Labour party

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke says Gordon Brown is toast and the PM should "stand down with honour". Just what Labour needed as the conference season looms! Iain Martin's column in the Telegraph today is an entertaining survey of the current, hapless state of the Labour Party: adrift on the high seas, all faith in the skipper lost, but no idea how to organise a mutiny, let alone brave the consequences of such an insurrection: In their plotting, the PM's internal enemies have adopted one of their target's worst traits: procrastination. If Brown declines the opportunity to resign with honour, then Clarke promises that "we" - a group presumed to include former cabinet ministers such as Alan Milburn and Stephen Byers - will take action as yet unspecified.

I read Polly Toynbee today and assumed it had to have been written by some pluck-faced intern charged with writing nonsense in the style of La Toynbee while she gets away from it all at her Tuscan villa. But apparently not. It is not a spoof or a parody. Anyway: Gordon is dead, long live the boy Dave! Seriously. Even so, it's worth noting that even Brown's most deluded defenders are now switching sides. Suddenly everything changed. The burst of optimism was so startling it dazzled those too long trapped deep in a dungeon. In that one moment it was all over for the old leader who had plunged them into these depths. Suddenly here was the chance of escape everyone was waiting for.

Since Camilla Cavendish makes some points in her Times column today that are similar to some I made about David Miliband's leadership challenge yesterday, I obviously think she's written a fine, penetrating piece. As she says, In policy terms, it is the Conservatives who have so far seemed optimistic about the ability of people to make decisions for themselves, and Labour that has made devolving power to a few hospitals and headteachers look like an am-dram production, involving more histrionics and agonising than Racine. The irony is that where it has devolved most power - to Scotland and Wales - it has let nationalists hollow out its core vote. This last point - about devolution - is not quite right.

No, I don't think so. Do you? Really? On the other hand, Danny Finkelstein thinks that David Miliband's piece in the Guardian this morning signals his determination to be a candidate to succeed Gordon Brown. Rosa Prince agrees. And there was me thinking that Miliband is the intelligent one. Doesn't he remember William Hague's example, doomed to become party leader too young and at the worst possible moment. There's precious little upside in being the next Labour leader, whether the changeover takes place this year or next. Better by far to back a caretaker such as Jack Straw - the only politician named by Miliband in his piece - and succeed him once some of the shine has been knocked off the new Tory government and once, of course, Labour has begun its penance in opposition.

Would even the west of Scotland Labour party stoop to producing a fake war hero to endorse Margaret Curran in the Glasgow East by-election? According to Guido, why yes they would...

Labour's latest approach to crime: Plans to 'shock' knife carriers Not quite what it seems admittedly, even though wouldn't surprise you if these clowns did suggest we start electrocuting teenagers, would it?

The Henley by-election result is striking: John Howell (Cons) 19,796Stephen Kearney's (Lib Dem) 9,680Mark Stevenson (Green) 1,321Timothy Rait (BNP) 1,243Richard McKenzie (Lab) 1,066Chris Adams (UKIP) 843 Admittedly, Labour didn't run much of a campaign (and would like to have avoided even contesting the seat if they'd been able to) while the Lib Dems pressed them hard. But still... 3% of the vote? If John Major's Tories had endured such a result, even in a Labour stronghold, you can imagine that the BBC would be full of chatter about how much longer Major could last and whether, in fact, the game wasn't already up. Today? not so much... And of course, it is for Brown. As the Telegraph reports, Brown has become an out of control sea anchor that risks sinking the entire government.

Danny Finklestein reports: Politely talking to one Labour member,  while in the presence of a member of the Shadow Cabinet, I asked him gently to what he thought we owed Labour's decline in the polls. Instead of giving an involved explanation he replied: "Oh that's easy to explain. Our Leader is utterly useless. If you asked him which of the two doors from this room he was going to exit from he would be incapable of choosing. And if someone else chose the door for him he wouldn't be able to make his way there" Well, yes. Once a party starts to unravel, there ain't anything anyone can do to stop it. Certainly, there's not much Gordon can do to rally the troops, calm nerves, plot a new course etc etc.

How can you tell if David Davis is right? Easy! As Mr Eugenides says, just look at these reactions:: JACQUI SMITH, HOME SECRETARY Faced with a crucial decision on the safety and protection of the British public, the Conservatives have collapsed into total disarray on what is their first big policy test since they have come under greater scrutiny. David Cameron must come clean on what has really happened and why David Davis has really resigned. DAVID BLUNKETT, FORMER HOME SECRETARY David Davis's behaviour is a pure piece of political theatre, even more bizarre than John Major resigning as leader of the Tory Party in order to stand again against his own colleagues. This is childish and immature and it is not worthy of a major political party to engage in such theatre.

The government's proposals for incarcerating suspects for up to 42 days before being required, however inconveniently, to produce a charge are, naturally, appalling. How can you be so sure? Well, they must be: 65% of the public supports them. In other poll news, ICM puts the Tories on 42%, Labour 26% and the Liberal Democrats on 21%. This is extraordinary: how can one in five Britons be prepared to vote for the Lib Dems?

I suspect that MPs are sufficiently craven - and willing to put the government's political prospects ahead of any petty concerns about principle or, god help us, justice - that they will endorse the government's appalling proposal that terrorist suspects can be held for up to 42 days before the state need produce a charge. In a better, more sensible world, all MPs would read John Major's article in The Times yesterday. For good measure Major, who of course survived an IRA assassination attempt himself (a mortar attack on Downing Street that blew in the windows during a cabinet meeting), decries the illiberality of the government's ID card proposals and (in England) its determination to have everyone's DNA held on a government database.

Even the Cabinet is demob happy... Adam Bouton reports: I was taken aback this week to hear that one senior member of the Cabinet is cheerfully telling colleagues that he has been over-promoted but intends "to enjoy it while it lasts".James Forsyth asks whom could it be? Is Des Browne sufficiently self-aware (and cheerful) to be the one?Of course, the country rather takes the view that the Prime Minister himself has been over-promoted...

I waited until to check that it wasn't actually April 2nd today, before posting this. It's no great surprise to see a piece in the Telegraph begin:Politics is about both measures and men. Labour is over-obsessing about one man instead of asking whether our measures make sense. Any prime minister in office today would feel the voters' anger as they see their cherished plans to spend their own money as they see fit destroyed by rising prices combined with the insatiable greed of the state in all its manifestations to take the people's money for its own, often incompetent and counter-productive ends.But it's rather more surprising to see that the author is Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham. Now, it only the Tories could learn from the pugnacious Mr MacShane...

Via Samizdata, this seems to be a quite appalling story. The Guardian reports that:A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the "psychological torture" he endured in custody.Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.

I wasn't quite sure what to say about this. This being the Scottish Labour party's latest attempt to finesse their position on the matter of an independence referendum.

A reader has chided me for failing to publish more political comment lately. But what more - despite the acres of newsprint devoted to the matter - has there been to say about the Obama-Clinton match-up that was not said six weeks ago? Precious little. She still can't win; her continuing campaign makes Obama's job in November more difficult. Meanwhile, in Scotland Wendy Alexander, the pocket-sized Scottish Labour leader, announces that she's fed-up with Alex Salmond winning all the headlines month after month and, consequently, says she's quite happy to have a referendum on independence after all. This, despite constant assertions that it was the last thing the country wanted or needed. In London, this has been interpreted as a humiliating blow to Gordon Brown.