James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
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David Miliband’s speech was neither a triumph nor a disaster. It was, as a fellow scribbler put it to me afterwards, a seven out of ten speech. I doubt that many people who weren’t for Miliband before it thought he was the man Labour needs after it. But equally Miliband’s supporters will have been relieved
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Darling’s speech suggests that Labour will not tack that left during this financial crisis. The Chancellor did attack the bonus culture. But all he said was that the government would “look at the culture of huge bonuses that have distorted the way decisions are made” which is not the kind of language that suggests he
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The illusion of unity is just about holding up in Manchester. Both Alan Milburn and Peter Mandelson stayed away—much to the disappointment of us hacks—from the Progress rally last night despite being listed as speakers, and most attacks on Brown have been in code. All of this makes Ed Balls’ attack on Tony Blair at
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David Miliband just spoke at a Progress rally here in Manchester, and the Kremlinologists are going to have a field-day with his speech. Provocatively, when Miliband listed what made him proud of New Labour, he did not mention the economy or anything else Brown is associated with. At the end of the speech, the room
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James Purnell made a fascinating speech this afternoon. It was in some ways a very Blairite speech. He challenged the party to go further, faster. He was cutting about Labour’s self indulgent streak and unapologetic about modernisation: “we changed. because we were tired of being the conscience of a Conservative country”. But at the same
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The mood here in Manchester is odd. No one expects a move against Brown this week but most people expect that this will be Brown’s last conference as leader. Talking to folk on the left, it seems that the one thing that could save him with the Labour party is him tacking hard to the
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Over on Next Left, Sunder Katwala reports that at a Fabian society fringe meeting today Jon Cruddas said: “There is a big case for a middle-class tax cut too – to remove some of the people who have tripped over into the higher rate tax bands, such as teachers who can now be paying the
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Alan Johnson’s interview with Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester changes the dynamics of the Labour leadership debate. By once again making clear that he isn’t interested in the top job and praising David Miliband in such lavish terms, Johnson has made clear that he won’t be a candidate. (Johnson admits that it was his defeat
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Coffee House is running a series of posts on the contenders to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour party leader. The latest is below. Click here for our profile of David Miliband, and here for Jon Cruddas. Alan Johnson, 58, Secretary of State for Health Pros Impossible to hate: Johnson is, as one political operative put
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Tony Blair on the Daily Show last night
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Frank Luntz is the Marmite of polling: you either love him or hate him. His focus group on Newsnight tonight comparing the three party leaders made—as expected—for interesting viewing. Although I’d have preferred to see the potential Labour leadership candidates tested. I imagine that the Lib Dems will be crowing for weeks about its finding
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Coffee House is running a series of posts on the contenders to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour party leader. The latest is below. To read our profile of David Miliband, click here. Jon Cruddas, 46 Pros Clean hands: Cruddas has served in neither the Brown nor the Blair cabinets so it would be harder for
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Yesterday, Downing Street was keen to take the credit for the Lloyd’s HBOS deal. But Brown is playing a dangerous game. First of all, there is the issue highlighted by Alphaville of whether there has been tinkering with the deal to make sure that Edinburgh remains a major UK financial centre. It also appears that
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Gordon Brown ignored the Bank of England’s advice and sold off half this country’s gold reserves between 1999 and 2002 at an average price of $275 an ounce. Last night, gold reached $870 an ounce in after-hours trading in New York.
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There’s some pretty tough competition at the moment for the award for the weakest statement of support for the Prime Minister by a Cabinet Minister. But John Hutton is probably the front-runner for his comments on the Andrew Marr on Sunday. Marr asked Hutton whether he was on the side of the rebels or Gordon
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The most interesting conversation in Westminster right now is what a new Labour leader could do to restore the party’s fortunes. One idea that could be particularly politically potent is a bold move on tax. Since Labour came to power, the number of people paying the top rate of tax has pretty much doubled. Brown
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Anne McElvoy has some telling details from inside yesterday’s meeting of the cabinet in her Evening Standard column this morning: “It can’t go on for much longer,” says one Cabinet member who described yesterday’s meeting as “excruciating: an embarrassment”. “It’s not just the country that’s not listening to Gordon any longer: the Cabinet isn’t listening
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One of the things that the rebels have got right so far is not turning this into a personal campaign against Gordon Brown. The Labour party is reluctant to dump its leader, they really don’t do assassination, and so the clever thing to do is to coax rather than bully them into it. By this
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Gordon Brown’s reply to David Cairns’s resignation letter ends as follows: I will always respect the views of others both in the party and the government but believe that both function best when we show unity. Gordon Brown This strikes me as a revealing choice of words. Brown doesn’t say the party and the government
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One of the striking things about this uprising is how the plotters keep framing their positions perfectly—evidently some people in the Labour party haven’t forgotten what the party learned from Blair, Campbell and Mandelson. On Saturday, Joan Ryan presented her request for nomination papers as a matter of party democracy. Today, David Cairns’s resignation letter