Labour party

Polly Toynbee is always worth reading. Her latest column is no exception. For all that one might disagree with her, indeed even be infuriated by her, there's always something useful to be gleaned from her columns. Still, there's a kind of panicked resignation about this latest one and an implied acceptance that Labour are doomed. The only thing that can save them? Massive increases in spending and government debt apparently. Well it's an idea... I confess that, rather mean-spiritedly, my favourite bit was this: In the dream scenario, Brown ascends the world stage to head a beefed-up IMF, but few imagine the man who wanted it so much can confess he wasn't leadership material after all. A Captain Oates walk to save the party he loves is an unlikely act for a man who admits no mistakes.

Like King Canute, Marie Antoinette is a much-misunderstood and, generally speaking, a much and unfairly maligned figure. Disappointingly, this time the guilty party is my old boss Iain Martin. For shame. Iain hazards that Peter Mandelson's suggestion that everyone try and keep their heads in these turbulent times since there is "no value in creating frenzy" is but the latest "Marie Antoinettish" comment from the noble lord. In the first place, Marie Antoinette probably never said "Let them eat cake". Secondly, if she had she would scarcely have been the first to suggest that the populace switch to brioche in times of shortage.

Brother Bright gives some of his reasons for hoping that Labour will prevail at the next election here. As a good man of the left, one would expect no less from him. And he's right, I think, to suppose that we'd be facing many of the same problems had David Cameron and Georgie Osbourne been running the country these past five years. In that sense, you can undertsand the frustration some of the Prime Minister's supporters must feel. Not all of this is the PM's fault, but he's the only fellow the public can kick. But for those of us who aren't automatically attached to any party the calculation is pretty simple: no-one, except in th direst circumstances, shoul ever be entrusted with four consecutive terms. Thirteen years is enough.

What I am about to do makes me more nervous than any other piece of writing I have embarked on since my first forays into journalism in the late 1980s. During most of my career I have had the luxury of writing for "people like me": the sort of middle-class liberals who read the Guardian or the Observer and carry those publications under their arms as the outward symbols of their right-minded decency. I spent 15 years writing for one or other newspaper. I was deeply honoured during the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003 to be described as a "liberal eurotrash" on the right-wing Drudge Report website. Until last month I was the political editor of the New Statesman, the iconic magazine of the Fabian left and damn proud to be so.

A friend of mine, once armed with impeccable progressive credentials, recently came out s a Conservative - much to the bemusement of his family and many of his friends. With Neill's permission, here's the explanation he published on his Facebook page. Sure, this is just one person's story, but I wonder how many other people might have come to similar conclusions after 12 years of Labour government. Anyway, I think this a pretty persuasive critique of Labour in power: I grew up in a Tory-hating family in Thatcher's Britain. In those divided times, we were definitely not "one of us" - Mum was a teacher, Dad brought up the kids and we lived in a council house. In fact, the shocked response of my family on this wall has been a relief, because it means they are still speaking to me!

The National Gallery of Scotland needs to raise £50m to prevent the sale of Titian's Diana and Actaeon from being sold. The painting, part of the Bridgewater Collection, has been loaned to the gallery for decades but is now being sold by its owner, the Duke of Sutherland. Well, £50m is quite a lot of money. Then again, it's a pretty nifty painting (though my own tastes run a little later - to Caravaggio and Velazquez in particular). Anyway, it's hard to imagine there being any discussion in France or Italy or Germany of the rights and wrongs of committing public money to the fund-raising effort.

I don't mean to pick on Tom Harris. After all, I think it a very good thing that MPs should have their own blogs. And, as it happens, I have no firm opinion either way on the desirability or not of a third runway at Heathrow airport. But I thought this a telling part of Mr Harris's latest post on the matter: I’M DISAPPOINTED by the announcement that we’ll have to wait until next year to get a decision on a third runway at Heathrow. But I concede that 70,000 submissions to the consultation will have to be considered and that might take a little while. And given that a judicial review - whatever the decision - is inevitable, consideration must be seen to be thorough.

Tom Harris's blog is a very useful creation. Now as it happens I don't think that parliamentary democracy is under threat because Damien Green was arrested, disgraceful though that arrest certainly was. Nonetheless, there's little doubt that this government has, time and time again and to an extent that may be as modern as it is largely unprecedented, ignored ancient parliamentary procedures and consistently demonstrated a contempt for "old-fashioned" concepts of liberty and the rule of law. Thus Mr Harris's latest post is usefully illuminating. He writes: As the right-hand man to Shami Chakrabarti the then Shadow Home Secretary, David “Remember him?

I've too much respect for my friends at The Times to ask if Rupert Murdoch dictated that this Peter Brookes cartoon appear on the paper's front page today... The Thunderer's leader column makes it pretty clear, I think, that the Times will not be endorsing Labour at the next election: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown both promised reform of public services that might have allowed the quality of services to be maintained at a lower rate of spending. In the absence of that reform, high spending and the maintenance of a large public sector workforce became the only way of maintaining servive levels. Yet such spending has proven unsustainable. It is this which led Labour to its fateful decision.

It's all very well and good getting excited about the American elections. But let's face it, they were but the appetiser before today's Westminster by-election in Glenrothes. The Kingdom of Fife is a strange place indeed, a sentiment confirmed by the whispers we now hear that Labour have managed to hold the seat. On the face of it, defending a seat against the 14 point swing needed for you to lose is no great triumph. And yet on this occasion it is, in fact, a rather spectacular victory for Gordon Brown. True, it's his back yard (he represents the neighbouring constituency) and both he and his wife have campaigned in Glenrothes. In such circumstances it would be highly embarrassing for Labour to lose.

I'm glad Trixy reminded me about the startlingly daft speech Hazel Blears, the Communities Minister (whatever that means), gave to the Hansard Society the other day. Though the irrepressible Mrs Blears was correct to bemoan the rise of a political class with no hinterland beyond Westminster (this also applies to the media classes, of course), it was her comments about blogs that were the purest Class A piffle. Apparently: Until political blogging 'adds value' to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair.

Campaigning is underway in the Glenrothes by-election. Yesterday Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife, made her election debut, knocking on doors in, of all places, bonny Cardenden. How did that go? Not so well, it seems. My friend Stephen McGinty has a fine, entertaining account in today's Scotsman: SHE was supposed to be Labour's secret weapon, but Sarah Brown ended up being so "secret" yesterday that no-one from the press was allowed to ask her any questions. It was clear from the moment she arrived in Cardenden to campaign on behalf of the Labour Party that she was not there to speak to the ordinary members of the public. The Prime Minister's wife was instead there to be seen to speak to ordinary members of the public...