Brown’s Year: Odds Shorten on Return of Blair!

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UPDATE, 29 June – ANOTHER DAY – ANOTHER ITEM OF BREAKING NEWS – Levy Doubts; Labour Donor Deserting Brown; Alan Johnson’s (unfortunate) Tennis Analogy. Game/Set/Match?

• Vacancy in Downing Street (Not, not PM, but a Speech Writer for Brown) Now don’t all rush at once!
• The Courts set another Al Qaeda operative FREE! Who exactly is running this joint?
• Jump to full RESULTS of Henley by-election
• Blair Biographer Anthony Seldon’s End of Year Report on Brown
• Poll: 49% say Brown worse than Blair! What? Is THAT all?
• Scottish Labour Leader Resigns – No, not Gordon Brown!
• Read my thoughts on the Scottish problem(s) here

Comment at end

28th June, 2008

FANCY A FLUTTER on a Blair Comeback?

So do YOU fancy betting on a the return of Tony Blair? If so, you’d better get a move on – the odds are shortening according to this site. The Guardian too reminds us we are in unsettled, thus gambling weather. They say that bookmakers William Hill have cut the odds on Brown being replaced as Labour leader, and PM, before the general election from 5/4 to 11/10 in the wake of the Henley result. Their odds on him standing down in 2008 have been slashed from 5/1 to 3/1.

Labour are now 5/2 with Hill’s to win the next election – their longest odds since coming to power in 1997 – while Tories are clear favourites at 2/7, their shortest odds since losing power. Lib Dems are 100/1 outsiders.

“Although Mr Brown is a slight odds-on chance at 4/6 still to be leader when the general election comes round, we haven’t taken a single bet of £100 or more for him to do so for months,” said Hill’s spokesman, Graham Sharpe.

After the latest thrashing at the polls, where Brown’s Labour came in 5th – yes FIFTH – behind the British Nationalist Party – desperate times need desperate measures.

Since I’d never thought of placing a fiver on the eventuality of Blair’s return, even though this is (possibly) the only website set up in dogged support of him, you can tell I’m no gambler!

Even at 33/1, perhaps I should go for it!

Quite why he’d want to drop important international duties, such as leading the global climate change campaign (download the paper here) and his Middle East envoy work, to mention but two, I am not yet completely convinced. On the other hand, he may have a get-out clause in those contracts; I couldn’t possibly guess. But would the Labour party, whilst crying in its tea over the disappointments of Brown, want Blair back? On the other hand – (how many hands does a cool gambler hold?) – is Labour resigned to a possible decade-long wilderness, only to fight in that interim over the “soul” of Labour?

I’ve just been reading a few of today’s articles on Blair’s Climate report. Is it just my natural bias or are the Blair remarks exactly what we are missing when Brown opens his mouth? An ability to get straight to the point while laying out the challenges? For example, here from the Business Green website:

Noting that the report had been “drawn up by experts, but guided by a politician”, Blair said that the aim was to offer a framework for cutting emissions that recognised both the long term need to mitigate climate change and the short term requirement to deliver economic growth.

“Long term, everyone accepts that the needs of economy and environment are in partnership,” he observed. “Short term, there is a clear tension. And we live in the short term.”

In a few words he has included the salient points – expert view, presentation by a “politician” (NB, he is STILL a politician), framework, cutting emissions, timetable, economic constraints. And, above all, that the tensions are difficult to reconcile.

It must be the way he tells ‘em.

And in the Middle East, despite slow progress, he is praised by all sides. How many of today’s politicians are greeted so?

Not our present PM. Or, at least, not here in the UK, it would seem.

BROWN’S HORRID, TORRID YEAR AS PM

ONLY ONE YEAR? IT FEELS LIKE 10!

Following Blair was always going to be a hard act for any leader, let’s admit it. But did anyone think it was going to be THIS bad?

Listen to ‘Today’: Tony Blair on Climate Change & on Brown’s 1st Anniversary as PM

(Use the arrow to go forward to 02:42:42 to listen to Blair)

After his interview you can hear senior Tory Malcolm Rifkind and Blair-supporting commenter David Aaronovitch on the result of the Henley by-election, where Brown’s Labour came fifth behind the BNP. It’s followed by a climate debate, where Blair is also praised.

To lose so spectacularly is, according to a previous heavy loser on PM tonight, like a mid-life crisis. John O’Farrell, the “Losing my Maidenhead” author, who came third in Maidenhead in 2001, has an interesting take on this, and was still upbeat after today’s walloping. He says his loss made him realise that local people didn’t like him much and therefore he had made the right decision to leave the place!

So that’s it then. Wonder if Mr Brown, who is taking all the flak for this loss, is ready to leave the country?

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What the papers say following Brown’s disastrous Henley result:

Can Things Only Get Better for Brown? Here are some “expert” suggestions from politicians, pr people etc

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The Adam Smith Institute website:

Meanwhile, Brown’s own chickens have come home to roost. Much as he blames international factors for the UK’s economic woes, the fact is that he presided, as Chancellor, over a ten-year tax-and-spend (indeed, tax-and-spend-and-borrow) binge. When the economy hit a rough patch, there was no money in the Treasury to carry us through it. And cheap credit had encouraged individuals to borrow too, leaving them without any rainy-day money. The Bank of England’s attempts to keep the system liquid just fuelled inflation.

It’s all depressingly familiar. In the last years of John Major’s administration, he could do nothing right either. Smelling defeat, the media picked holes in every move and initiative. And now, stagflation is back, a grim reminder of Harold Wilson’s era, and stemming from the same profligate abuse of the public finances. It’s difficult not to feel sad for Gordon Brown – he waited so long, but now the job has turned to dust in his hands.

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The Economist has a thoughtful take on Brown’s lack of foreign policy profile. Excerpt here:

One explanation is that, after a decade as finance minister, Mr Brown has developed a taste for only the economic dimension of foreign policy. He has a zeal for international development (Foreign Office types complain of the aid budget growing while embassies are closed to save cash), wants reform of the Bretton Woods institutions and believes that trade can discourage conflict—as chancellor of the exchequer he once dispatched Ed Balls, now a member of the cabinet, to investigate the economic obstacles to peace in the Middle East. It is telling that Mr Brown was the only foreign head of government at a big energy conference in Jeddah on June 22nd.

Another theory is that, whereas Mr Blair felt liberated from public opinion in foreign affairs, Mr Brown’s conduct abroad is no less guided by political calculation than his domestic policy. As a result, vision gives way to cautious ambiguity.

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Andrew Porter’s Telegraph report says:

The prospect of former sworn enemies like Alan Milburn returning to the fold also gets greater by the day. It is even suggested that Mr Milburn was consulted over Mr Brown’s social mobility speech he made on Monday.

Such was the hostility between these two former Cabinet colleagues that it is barely believable that they could work together again. But until yesterday morning it was also barely believable that Labour would limp in fifth in a by-election.

And Lord Levy on Newsnight last night said that after Henley, and seeing the polls, “sacking Mr Brown” is something that needs to be “seriously considered”.

This blog comes to a similar conclusion to me regarding Brown’s predicament on policy. In his last year, it was clear that Blair was working flat out to embed his policies, especially in Education & Health in case Brown et al tried to reverse the changes. And all the other BIG ideas of New Labour had already been implemented. What ELSE was there? Very little, in fact. That has been Brown’s bad luck. Though you have to wonder why he hadn’t noticed. The one “change” I can recall was doing away with the big casino project. Its loss was no big deal, except to the Manchester job hopefuls. But that apart, Brown was clearly with Blair on his social changes. Either that or he was in the dark as to how exactly to backtrack on them. And if with Blair, he was NOT with his party. Thus their deep disillusionment with him. They thought he was one of them. Instead he’s turned out to be a Blairite without the charm or political nous!

And the Iraq kerfuffle, which if you recall, was supposed to have been the reason for shifting Blair? Er – silence, more or less. Even the protesters have garaged their placards.

This biblical quotation, as used at the above mentioned Quaerentia site, may once have haunted the former PM. I do not believe it will be bothering him nearly as much today. Blair, Labour’s most succesful leader ever (don’t let’s forget it – cos it’s true), was even a dab hand at setting the agenda for AFTER he had departed. A kind of Living Will for the next guy’s continued struggle on this mortal coil.

I never knew THAT’S how it worked. Good idea, if you can do it!

Some of us, it would seem, are more dispensable than others.

12 Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom,
and also madness and folly.
What more can the king’s successor do
than what has already been done?

18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2 NIV)

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RESULTS of the HENLEY by-election:

FULL RESULT

John Howell ( C) 19,796

Stephen Kearney (LD) 9,680

Mark Stevenson (Green) 1,321

Timothy Rait (BNP) 1,243

Richard McKenzie (Lab) 1,066 votes

Chris Adams (UKIP) 843

Bananaman Owen (Loony) 242

Derek Allpass (Eng Dem) 157

Amanda Harrington (Ind) 128

Dick Rodgers (Good) 121

Louise Cole (Ind) 91

Harry Bear (Fur Play Party) 73

Con Hold

Conservative majority: 10,116

0.81% swing LD to C

Electorate: 69,086

Turnout: 34, 761 (50.32%)

ALEXANDER RESIGNS IN AN EMOTIONAL SPEECH

Listen to Wendy Alexander’s emotional video here.

Those of you who know that I am NOT a Labour member or supporter, though as I have said before I now would be were Blair still in charge, will wonder why I react with some sadness to this. Well, a couple of reasons. This resignation is all about the lack of declarations from 10 donors for her leadership campaign, each of whom bestowed under £1000. Americans still manage to run democracy with millions appearing and disappearing into black holes without this kind of relentless pursuit of individuals. Less than 10,000 GB pounds, my friends! And for that this woman RESIGNS! Mugabe and his ilk will be laughing up their dictatorial sleeves as inflation in Zimbabwe rages at millions of percentage points per year!

Are we really so simple-minded that we think Alexander’s treatment at the hands of the rotten Scottish National Party (yes, I AM Scottish, so I can say that) is acceptable?

Another reason for my unease in this resignation is that Wendy Alexander is a woman who got to the top in a male dominated political world. That in itself was some achievement.

Whether her boss, and fellow-Scot Gordon Brown, will be as disappointed, well, I couldn’t possibly comment.

She had already irritated him by calling on the SNP’s Alex Salmond to bring forward his promised referendum on Scottish Independence. SHE was probably right in this. NOW would have been better than then, if Mr Brown’s poll ratings continure to decline. The voters may well decide to cross out Brown on ANYTHING for which he stands, including a united Britain come 2010, the date Salmond has pencilled in for the referendum.

This Associated Press report describes it as another headache for Brown. Maybe. But it also reports the resignation of a Glasgow MP due to ill health.

NOW THIS NEWS COULD BE REALLY CONSEQUENTIAL

Earlier Saturday, Labour lawmaker David Marshall announced he was quitting the House of Commons because of ill-health, setting up another tricky by-election for Labour, this time in Glasgow, Scotland.

By-election looming? Is there a Scottish born international statesman of high repute and proven ability standing by? A peace-maker/climate change leader/man of conviction/who understands and confronts terrorism threats? Is the SNP beatable?

It’s a bonus that I can think of one who actually spent some of his childhood IN THAT constituency.

Step up to the mark, Mr ACL Blair.

If he did this and won, Britain could have a “new” PM in a matter of months. And a strong voice for a United Kingdom from the man who gave Scotland devolution in the first place.

Now THAT would make me really proud of the city of my birth! And this constituency is where I was born and brought up!

Marshall’s seat is the 25th safest of 633 in Britain!

• Labour MP for Glasgow East
• Majority: 13,507 votes. — 25th out of 633 MPs.

Although it would take a 22% swing for the SNP to win there, I contend that If Labour can’t retain THIS seat, they might as well give up now! Certainly the Tories will NEVER do it! Never! So it could be Blair V Salmond’s man.

Phew! Want a canvasser who speaks the lingo, Mr Blair?

Get down on your bended, Labour! This might be your only way out!

Interesting times, indeed.

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Tags: 1. Tony Blair, betting on a Blair comeback, Blair to stand in Scottish by-election, Brown (Gordon Brown & his Labour Government, from June 2007), Brown poll disaster, by election, by election in glasgow, conservatives, david marshall mp resigns, Henley, labour, return of Tony Blair, wendy alexander resignation