James Forsyth

Peter Mandelson gave the Dearing memorial lecture last night and in a section responding to the criticisms of the budget cuts for higher education said:   "Much of the rest of the public sector will receive similar constraints in the course of this year or soon after." Mandleson has implied this before, most notably on Newsnight the day of the Hoon Hewitt plot. But it is a very different from the message Brown is putting out. We in the press should demand details from Mandelson about what these cuts in financial year 2010-11 might be with the same intensity that we did when the Tories said they would make in year cuts if elected. Who knows Mandelson's plans might be more ambitious than the £1.5 billion that the Tories have been able to find.

If an event is going to have dramatic impact we can’t know it is coming. So the emotional moments in Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan have lost much of their potency through being pre-briefed to today’s papers. It also strikes me as rather bad tradecraft to have let it be known that Alastair Campbell was prepping Brown for this appearance; a detail that was bound to lead to cynicism about whether or not the public is being spun. The write-up of the interview in the papers also left me wondering how the electorate will react to Brown saying there was a deal between him and Blair to hand the premiership over to him after Blair had served his stint.

It is interesting that Sir George Young took the opportunity of his interview with The Times this week to reaffirm the Tory leadership’s support for electing select committee chairmen. In the last fortnight, two Tory MPs who would like to be select committee chairmen in the next parliament have complained to me that the leadership is quietly conspiring against the idea. But Sir George’s words suggest that this is not the case. Select committee chairmen election should mean that we get a chairmen who is determined to hold the executive to account wherever that may lead. But it will be intriguing to see how MPs vote.

John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting about what is considered a sackable offence in today's world and what is not. When the story was just about Terry allegedly cuckolding a team mate his position as captain seemed safe. As Danny Finkelstein argued on the Today Programme, modern society is reluctant to have people lose their jobs because of sexual indiscretions—politicians don't have to resign as soon as they are caught having affairs these days. But as soon as there started to be stories alleging financial impropriety—the claim that an associate of his was hawking out the Wembley box that Terry was entitled to through his position as England captain--then his position became far more vulnerable.

Faisal Islam, Channel 4’s economic correspondent,  is one of the journalists who best understands what the Bank of England’s institutional view is. So it is interesting to see him writing this today: “I’m convinced that at Threadneedle Street, they were shocked by the limpness of Britain’s exit from recession. They have been running their big computer model in the past weeks. When it reveals new economic forecasts next Wednesday, we are likely to see a marked downgrade to Britain’s economic prospects.” Politically this could have an impact as Labour’s, to put it charitably, extremely optimistic growth forecasts are what allow it to claim that it will cut the deficit in half in four years.

Peter Mandelson was doing his full Alan Rickman impression at Labour’s press conference this morning. His aim was to imply that every time Labour put the Tories under pressure they wobble. As so often since his return to British politics, Mandelson delivered lines that were so memorable that they were bound to make it into copy. He said that the Tories “would strangle the recovery at birth”, that David Cameron was “bobbing around like a cork in water”, and that George Osborne was the Tories’ “weakest link”. As I type, Mandleson’s sound bites are being replayed yet again on News 24. Now, these lines aren’t going to cut through to the British public.

With another poll showing the Tories ahead but not by enough to secure an overall majority, The News of the World reports that the party is making contingency plans for a second election: The idea would be to take action on immigration, householders’ rights and business taxes and then go to the country again seeking a stronger mandate. To boost the Tories’ prospects, the paper says that Cameron plans to hold a boundary review beforehand. I’d be surprised if it was possible to do that quickly enough for new seats to be in place for a second election this year. There’s also a risk that this effort to remove Labour’s in-built advantage could appear to be gerrymandering if it is followed straight away by an election.

Stories of Gordon Brown’s temper are commonplace in Westminster. But they rarely make it into print. This, though, is about to change. The Mail on Sunday reports that Andrew Rawnsley’s follow-up to Servants of the People contains a string of revelations about Brown’s behaviour. The paper reports that Rawnsley has investigated whether the Prime Minister has hit a senior adviser, pulled a secretary out of her chair because she wasn’t typing fast enough and sworn at aides over the Obama snub. Downing Street is rubbishing these allegations. However, Rawnsley’s record is so good that these stories cannot easily be dismissed, also many journalists have come close to standing them up previously and so will not be inclined to dismiss them out of hand.