Ed Miliband and his new broom (minus a few bristles)

Ed Miliband is now Labour leader and looking every inch the junior executive with a day in charge whilst the boss is away. I suppose the Labour Party is now going to reinvent itself again. Branding for Britain's socialists, or whatever they are today, is rather like supermarket branding. Keep changing the label and the punters might think they're getting something different. I've been thinking about this Miliband brother contest. I think it will be probably best all round if Dave does disappear. Otherwise the press will continue, ad nauseam, about the brothers. Ed and David are both ambitious men. Both wanted the top job. This is not about responsibility as Ed waffled on about this morning. He has no "responsibility" to be leader. It's just his ambition. He thinks he's better than anyone else. Fair do's. But don't get all pious about it.

As for his Iraq stuff, well it's OK as it goes but he's been around for some time and his voice of disapproval was a whisper if it was anything. He implies New Labour is dead, but looking at the present shadow cabinet, as Ed gave his leader's speech, it looked like they were suffering from nothing worse than having eaten sour grapes.

Miliband junior gets to have an elected team to select from. None of his choosing. Could be anyone. Dromey's in there apparently. He's Harperson's husband and looking quite good for a suited and booted former trade union rabble rouser. I fear a slick presentation of anti-cuts opposition. The trouble is it was New Labour that baked the cake and stuck frightful frosting on the top. Now that they lost the knife to cut it with, they are berating the coalition over its choice of knife and slices. The cake should never have been baked in the first place. It's full of quantative easing and the cherries have all sunk to the bottom.

Miliband may suit some but I don't think he will be much more than he is already. Just leader of the Labour Party.

Miliband Minor wins the Labour leadership race!

Tortoises and hares come to mind. I also got the feeling that David Milband sort of got a bit tired and testy towards the end. Four and a half months. That's half a human pregnancy. The Labour Party has some warped idea about democracy. Keep it tedious, long drawn out and folks may not get to hear too much about it all.

I can't summon up much enthusiasm for it. Personally I think Diane Abbott would be better at raising the political temperature, but she would have been a bit of a liability. Ed Miliband is no doubt a talented young man though I think he will not get many knockout blows at PMQ's. Now they will have to find a deputy leader. Another four and a half months?

The election process was tortuous indeed. Brother David kept his lead in rounds 1,2 and 3 only to get stuffed by Brother Ed in round 4. I can see why the LibDems like this sort of election.

Round 1: David Miliband 37.78%, Ed Miliband 34.33% Diane Abbott eliminated
Round 2: David Miliband 38.89%, Ed Miliband 37.47%. Andy Burnham eliminated
Round 3: David Miliband 42.72%, Ed Miliband 41.26%, Ed Balls eliminated
Round 4: David Miliband 49.35%, Ed Miliband 50.65%. Ed Miliband wins!

It wasn't exactly Cain and Abel but neither was it a Jedward outing. Brotherly love will be back very soon we are assured and, of course, all good socialists are brothers. I just hope Miliband Minor doesn't think he's got his prefect's tie as well!

Dianne Abbott wants to be Labour leader

I must say I was surprised. But I've had half an hour to think about it and I say "Go for it, girl!" although she's only two years and a bit younger than me. She may be just the tonic the Labour Party needs. The Miliband brothers are clever. In fact very clever. No intellectual shirkers are they. But I sense the party won't go for either straight away. Ed Balls has gone back to his roots, which is probably a good thing for him. Trying to be the antedote to Mandy and Campbell was never going to work. Andy Burnham is also in the race.

Diane Abbott says, "The other candidates are all nice and would make good leaders of the Labour Party but they all look the same... We cannot be offering a slate of candidates who all look the same. The Labour Party's much more diverse than that." And so is the country. However, I don't buy this multi-cultural thing. It's artificial mumbo-jumbo dreamed up by pseudos and political wonks. If the country was multi-cultural it would be a real mixture. It isn't. It's predominantly white with large enclaves of immigrant communities in the big cities. Solihull isn't multi-cultural. What we have are a number of people from different ethnic backgrounds. Some integrate, some don't. The country is definitely diverse, though. I reckon everybody is in some kind of minority. I'm in about six!

Having a black female Leader of the Opposition might be a good thing. But it must not be because it "looks good" or "ticks a few boxes". Dianne Abbott claims to be a socialist but I have my doubts. I think she's more than likely to be enamoured by pragmatic policies rather than dogmatic ones. Will she win? I tend to doubt it, but she may not come last.

Labour losers line up for contest

This is how the BBC describes the likely candidates for Labour leadership.

Policy wonk-turned-Blairite frontrunner - David Miliband
Smooth-talking ex-postman and possible caretaker? - Alan Johnson
Feminist comeback queen - Harriet Harman
Calm throughout the storm - but uncharismatic? - Alistair Darling
Hard-hitting Brown loyalist - Ed Balls
David's Brownite younger brother - Ed Miliband
Fresh-faced, friendly, ready? - Andy Burnham
Philosophical left-winger - John Cruddas

Hardly a group that will set the Nation's pulses racing. If that's the choice, well.... and I hope Harriet Harperson doesn't get it, or the Miliband Brothers. Isn't there anybody else?

D-Day for Gordon Brown!

June the 6th will be Gordon Brown's D-Day! Disaster Day, Dumping Day, or Departure Day. Take your pick or make one up yourself. He will be gone by that day. A month of hearing about the sleaze of politicians, the daily disasters in the economy and the tortuous campaigning of a prime minister who is fading fast, will have convinced the Labour Party they need a new leader. The fact that the European Elections will have provided the worst results in the history of the party will have come as no surprise. It will have just added to the desire for a complete change of leadership.

Why would anyone want to vote Labour?

"Gordon's for me", says Harriet Harman!

Very strange things are happening at the top of the New Labour edifice. The cracks are appearing and various characters are out night and day with pots of glue and sheets of brown paper. Or is it vinegar and brown paper?

Harriet Harman is the latest to sound off about her loyalty to the hapless leader. She has publicly declared that she is not remotely interested in the leadership. So if, Gordon Brown falls on his sword, let's hope there are those capable of holding her back. Known as Harriet Harperson for her slavish adherence to all things sexually equal, she is the complete opposite of a soft-boiled egg. She's soft on the outside and pretty hard inside. A perfect political operator and one Brown should be wary of.

It is said quite often that Gordon Brown is grumpy and moody. It is now being reported that he often flies into rages, is unpredictable, can be extremely morose and prefers to maintain close contact with only a small coterie of close companions. Is this the type of man we want leading the country? Is Gordon Brown really stable enough to cope with the complexities of a financial meltdown? It depends on who you believe.

The Cabinet is coming to the Brown rescue by saying he's the best man for the job. Whilst falling short of saying they'd die for him, they seem quite happy and pleased about it all. Has the prime Minister ever bellowed at one of them? Has he cowered them into submission?

It doesn't add up. Peter Oborne reported in the Daily Mail that Brown was getting increasing bunker-bound. Oborne says, "The fundamental fact is that Brown has lost control of a very large part of the Labour Party. For a control freak who deeply resents it when he fails to get his own way, this is intolerable. This powerlessness explains the recurrent reports emanating from Downing Street that Brown's personal behaviour has become erratic. He is prone to fits of rage, and there are reports that only last week he had to be taken to one side and calmed down by Peter Mandelson after a TV interview went wrong." Somebody witnessed that, unless Oborne is making it up, which I very much doubt. So can the likes of Alan Johnson still say he's the only man for the job?

Oborne goes on to say, "Worryingly for Gordon Brown, the conspirators do not just have their candidate. They have their chosen time. Next month's local and European elections are the moment of maximum risk for the Prime Minister. A truly disastrous performance at the polls - as seems very probable - will prompt many more MPs to come forward to call on Brown to go." So that will be that, then?

It is a very sad situation where we have a man in power with obvious qualities, and Gordon Brown does have those, but that his twin flaws of anger and vindictiveness are now outweighing the positive aspects of his nature. Perhaps the Cabinet have just had enough of being browbeaten.

If he goes in June and a new leader is in place, Labour could well get back in contention. I still think it hard for them to win an outright majority, but they could be in with a chance as far as a minority or coalition government is concerned. At the moment, they are doomed to go down like the Titanic.

The Labour Party made the grave mistake of accepting as fact that Gordon Brown was the only choice after Blair. Patently that was an absurd notion. Then, once in place, Gordon Brown made the catastrophic mistake of not calling a general election. He just bottled it. If he had gone to the country he could have won well. Any subsequent problems over the credit crisis would enable him to say he was backed by the country. As it is he isn't and won't be. We have a prime minister who finds decisions hard to make and who is very much becoming emotionallly unstable.

Harriet Harman is fooling nobody apart from herself.

Experienced man looks a bit like a novice!

Ruth Kelly is leaving the Government to spend more time with her family. Usual remarks, but for her, probably true. She would want to, and why not.

As for the reasons other than this, well, they stand out a mile. She grins and offers profuse praise for the Prime Minister. He, in turn, burbles about, "There are no political issues between Ruth and me." Really? She is known to be unhappy with the direction of the government over recent months. Before the prime minister's conference speech on Tuesday, it was also known that a number of cabinet ministers had been considering resigning with her. She smiles sweetly and says she was surprised that the news came out today. Really? She says she spoke to "Gordon" months ago. So someone leaked their agreement about the timing of her departure? When would we have known, if not today?

If I were Gordon Brown, I'd be a bit miffed at her cockiness. However, it does tend to show that he is a bit of a novice in keeping his cabinet together. Blair would have shrugged it all off with a "well, yeah, er!" retort.

"I'm all in favour of apprenticeships, but let me tell you this is no time for a novice," says Brown, referring to David Cameron, but taken up by the press to mean Miliband. Gordon Brown had a lengthy time as Chancellor in which he kept telling everyone he'd served his "apprenticeship" and he wanted to be Prime Minister. His apprenticeship didn't mean he wasn't going to be a novice as PM.

In his conference speech, Gordon Brown mentioned this "new settlement for new times" every so often but we are waiting to hear what it will really be. He painted a rosy picture of New Labour's achievements, but the real problems are stored up due to excessive borrowing and running the public purse dry.

I think a novice might do things a bit better!

Top of the Pops

Gordon Brown and The Novices

Gordon Brown has staked his claim to be the only man to steer Britain through tough economic times saying, "This is no time for a novice."

No time for a ditherer, either!

Miliband's Heseltine Moment!

David Miliband is what my father would have called "a thruster" by which he meant someone to be wary of. Miliband is a bit loose with the tongue. Unlike the chirpy Hazel Blears, Miliband is more of the sidling up and conspiratorial grin type. If I were Gordon Brown I'd move him to be Leader of the House and get Hoon in, much as I detest Hoon for his duplicitous dealings over Iraq.

Miliband was overheard telling an aide, “I couldn’t have gone any further. It would have been a Heseltine moment.” He thinks!?! All the signs are there. He is being both disloyal and disingenuous. Miliband may be the bookies favourite, but I'd not lay any bets on him. If we are to get a possible new leader of the Labour Party, I'd plump for John Denham or Alan Johnson. The rest, well just look at the possibles from this set!

The Foreign Secretary said that he had toned down his Labour conference speech to avoid embarrassing Gordon Brown. Is that what he really thinks? He must think we were all born yesterday!

A well-coiled Miliband ready to spring

It seems Gordon Brown is doing his best to curry favour with the delegates at the Labour Party conference. After a summer of a little discontent, he is trying to re-establish his authority. Labour MPs are relatively cheered and Brown is getting a "bounce" in the opinion polls. Apparently some members of the British public think he is handling this present financial crisis well. Well enough to know spivs when he sees them. My only complaint on this subject is that he isn't doing much to contain them. OK, the short selling system has been defused, but the guys involved in all this are really Del Boys with computers. I know it sounds a bit snobby, but one of the problems with the Thatcher years was letting those that were used to market stall trading move into the computerised world of banking unchecked.

So Brown gets a little bit of peace coming his way. Doesn't stop those seeking to replace him from moving the chairs in the Cabinet Room. David Miliband is seen as an obvious choice by the media. But I think he will not have voter appeal at this time. However, he will be a contender, and he is like a jack-in-the-box currently. My hunch is that Alan Johnson will come through. He is a man who can sup with all kinds and still seem like one of them. He would give Labour back its working class inheritance whilst giving it the veneer of New Labour modernisation. But, unlike Miliband, is he ready to spring?