Tony Blair: Abstention recommended

Hard to argue with Charles Clarke in the Indie yesterday: "Blair's Presidency of the EU... would encourage the rerunning of past battles rather than enabling a new approach to be fashioned." Quite. No-one even knows what the job is really about, and Blair is not even a professed candidate, but still all we're hearing about at the top of the news hour is Iraq, Bush, WMD, 'war crimes' et cetera.
Moreover, as Clarke wisely added: "Whatever the merits or otherwise of this assessment, it remains very doubtful that Tony Blair will command the support he needs to secure this appointment and the UK should certainly not be putting all its eggs in the basket of winning the Presidency." Indeed, tonight it looks like Blair has nowhere near the votes he'd need. On sober reflection he ought to be glad of this outcome.

Labour: The vastness of the North devours us

The last days, the bunker days... and tonight BBC1's Question Time fielded a quite conspicuously skewed-right-of-centre panel, there to jump up and down on a cut-out of Gordon Brown, cheered to the hilt by a rowdy audience. But, then again, since Harriet Harman was the allotted speaker for Labour, I was indeed minded to vote for Anyone But.

So, has this been as ghastly a day for Brown as his detractors would desire? The Lockerbie blowback continues, and for sure the Government's inability to say what it thought about Scotland's choice (and why) is rather shameful. As for the Baroness Scotland - the debacle serves her right, though I wouldn't have wanted her to go until her high-handed third-rate attempt at an apology - like the expenses thing, can none of these people feel the gorge of their own hypocrisy rising up to flood their throats?

Shriti Vadera? Well, I see Robert Peston rides in manfully to say that her new job is all of a piece with Gordon's wishes. And I hope that is so, because the vultures of the press were squatting over that story all bloody day long, hoping perhaps that Vadera would flounce out in high dudgeon and give Gordon a hard boot in the sporran on her way out.

I admire Charles Clarke MP and can't argue with any of what he said the other day. I admire the serial Brown-basher John Rentoul too, have done ever since reading his outstanding biography of Tony Blair, but while I find it noteworthy that Rentoul "admired [Blair] more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning" (since I did too), I rather feel he's now going a tad overboard on this same sentiment. Still, I remain his fan, and we are likeminded too in wanting Alan Johnson for Labour leader.

But what really preys on me is this headline today from the FT: "Labour’s support in north collapses." Without serving up any hard data from their new research that I can see, the paper nonetheless warrants that "The Tories have built a narrow four-point lead in the north, eradicating the 19-point Labour lead in the region that underpinned Tony Blair’s last general election victory." Dear me how, the shame of it. I suppose it partly depends on how you define The North. In the Spectator David Blackburn looks at things in the round, arguing "the evidence that Middle England is not fully behind Mr Cameron will cause a few headaches in Central Office. But if the Tories win in Newcastle, a marginal victory in Redditch is of no consequence."

Had away, bonny lad. I guess conceivably the Lib Dems could turn their municipal success in Newcastle into a dominance of Tyneside's Westminster seats too. But the Tories? Truly I would gan to the top of our stairs. Not that there aren't Tories in NE1, mind you - but in the main they either travel by chauffeur or hide behind mansion walls; and that has never seemed quite sufficient to win a polling majority.

None of this, I know, is any comfort to Brown, or "The Wolf", as I ought really to call him were I to extend the entirely regrettable WWII analogy of this post's title and opening lines, occasioned probably by there being a new biography of the appalling Alan Clark going round... Divvint get wuh started on that one.

William Hill: Brown 6/4 to go before the next election

As reported in the Spectator, "Brown is 6/4 to go before the next election 7 to 2 to leave this year 15/8 to be replaced in 2009, 11/10 to go in 2010." This is tough-minded betting. In the Independent the other day Johann Hari was suggesting that Brown accept he's lost the next election and embark on some berserker spree of red-blooded socialism for the 2 years he has left. And John Rentoul, the smartest biographer of Blair, was chastising those disciples of the former PM who fell in meekly behind Brown last year, after a token bit of moody shilly-shallying. David Aaronovitch in the Times raised the issue of all that rancid karma Brown and his best pals stored up for themselves during the presumptive Blair-baiting wait for succession. (And I have to say to my eye the worst of Brown is his rotten taste in political allies and little proteges.) It's hard to see a bracing blast of economic good news sufficient to save Brown within the next 18 months, the time-frame he would need. I can't see him going out in some blaze of redistributive glory. I don't see how Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn could lead the party, though perhaps as stalking horses they could smoke out a more considerable stiletto-wielder. I don't think the public are ready to accept a second consecutive unelected PM, least of all in these grim circumstances. And I'm not sure a smart young man like David Miliband wants to bet the house this year or next, and risk fast-forwarding to the end of his and all political careers, i.e. failure. So what do I think is going to happen? What would I like to happen? I'll decide once there's a bit of clear blue water between us and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.