James Forsyth

The main news coming out of Gordon Brown’s monthly news conference is that nationalising Northern Rock is now clearly under serious consideration, with Brown and Alistair Darling both stressing that all options are on the table. The other notable thing was how Brown kept banging on about ‘the spirit of Christmas’ in, what came across on television, as a rather over the top fashion. One of the New Year’s resolutions for Brown’s media team must be to find a way of humanising him and allowing him to demonstrate some warmth and humour in a way that comes across as natural.

To lose by this small a margin must be absolutely gutting for Chris Huhne. To come so close against the candidate of the party establishment and the media is a real achievement. But this defeat need not be the end of the road for him.  What Huhne should do now is become the leading voice in the party against going into coalition without a guarantee of PR. This would not be technically disloyal and Nick Clegg would be hard pressed to slap him down over it. But it would position Huhne perfectly if there’s a hung parliament. Clegg would be sorely tempted to accept an offer to go into government and if he did, Huhne could resign on principle.

Today’s YouGov poll showing the Tories reaching 45% will send the party into the holidays in high spirits. If they can sustain this rating into the New Year, they’ll vastly increase the chances that Labour will turn in on itself. Gordon Brown, whose approval rating is now -26 compared to +48 in August, will come under even more pressure if things do not improve in the near future. Two numbers from the poll should particularly cheer the Tories. David Cameron and George Osborne now have a 7 point lead over Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling on who would do more for your family’s standard of living. While 77% think that a lot of the money pumped into public services in the last ten years has been wasted.

Gordon Brown’s decision to turn up in Lisbon yesterday to sign the new EU treaty but only as the other leaders were leaving left him looking more like Mr. Bean than ever. It was typical of how Brown doesn’t quite get triangulation. The excuse the Brownites trotted out was that he had already agreed to talk to the Commons Liaison Committee on Thursday morning and so couldn’t be in two places at once. But as James Kirkup points out over at Three Line whip the timing for this doesn’t add up. Brown claims he agreed to his date with the Liaison Committee on the 5th but the Portuguese had informed the rest of the EU of the date of the signing ceremony back in October.

This morning, Gordon Brown told the Commons liaison committee: "You cannot make decisions and assume that people will simply follow them. Most decisions can only be successful if people are part of the process."After that, he jetted off to sign the Treaty formerly known as the European constitution having denied people the role in the process that the Labour manifesto had promised them.