James Forsyth

You won’t find many hacks better connected than Trevor Kavanagh so his column today is particularly noteworthy as it assumes that Gordon Brown being told to step down by some of those closest to him is inevitable: The party won’t have him humiliated by a Cabinet coup, a stalking horse challenge or a showdown with “men in suits”. But senior Labour figures want the issue sorted before the party conference in September. So . . . who? Both pals and plotters believe there are just two options. Either Gordon’s family — his wife, Sarah, or brother Andrew — will step in to save this proud man from further torture and urge him to fall on his sword. Or a group of Cabinet ministers led by Straw will deliver an ultimatum: You go, Gordon . . .

If you want to get a feeling for the pain that Labour is currently going through read Jackie Ashley’s column in The Guardian which sums up the situation brilliantly. “Talking to ministers over the past few weeks, I have been struck by how fatalistic they have become. They do not seem, in the main, to be rebellious, angry or even despairing. Despair is too energetic a word. They seem clinically depressed, tired and flat. There has been talk of a posse of 15 junior ministers going to Brown to tell him the game is up but the consensus is that it won't happen - in effect because they cannot be bothered. There is no plot. There is no plan.” Ashley is surely right that Labour has to either dump Brown by the end of the year or get behind him and with enthusiasm.

Like Stephen, I couldn’t quite believe it when I read that children now receive marks in English GCSE for writing ‘F*** off’. The explanation from Peter Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, that writing down this expletive ‘does show some very basic skills we are looking for’ does make one think that it must be April 1st. One imagines children up and down the land writing ‘F*** off’ on their homework and responding to any objection from their teachers with the line ‘you get a mark for it.’ PS For contrast, try answering some of the questions from the old 11-plus.

One would have thought that getting a bunch of passport photos done in London would be no great hassle—but you’d be wrong. For a while I’ve needed to get some taken for the Tory conference accreditation form so on Thursday I popped into Hampstead Post Office to use the photo machine there. It was out of order. I went back this morning thinking that it would have been fixed in the meantime. How foolish I was. This lunchtime I went to Victoria to use the machines there. I went into one and started plopping in the four pounds that I had to pay to get four photos. But when I got to three pounds eighty it told me the service was temporarily unavailable.

The letter from Sir Simon Milton, head of the Local Government Association, to local councils telling them not to use the powers granted to them under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to deal with “trivial offences” is a triumph for David Davis. (These powers were designed to assist in anti-terrorism investigations but are now being used by councils to check up on what people are putting in their bins and whether they are scooping up after their dogs.) Although, the letter might have been sent anyway there is no doubt that Davis has turned the spotlight onto these kind of abuses. Davis is going to have to battle to stay in the news these coming weeks and I still think that his resignation was ill thought-out.

Today’s Observer has an update on the state of the Labour party’s finances, as Peter Oborne reported back at the end of May there is a real chance that the Labour party might actually go bankrupt. Gaby Hinsliff reports that this worst case scenario appears to have been avoided thanks to a substantial donation from Sir Ronnie Cohen and Lord Sainsbury agreeing to guarantee the salaries of various future staffers. However, the party remains heavily in debt. Ray Collins, the new general secretary, has said that Labour cannot afford to recruit many new staff before the next set of European and local elections in 2009 or the general election. This is going to severely weaken Labour’s field operation, accentuating Gordon Brown’s political problems.

The BBC is reporting that Morgan Tsvangirai will announce this afternoon that he is pulling out of the presidential run-off on Friday.  His decision is in response to the mounting violence against his supporters and systematic efforts to prevent him from campaigning. However, it will allow Mugabe to claim victory. The next few days will be a major test for Africa. European nations are committed to the idea that African nations must take the lead on Zimbabwe. Now that there will not be a contested election on Friday, African countries are going to have to decide what they will do to remove Mugabe from power and stop him spilling more blood and inflicting further misery on Zimbabwe.

The BPIX poll in The Mail on Sunday is unremittingly bad for Brown. Not only do the Tories lead 49 to 26 but the public return a brutal verdict on Brown personally. 44 percent, a plurality, say he should quit now. 47 percent, again a plurality, believe Labour would have a better chance at the next election if they got rid of Brown. 85 percent think Brown has performed worst than expected since becoming Prime Minister and 53 percent wish Tony Blair was still PM. BPIX, who as Political Betting notes are not registered with the British polling council, also asked a series of quirky questions. These find that Cameron has a commanding lead on everything from who best represents British values to who would you like to babysit your child.