Matthew Dancona

Peter Mandelson's dig at Gordon Brown for his botched, theatrically half-hearted signature of the Lisbon Treaty is more than the latest chapter in the 13-year-old feud between Blairites and Brownites. It is also (yet another) uncanny echo of the John Major era. The Grey One tried his best to plot a middle course on Europe - and ended up pleasing nobody. It is often pointed out that Labour is not split over Europe as the Tories were in the Nineties. That is true. But Mr Brown's backbenchers are divided no less fiercely over a much more toxic issue: how soon the PM should step down. One Labour Privy Councillor told me that if Gordon didn't get his act together by the summer that Jack Straw or Alan Johnson would have to step in. Improbable? Maybe.

Amanda Platell, a must-read columnist as well as a hugely experienced former editor and political adviser, hits the nail on the head today with her piece on New Labour's 'trustafarians'. She applies the term to the privileged younger generation of Government ministers who have never had to struggle in Opposition or fight for the privilege of office. It's spot on: a label that deserves to enter the political lexicon.

As James has noted, there is a yawning gulf of ideas opening up between the Tories and Brown on foreign policy. Read this piece by David Aaronovitch in The Times today for a fascinating exploration of the subject. While I am still not sure that Gordon embraces liberal interventionism with the same ardour as Blair – for all his contempt for the EU, Brown is still a believer in rules-based internationalism – there is no doubt that the PM is closer ideologically on foreign policy to his predecessor than is Cameron, the self-styled “heir to Blair”. As was once pointed out to me by a very senior Cameroon, it is no accident that Dave inherited Douglas Hurd’s seat: he is more of an old-fashioned pragmatist on foreign policy than a 21st Century radical.

Don’t miss a very important piece in tomorrow’s magazine by James and the distinguished US journalist Claudia Rosett on the star of Gordon’s “ministry of all the talents”, Mark Malloch Brown. Although plenty of people expressed concern about Lord Malloch Brown’s appointment to a senior ministerial post at the Foreign Office and his early remarks, myself included, this article is the first major investigation of His Lordship, around whom all sorts of rumours have been swirling in the past few weeks. It reveals some remarkable things.

As I predicted yesterday, Michael Gove’s speech to the Bow Group this morning was a belter: as trenchant and subtle an analysis of Gordon Brown’s politics as any Tory politician has yet made. The Gover launched his attack more in sorrow than in anger – and it was all the deadlier for that. Look at his choice of historical precedents for the Prime Minister: David Lloyd George – one of our most historically significant Chancellors whose peacetime premiership descended into an exercise in idealism-free positioning, truckling to establishment media figures and ideological drift.

Huge excitement at Tory HQ over a speech which Michael Gove will deliver tomorrow on Gordon Brown’s politics. It is meant, I am told, to be seen both as the “definitive” take on Gordon-so-far and as a companion piece to David Cameron’s speech on immigration today – a measure of how (justly) high Gove’s stock is in the Cameroon circle. Apt, as well, that the most brilliant Scot of one generation should be selected to take on the most brilliant of another. The Shadow Schools Secretary was President of the Union when I was at Oxford and, though he has deliberately restrained the rhetorical fireworks as Shadow Schools Secretary – the key is to look like a Cabinet Minister in waiting – he is quite something as a debater when he lets loose.