Results tagged “leadership” from Birmingham Post - News Blog

Just what is David Miliband plotting? One story doing the rounds is that he is already drawing up plans for his first Cabinet - with former Health Secretary Alan Milburn as Chancellor.

But friends of the Foreign Secretary have denied this - apparently - and claimed it is a "smear" invented by Downing Street to make him look treacherous.

A third version of events has it that he is actually conspiring with Culture Secretary James Purnell and others to walk out of the Cabinet if a reshuffle takes place in September, potentially plunging the Government into meltdown.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, has been taking up Pilates.The message? He's not going to retire on "health grounds".

This is politics as a game of Chinese whispers. As I said before, the longer this goes on, the more I find myself sympathising with the Prime Minister.

Ladywood MP Clare Short claims that David Miliband would be a lousy choice for Labour leader, partly because nobody has ever heard of him.

But nobody had heard of David Cameron before he stood for the Tory leadership. It was probably an advantage, as it helped him to present himself as someone who was changing his party.

If Labour does ditch Brown, or, indeed, if it keeps him but goes on to lose the next election, I think its best bet is also to go for a new face. Miliband's problem might actually be that he is too well known, and too associated with the current regime.

For example, there's Culture Secretary James Purnell, who I imagine can walk down the street more or less unrecognised.

Or how about a Minister who's not in the Cabinet? He won't thank me for this, but what about our very own Minister for the West Midlands, Liam Byrne (Hodge Hill)? Just throwing it out there . . .

Incidentally, although Clare Short has resigned the Labour whip and is not a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party, I think I'm right in saying that she is still a member of the Labour Party. If so, she'll get a vote in the leadership contest.

So Gordon Brown is to come to the West Midlands in a bid to prove he understands what ordinary people are going through. As well as a meeting of the Cabinet, there will be events where Ministers "listen and learn from the experiences of people in this country," to quote Downing Street.

I kind of wish him luck. Am I the only one who feels he doesn't deserve to be stabbed in the back by his colleagues? It's only 18 months ago that they were claiming he was the best thing since sliced bread.

But I'm not sure this listening and feel our pain business will be enough. What's been most surprising about the Brown premiership is the relative paucity of big ideas.

There have been some constitutional reforms, but mainly technical stuff which doesn't mean much to most people - downgrading the Royal Perogative (taking some power out of the hands of the Prime Minister and giving it to Parliament), abolishing regional assemblies and that sort of thing.

It's reported that some former Cabinet Ministers are planning to publish their own policy proposals, presumably in an effort to promote a more Blairite agenda. This will be seen as another effort to destabilise Mr Brown and perhaps it is, but I think the Prime Minister should consider saying thank you, and stealing their best ideas.

Someone once asked me what I did during the recess - the long holidays MPs take, which more or less follow the school holidays.

I think it was the editor, when he first came to the paper, probably trying to find out if I ran away to a beach.

What I always say is that the recess is actually harder than "term time", as the MPs are away, the Government does very little, and it's more difficult to find stories.

But although this is true, I do look forward to the recess. It's pretty hectic working at Westminster, and the prospect of writing slightly fewer words each day for a couple of weeks is very welcome.

But once again, the politicians are ruining my plans. Two years ago, we had the coup which forced Tony Blair to announce a departure date - masterminded by West Midland MPs.

This time, it looks like we may get something similar with Gordon Brown. And even if he hangs on, there'll be no stopping the flow of copy as the media scrutinise every detail of Labour's leadership crisis (which is what it is). David Miliband has seen to that.

Will Charles Clarke challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership?

There's certainly a feeling among some Labour MPs that something has to change. The rebellion over the abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax is driven partly by a fear among MPs in marginal seats that they are set to be kicked out of the Commons at the next election.

Hence, they are keen to distance themselves publicly from an unpopular and badly thought through policy, even if this causes difficulty for the Prime Minister.

But there's no sense that a leadership challenge is imminent or, for now at least, desirable. It's not as if Mr Brown is likely to go quietly before he has fought even one general election as Labour leader.

So it was odd that the Prime Minister chose to stoke the fires with his comments earlier this week, when he insisted: "I'm starting a job that I mean to continue."

This has been seen as his way of insisting that he won't be pushed out of office. A Prime Minister only says these things when he is in trouble, and the effect was to give talk of a leadership challenge more credibility than it currently deserves.