The Spectator

Wednesday

The Spectator

Reshuffle will be official at lunchtime

Just back from the first lobby briefing with Michael Ellam, the new Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (except he’s dropped ‘official’ so he’s just PMS). His hands were slightly shaking, the poor thing, and I can't really blame him. The room was packed, and a few of us are proudly sporting little red badges saying ‘Feral Beast’. The upshot: no reshuffle news till tomorrow lunchtime. No outsiders in the Cabinet, it seems: Mr Ellam says we will only see what Mr Brown means by “a government of all the talents” when the ministers of state are named on Friday. Mr Brown expects to use Chequers “occasionally” for family use.

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Conservatives at war

No, this has nothing to do with the Tory response to Gordon Brown -- or to Quentin Davies. This is about what, in another context, Richard Hofstadter called 'the paranoid style in American politics'. In the latest issue of the liberal New Republic Johann Hari has an immensely funny piece about his adventures on a cruise organised by the right-wing National Review. Go here. But it is not all jokes. Hari's amused hostility to his fellow-travellers is tempered by his sympathy for William F. Buckley Jr, founder of National Review, and Rich Lowry, the present editor. Both men are sceptics, both talk like conservatives. Most of the others on the cruise, however, are swivel-eyed fantasists, pathologically anti-European -- what are they scared of?

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How about a really radical reshuffle?

All this “talent” business is getting out of hand. In some of Gordon’s speeches, it sounds like a reference to the parable of the Talents (Matthew 25: 14-30). And, for the record, this is how that particular Gospel story ends for the unfortunate soul who squanders his asset: "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." On the other hand, when Prime Minister Brown says with a twinkle for the hundredth time that this will be a “government of all the talents” I am reminded rather of Britain’s Got Talent, and Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden and Simon Cowell judging the auditioning acts. Rumours are flying around Westminster which was obviously all part of the plan – Chris Patten for the Cabinet?

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A healthy reshuffle

Patricia Hewitt to stand down as Health Secretary. No surprises there. Gordon has been saying throughout his grand tour that, while education is his “passion”, health is his “priority”. And no wonder: the Tories have stolen Labour’s lead on health policy, perhaps Cameron’s most remarkable and certainly his cheekiest achievement. Brown is an implacable believer in the NHS and its funding system and, in private, becomes positively irate when the virtues of continental financing structures are mentioned. For the Tories to have stormed on to this terrain is sacrilege for Brown – almost literally. So who will be the new Health Secretary? Ed Balls? I’d give it to John Hutton.

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Can we have what you had, Mr. Brown?

When the Prime Minister (its so weird writing that) told us on the steps of No10 that he “went to the local school” in Kirkcaldy and chose its motto as his personal leitmotif, it is worth recalling the type of education he actually had. He enjoyed the ultimate academic selection, being chosen from primary with other boys with IQs over 130 who joined an “E Stream” and were sent a year early to Kirkcaldy High. It worked so well he was at university aged 16. But as he just said, “I would not be standing here without that opportunity.” Any chance of him extending that opportunity of academic selection to the millions stuck in dead-end comprehensives, then?

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Brown’s agenda

The school motto of Kirkcaldy High School: “I will try my utmost”. That was the principle which Gordon Brown promised to make the foundation of his work as Prime Minister. It is up there with Boxer’s “I will work harder” in Animal Farm. But this was the son of the Manse speaking from the heart. The days of Cool Britannia are a distant memory. Only Stakhanovites need apply. There were five main themes in the new PM’s brief address, all of which have been roadtested during his tour of the country: 1). Strength: “steady in purpose”, “steadfast”, “resolute in purpose” – that is, in contrast to the limp, purposeless Tories. 2).

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Welcome Prime Minister Brown, goodbye Mr. Blair

We’ve just posted The Spectator leader that will be in this week’s print magazine; it looks at the challenges facing Gordon Brown. We’ve also put up a fantastic essay by Clemency Burton-Hill on what it was like growing up with Tony Blair. Do give them a read and keep on coming back for more.

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Paging John Bercow (UPDATED)

I don't know where John Bercow is having lunch right now, but a lot of people wish he'd switch his phone on. Perhaps thanks to Guido, there's a rumour flying around Westminster that he's the next to cross the floor and join Labour. Well, didn't Ed Balls omninously suggest there are more Tory MPs out there, wavering to join Labour like Quentin Davies? I've had a Shadow Cabinet member phone me and ask if it's true about Mr Bercow - Mr Bercow has a pro-Labour wife, apparently, and is known to wish Mr Cameron would go further in his modernising mission. I strongly suspect it's nonsense - "an inverted pyramid of piffle," as Boris would say. Mr Bercow has not been allowed to drift into the wilderness that Davies inhabited for so long.

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Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen and Areverderchi

For the first time in my time in the Commons, the press gallery was full. “A lot of so-called journalists I’ve never seen before” grumbled the doorman. And no wonder. This was box office – or was supposed to be. It turned into a rather tame love-in. David Cameron had technocratic, statesman-like questions – getting prepared for Gordon Brown already. Tony Blair tried his line about NHS waiting times (which I fisked last week) and even Jeremy Corbyn’s “lets pull out of Iraq” line was an easy bowl for Blair. He made soft jokes about a P45.  A LibDem asked him about his thoughts on disestablishment of the Church of England.

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The coming battle

We’ve got two great pieces up today on the new political landscape. James O'Shaughnessy explains why the master tactician Gordon Brown is putting housing at the top of his agenda. While Martin Vander Weyer looks at whether business will prefer David Cameron or the devil it knows, Gordon Brown. Check back for more later in the day.

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What’s the next Brown surprise?

Iain Dale reports that Ed Balls was understandably gloating about the defection of Quentin Davies last night at a Fabian Society reception last night and promised his audience that, “There's more to come - as I know.

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How important is the defection of Quentin Davies?

Two contrasting views in the papers this morning. Here’s the key passage from The Guardian’s leader on it: “There has been no more brutal assault on a Tory leader since Sir Geoffrey Howe plunged the knife between Mrs Thatcher's shoulders in 1990. Mr Davies's withering comments will be endlessly repeated. They represent a huge new threat to Mr Cameron's recently more shaky standing. And they give Mr Brown the priceless reputation of being a party leader who, like Mr Blair a decade ago, can reshape British politics to place Labour in command of the centre ground once more.” And now, Daniel Finkelstein in The Times: “people with knowledge have a tendency to regard the things they know as more important than they actually are.

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Who we are

Where better to spend the last night of the Blair era than in the company of ageing rockers? These days, The Who smash their tambourines rather than their guitars. But, other than that, they are still as sharp as the sharpest Carnaby Street winkle pickers and as taut as the tires on a brand new Vespa. At the Wembley Arena last night the band that hoped that they would die before they got old showed that you're only as old as the venue you fill. My Generation? Yes, and their children, and, in some cases, God help us, grandchildren. Pop long ago broke its promise to define generation gaps and became something completely different: part of our island folklore, our national glue.

Tuesday

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Should Gordon worry about Tony’s new job?

There are two reasons for Brown to be concerned about Blair becoming the quartet’s envoy to the Palestinians. First, it is going to exacerbate the problem of Brown establishing himself on the world stage. Back in 2005 one of Brown’s closest allies told Newsweek’s Stryker McGuire how when he was in the States during the Major year “Everybody there thought Thatcher was still prime minister.” The Brownite aim of avoiding a repeat of that embarrassing situation just got a bit more difficult. The second potential problem is Gaza itself. What happens if attacks on Israel from Gaza reach such a level that the Israelis decide a prolonged military response is needed? Blair as an envoy to the region would likely have something to say about it.

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Dangerous poppycock from Blair

Today’s news that Afghanistan’s opium production is soaring takes me back to perhaps the biggest lie Tony Blair has uttered during the war on terror. He told the 2001 Labour conference that “90% of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan. The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets.” In fact, he knew that the Taliban psychos had virtually extinguished the poppy trade declaring it “un-Islamic”. Fearing limb amputation, farmers obeyed. The UN said crops dropped by 91% - info that was available well before his speech. So our intervention in Afghanistan was only ever going to increase world opium supply, as well he knew.