James Forsyth

The more that comes out about the Brown-Blair tensions, the more you realise quite how damaging they were to good government. Just take this example from the forthcoming BBC documentary on the Blair years that the Daily Mail reports today, “Left-wing Labour MP Ian Gibson reveals how Mr Balls - now Schools Secretary - told him to step up the fight against the fees. He says: "I met Ed and he said, 'Gosh, you've been on the TV and radio a lot recently on the issue, keep going, excellent'."  So a Prime Minister whose passion is education was prepared to have his henchman jeopardise the passage of a hugely important piece of education legislation for purely factional advantage.

There is yet another story about Lord Ashcroft’s role with the Tories in the Guardian today. This time the news is that Ashcroft gave David Cameron a ticket to and a flight home from the Rugby World Cup final in Paris. At the risk of coming over all hair-shirt, this strikes me as a mistake. Ashcroft’s organization is obviously playing a key role in the marginals and going a long way to neutralise the incumbency advantage that MPs have but this kind of personal association risks fostering the impression of a party overly reliant on the largesse of one individual. Labour have obviously decided to make a big deal out of the Ashcroft connection and it seems foolish for the Tories to add any fuel, however small, to the fire.

Gordon Brown’s Mansion House speech tonight will be pored over for hints about the direction of British foreign policy.  As Jackie Ashley, a columnist normally sympathetic to the Prime Minister, writes in The Guardian, “Brown's "vision" for foreign policy remains even more opaque than his domestic vision.” There is no desire in Downing Street for the Brown premiership to become as defined by foreign policy as Blair’s was. But as Tim Hames argues in The Times the moment of decision coming down the track on Iran, means that Brown might well have to make a fundamental choice on foreign policy before the next election.    To date, Brown seems determined not to box himself in.

The internecine warfare at Respect just took another turn with George Galloway denying that he has left the party. There now seems to be a bitter dispute between Galloway’s faction and the Socialist Workers Party about which group is going to have to be the one to actually break away. The SWP are claiming that Galloway’s decision to hold a rival party conference suggests that he is the one who has left, while Galloway’s lot are refusing to budge.

Respect is finally collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Daniel Finkelstein reports that George Galloway has kicked out the Socialist Workers. However, this is only the beginning of the fun. Danny points to a statement posted on the party’s website: Dear Members, Respect has been locked out of its head office. Overnight the locks were changed on the Respect national office. This action excludes most National Officers, the national office staff and the majority of Respect members who support them from their own organisation's headquarters. All one can say is that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer party. It is a good job that they have a leader with such courage, strength and indefatigability to try and get them through this crisis.