one at that, was unthinkable; even the resolutely fanciful SNP must have acknowledged that privately. However, this by-election raises some interesting points nonetheless. As Alex Massie notes, the gloss has come of the hubristic SNP. Salmond’s Braveheart act about winning 20 seats and seeing Westminster “hanging from a Scottish rope” looked optimistic-to-mad when first performed; now it just looks mad.

Further to Alan Johnson’s immigration statement on Monday, Gordon Brown will give a speech on the topic. The intention is to re-engage with core voters who have defected to the BNP. In an interview with the Mail, Brown acknowledged that the public were right to be concerned, especially in times of economic uncertainty and hardship. Brown is expected to tighten migrant employment controls so that migrants are only used where there are labour shortages. He will strengthen the ‘Labour Market Test’ by extending vacancy exclusivity for UK citizens from 2 weeks to a month, and pledges to retrain British workers. The proposals are welcome and the rhetoric is tough, giving some weight to the maligned call of ‘British jobs for British workers’.