James Forsyth

The Lib Dems should be leading the charge against Michael Martin. It is the kind of issue where the Lib Dems can emphasise their outsider status and come across as the party prepared to break up the cosy Westminster consensus. Considering the public disquiet about how MPs are using the expenses system, the Lib Dems would be onto a winner. MPs and the political parties are reluctant to criticise the Speaker because they fear the consequences. As Nick Robinson points out, individual MPs worry that they might not get called in debates and the Tories want to ensure that one of their own gets the job next time round.

Today’s Economist poll on Northern Rock is a belated birthday present for Gordon Brown. Only 5 percent believe the government is most responsible for the crisis and people are more impressed with Brown and Darling’s handling of it now than they were a month ago. But what will really cheer up the PM is that almost 60 percent of the public think the Tories are playing politics with the issue and only one in five say that David Cameron and George Osborne would have done any better. However, this doesn’t mean that the danger has passed for Labour. There are still, as The Economist points out, a whole bunch of problems for Labour—the management of the bank, the inevitable job loses, the repossessions to name but a few—to deal with.

The Lords has just defeated the government on its plan to exempt Northern Rock from the freedom of information act, the issue which David Cameron raised at PMQs yesterday. Brown and Darling now have a choice: they can either overturn the vote in the Commons and send it back to the Lords or they can back down on this question. As Peter Riddell wrote in The Times this morning, “The Government is asking us all to take far too much on trust over the nationalisation of Northern Rock. This may have become the only remaining option by last weekend. But that does not mean that Parliament should sign up to a blank cheque – on behalf of us all – granting ministers sweeping powers and providing little information about the possible taxpayer liability.

Gordon Brown should be casting nervous glances across the Atlantic because a defeat for Hillary Clinton, which is now the most likely result, would be bad news for him. First, it would remove any chance of Brown getting some easy opportunities to play statesman. A President Hillary would likely have teamed up with Brown on a bunch of popular initiatives on things such as climate change and given Brown the chance to strut the international stage. It is unlikely that Obama, who Brown apparently snubbed last summer, would do as much with the Prime Minister. While John McCain is on the record with high praise for David Cameron and has criticised Brown’s pullback from Iraq.

The issue of whether or not to recognise Kosovo demonstrates once again why the idea of a common European foreign policy is absurd. On this issue—as on pretty much any other contentious foreign policy decision you can think of—the European Union is split. 17 of the Union’s 27 members either have recognised Kosovo or will do so in the next few days. A common European policy would have had to gone against the wishes of one of these groups. Ironically, for years it was thought that the European Union was the solution to the Kosovo question. Serbian officials dropped heavy hints that they would accept independence for Kosovo if Serbia got to join the Union at the same time. But the backlash against enlargement, means that this deal was effectively taken off the table.