Labour party

Most people expected this morning's official GDP statistics to show that the economy has come out of recession.  But they didn't.  In fact, they had the economy shrinking by 0.4 percent in the third quarter of this year.  So the downturn continues – and it's the longest on record. We've always maintained on Coffee House that coming out of recession won't do much good for Brown.  But, obviously, staying stuck in one has far more dangerous implications for him (not to mention the country).  Obviously, the government won't be able to deploy the green shoots strategy now.  But with other major economies already out of recession, they'll struggle to deploy it in future.  You imagine the Tories will have a field day with this.

And so the strangeness continues: the latest Ipsos MORI poll has the Tories leaping a hefty 7 points to 43 percent, while Labour climb 2 to 26 percent, and the Lib Dems fall 6 points to 19 percent.  It's most likely a correction from their last poll – which had the Lib Dems above Labour for the first time since the 1980s – but the Tories' 17-point lead is still at odds with some of the other polls we've seen recently.  I'm sure CCHQ will be pleased, but, as I said yesterday, it's worth waiting a few weeks until the polls settle before drawing judgement. UPDATE: Guardian/ICM also gives the Tories a 17-point lead.

So what's the deal with the opinion polls we've been seeing in the newspapers recently?  There was some hubbub in Tory circles yesterday over the fact that two weekend polls – YouGov for the Sunday Times and ComRes for the Indy on Sunday – had Labour either gaining ground on the Tories or a maintaining boosted level of support around the 30 percent mark.  What had happened to the 19 percent lead that the Tories enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of their conference?  Had the Labour conference really been more successful than the Tory one, despite all appearances?  I've heard these, and similar questions, doing the rounds over the past couple of days. I rather suspect that there's some volatility involved in all this.

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: "Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector." Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can't imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that "Roadblock to Reform" label, and Labour's patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial albatross.

The once-daft (but now rather good) Labour List has a very interesting story about Harriet Harman. Apparently, she will tell Andrew Neil on this weekend's BBC Straight Talk that she won't stand for the leadership in any circumstances and has no leadership ambitions.  This is very bad news for Gordon Brown. This may seem like a strange thing to say, but in several conversations with Labour MPs and activists I have heard a version of the following: "We can't get rid of Gordon because Harriet would win the election to replace him."  With Harriet gone, the way is now clear for a genuine challenge.  The likelihood is that this won't happen.

Sky’s Jon Craig has the scoop that a rump of Blairite MPs and former ministers have formed a group called Labour Future. Headed by Charles Clarke and featuring Malcolm Wicks, Nick Raynsford, Denis Macshane, Parmjit Dhanda, Hugh Bayley, Meg Munn and crony-in-chief Charlie Falconer, this club's terms of membership are intense anti-Brown sentiment, and I wonder what the Foreign Secretary makes of this daring little coven? Craig’s informant has loftier ambitions: “It’s about setting out our agenda for the future and showing that Labour is not intellectually dead”. The underreported story of the summer was the suppression of Blairite thinking from Labour’s public discourse.

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating: the email exchanges between Danny Finkelstein and Philip Collins over at Comment Central are one of neatest features in the political blogosphere - always worth a read.  They've got a new one up today, discussing how Brown should go about handling the Legg letters.  Does he force Labour MPs to cough up, and risk drawing their anger?  Or does he fold and allow them to fight Legg, to maintain some degree of their support?

So expenses are back - and in a fairly big way.  Not that they ever really went away, of course.  But you'd be forgiven for thinking that the parties had pretty much forgotten about them during conference season, so little was said about the issue.  But today it's back on the front pages and, you suspect, back to the top of MPs' priority lists.   According to the Sunday Telegraph, "more than half" of the Commons will be either told to repay dubious claims, or provide extra information about those claims, during the next part of Sir Thomas Legg's investigation into expenses this week.  Gordon Brown is said to be among the former group.