Peter Hoskin

A striking observation from PR Week's David Singleton: "[Damian] McBride's next move is unknown. Previously, lobbyists have been keen to sign up anyone linked to the Brown's inner circle, but this week it appeared highly unlikely that many agencies will attempt to snare the former special adviser. Hanover Communications MD Charles Lewington said: ‘I am loathed to kick a man when he is down but he demonstrated a clear lack of judgment and professionalism. I fear his reputation is so badly damaged that only a long period building churches in Rwanda will restore it.'" Singleton's the journo who had the lowdown on the McBride-Carter wars last year, so it will be well worth keeping an eye on the PR Week website for his insights into Smeargate.

Over at Red Box, Sam Coates has published the open letter that Gordon Brown has sent Sir Gus O'Donnell about the McBride scandal.  Here it is.  Have a sickbag to hand before reading: Dear Gus I am writing about the Code of Conduct for Special Advisers, and the proposals I want to make to tighten this up. I am assured that no Minister and no political adviser other than the person involved had any knowledge of or involvement in these private emails that are the subject of current discussion, and I have already taken responsibility for acting on this - first by accepting Mr McBride's resignation and by making it clear to all concerned that such actions have no part to play in the public life of our country.

With McBride gone, it's worth referring to a passage from Philip Collins' article for the Times yesterday.  Speaking about high profile resignations, he makes this point about those who leave government: "The incidents that fade from the memory quickest are the alleged scandals: David Blunkett (twice), Peter Mandelson (twice), Beverley Hughes, Peter Hain. To this number we might yet have to add Tony McNulty but probably not Ms Smith. Why the distinction? Because Ms Smith is more damaging to lose. We can see that there is neither rhyme nor reason to this list because ministers are allowed to come back. What sort of misdemeanour is sufficiently bad to require resignation but not so bad that it does not prevent your return to government a few months later?

There's an incredibly important comment piece by Dr Taj Hargey in today's Times.  Hargey is chair of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford and the Imam of the Summertown Islamic Congregration, and describes the "McCarthyite" campaign which the "Muslim heirarchy in Britain" have waged against him.  In the face of fundamentalism and Wahhabism, he calls for a reformation of Islam: "We need a reformation that saves Islam from foreign-inspired zealots. That reformation is already under way, with Muslims going back to the pristine teaching of the transcendent Koran, not taking on trust the hadith (a compilation of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad recorded some 250 years after his death by non-Arabs) or the corpus of medieval man-made Sharia (religious law).

Uh-oh.  Are the Government about to make an official forecast they might regret?  Speaking to the Standard, the Treasury minister Stephen Timms strongly hints that a 2009 recovery may be pencilled into the Budget.  Here's what he said: "I wouldn't rule [growth this year] out. The question is when in the second half of the year and we will be a bit clearer about what we expect when we publish the Budget forecast" Now, this isn't quite as outlandish as the forecasts in the PBR.  But it's still towards the optimistic end of the spectrum, and you'd have thought the government would play it safe rather than risk backtracking once again.

Is Cameron overdoing it on the economy?  A silly question, perhaps, given that we're caught up in a recession.  But it's one prompted by an article in today's FT, which notes that: "David Cameron has made only one speech dedicated to health and education in the past nine months, compared with 18 on the economy." Of course, the worry is that the party's message on the public services will get submerged under all the economic talk.  That may or may not be happening already but, even given the relative importance of the issues, the 18:1 ratio does seem rather unbalanced. To my mind, all this underlines just how Cameron-centric the Tory party has become over recent months; something which the Tory leader himself appears to acknowledge.