Peter Hoskin

Watch out.  The fur's flying in Cabinet, and there may well be blood.  The latest claim, revealed by Ben Brogan in the Mail, is that Harriet Harman's being blamed by her colleagues for floating that 'lifeboat for Brown' story yesterday: "Last night, Harriet Harman was at the centre of a blame game over claims that Mr Brown is Germany's favourite for a new job as a global financial watchdog. Downing Street poured scorn on reports that the Prime Minister is being lined up for an international role that would force him to quit No 10. Labour sources claimed instead that Mr Brown was the victim of a botched spin operation by the party's deputy leader amid signs that his authority is weakening.

Now the Tories have nabbed David Freud from the Government, they have the perfect opportunity to recast the welfare debate for the recession years.  As Alex Barker pointed out in an excellent blog post for the FT yesterday, they certainly need to.  After all, recent findings suggest that the Freud-prescribed workfare measures aren't working quite as well as many hoped they would as the downturn takes hold.  Now, that's not to say the welfare reform agenda should be jettisoned.  There's overwhelming evidence that it works better than centralised alternatives, and with unemployment levels shooting ever upwards - and with some 5.2 million Brits on out-of-work benefits - there's a clear need for drastic action.

When you step back and think about it, it's really quite astonishing how fast and how emphatically Brown has fallen since his minor 'bounce' in the autumn.  Sure, he was always going to struggle as the recession bit deeper and deeper.  But to so swiftly get to this point - where all news is bad news; where there is little salve or comfort; and where hope is dying from suffocation - really takes some doing.  Little wonder, then, that Labour now seems saturated by despair and self-loathing; something that's captured wonderfully by two comment pieces in today's papers. The first is Andrew Rawnsley's article in the Observer, an essential portrait of life in the Downing Street bunker.

Just to flag up Martin's latest blog post, in which he details Downing Street's reponse to his 'apology DVD' scoop.  Well worth reading, particularly as it features a (typically) less-than-charming text message from Damian McBride...

Given that today's the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, I've just delved into the Spectator's archives to see what we said about the great man on the occasion of his death in April 1882.  I've typed out the whole obituary below for the benefit of CoffeeHousers and for the sake of posterity: By the death of Charles Darwin, which occurred on Wednesday, England has lost the most original, as well asfar the most celebrated, of modern men of science - the one man whom European Science would, with one voice, probably agree to consider as the most eminent scientific thinker and writer of the present century.

So, Our Dear Leader's studying tapes of Barack Obama to find out just how to say sorry.  We still may never hear an actual apology, but at least he's doing his homework.  Here at Coffee House, we figured we should help him out.  So this, CoffeeHousers, is your mission... Write out a script for Brown's Great Apology, of no more than 300 words, and post it in the comments section below.  The idea came from Alex's classic blog post earlier today, and I'd recommend you read his effort for inspiration.  Here's a snippet: "Mistakes do happen, you know. Nobody's perfect. Not even Tony.

So far as Brown is concerned, the biggest problem with this grilling of the bankers is that it will rebound, dangerously, on to him.  Despite the Government's best efforts to pass the buck (see Alistair Darling's article in the Indy today), there's plenty of room for them to be embarrassed by the associations, friendships and working partnerships that the Treasury Select Committee is shining a light on.  The ever-alert Paul Waugh points out one of them over on his blog: Yet today's news from the Treasury Select Committee is the most damaging threat of all of to Mr Brown and Mr Darling's judgement in relying on Sir James [Crosby, former chief exec of HBOS and a "favourite adviser" to Gordon Brown].