David Cameron voted against the majority of Conservative MPs who took part in the division yesterday on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. He was one of 37 Tories voting in favour; 49 voted against. The rest found something better to do. According to the incomparable Professor Philip Cowley of Revolts.co.uk, this is the fourth time he has been in a minority in his own party in Commons votes recently.
The others were votes cast in favour an 80-per-cent-elected House of Lords (where the Conservatives split 80/103 against); gay adoption (where the Conservatives split 29/85 against); and the abolition of blasphemy (where the Conservatives split 37/51 against). In each case, the party leader found himself in a minority of his party.
He really is beginning to resemble Tony Blair. (On whose absence from politics Robert Harris is well worth reading today.)
Is there any subject that exposes as much hypocrisy and denial as the provision of long-term care for the increasingly populous elderly?
We berate the Government for its inadequate provision of care, but how many people invite their frail parents to live with them these days? We demand that care should be universal and free, yet when additional taxes are suggested to pay for this provision we scream blue murder at the rapaciousness of the state.
Alternative front-page headline for this morning's Independent. According to an ICM poll for the BBC, 28 per cent of people want house prices to fall, 22 per cent want them to rise and 46 per cent, bless them, want them to "stay the same".
Now, for the weather forecast: "Better weather expected on Thursday with thunderstorms bringing the rain that made this country great."
Brown's premiership will implode amazingly quickly. These things do.
I did not mean this quickly. A sudden collapse this autumn seemed possible. Then the Crewe by-election was called. From Labour's point of view, as I also said, it was "a write-off". But even before we get there, Frank Field's 2 minutes and 48 seconds in conversation with Mary Ann Sieghart on the BBC World Service on Sunday night has just taken the Brown roller-coaster on another momentarily disorienting plunge. Funny kind of roller-coaster, this. After an early up-hill section to a plateau with unexpectedly good views, it has been down-hill all the way, with short pauses between each lurch earthwards. Field is, as Alan Johnson and Ed Balls have pointed out, no friend of Gordon's - although they did embrace at Lambeth Palace the other day.
My colleague Andy McSmith notes Cherie Blair's decision to heap more misery on Gordon Brown's head by obliquely suggesting in her memoirs that he might have leaked the news that she was pregnant. In her book, Cherie remembers going through the options of those who were privy to her secret one by one. She concludes that it would not have been Lauren Booth, her half-sister, nor Sally Morgan, Tony Blair's senior aide, nor Anji Hunter, the Prime Minister's "gatekeeper".
Today The Independent reports on new figures that show that confidence in Britain's housing market has sunk to its lowest level for more than 30 years, as property prices continue to fall and mortgage lenders restrict home loans. But would a collapse in property prices be a disaster – or a blessing in disguise? Let us know what you think.
There is now a gross inequality between the way Labour’s failings are (rightly) ruthlessly exposed, while Tory failings pass silently in the night.
You saw it in the London mayoral election. By the end, everyone knew Ken had met with a loathsome Islamist cleric and that one of his staff – spending less than 0.0000001 per cent of the mayoral budget – may have been dodgy. But who knew Boris had twice been sacked from jobs for outrageously lying, and had led a friend to believe he'd find him the address of a journalist he wanted to be beaten up? While Ken was exposed on front pages and on Channel Four documentaries, Boris was covered in candyfloss we journalists spent the campaign gently licking off.
In my column today, I describe some of the ways this is being replicated in the battle between Gordon Brown and David Cameron.
A while ago on Open House, we picked up on the comparisons that had started to spring up between the governments of Gordon Brown and John Major. They were mischievous back then, and I agreed with Steve Richards that, ultimately, they were probably overblown. But looking back at Major's last days now, the comparisons in rhetoric at least are alarming.
Watch Major's election announcement, and how he attempts to fight Labour's slogan "time for a change". He confidently declares:
"People are looking for change, we are the change. And we'll carry forward what we've been doing for the past 18 years."
That's right, you heard correctly. Change is continuity. Up is down. Black is white. It's the very same tac that Brown wants to attempt, declaring outside No. 10, "Let the work of change begin". But the electorate has been left saying, what change? Brown should beware - the voters didn't buy it when Major tried it. Campbell was right on the election night to say the massive predicted 171 majority would not be correct. In the end, it was 179.
There was a time, a generation ago, when part of my job as a party press officer to keep politicians like Gordon Brown informed about what was being written or said about them. I pity the poor sod who has had to brief Brown about this weekend's collection of character assassinating observations, coming not from political enemies, but from people who are supposed to be on his side.
To deal with them in order of seriousness, having Lord Levy saying that it is "inconceivable" that Brown did not know about the secret loans that the Labour Party raised to fund their last general election campaign is bad, but containable. Levy is not an unsullied source.
John Prescott's description of Gordon Brown as "frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly" and the revelation that he suggested that if Brown was so angry, perhaps he should resign, is worse - but taken as a whole, Prescott's memoirs arguably hurt Blair more than Brown.
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