Brown's Speech Writer Quits

Decade long Brownie Beth Russell is reportedly quitting Team Brown next month to return to the Treasury. She will be the third member of the mobile phone target team to quit Number 10. She was the official speechwriter, though it is understood that Gordon is the one who inserts the lists of statistics that make his speeches so special.

Downing Street's Jeremy Heywood has written to Whitehall's mandarins euphemistically seeking someone for ‘a high profile and demanding post involving daily contact with the Prime Minister... I would be grateful if you could each put forward the names of one or two individuals who would particularly excel in this role.' An ability to duck under fire would be useful.

Fiona Gordon has already given her notice, Spencer Livermore went in March. The captain will be alone when the ship goes down...

Spin from 10 on 42

Downing Street is making out that it is on a knife edge tonight. In reality they have got it in the bag and are trying to set the ground for the "Gordon Wins" stories for which the Brownies think it is well worth tearing up the Magna Carta.

Congratulations are due to the honourable member for Glasgow central, Mohammed Sarwar, who has secured, as the price for his voting for 42 days detention, assurances that he can pass his seat down to his son. It seems the Labour Party was only against hereditary peers, but are more than happy with family seats for MPs..

UPDATE : Punters on Betfair reckon the bill has a 90% chance of passing.

Is Des Down?

Ever since that bizarre interview on the Today show last week people have been speculating about Des Browne's state-of-mind. John Humphrys tore him to pieces following a High Court ruling that families of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan could sue the Government under human rights laws. Des was all over the place.

Then MoD documents released under an FoI request showed he had misled the Commons over the 15 weeping Royal Navy sailors taken prisoner by Iran last year. Contrary to his claims they had been in Iraqi rather than international waters. He will have to apologise to the House for his lies.

Whitehall reckons Browne is down and possibly suffering from mental exhaustion because he is both a part-time Defence Secretary and a part-time Scottish Secretary. His SpAds spin that he has a chest infection. Guido prefers to believe that in the dark hours of the night his soul is tortured by the ghosts of the soldiers he sent to their death under-equipped.

Or perhaps he is ashamed of himself over the failed court action (in his name) to gag a coroner's ruling from becoming public which criticised the MoD over troops deaths?

Lower Taxes for the Lower Paid

Watching Darling spluttering explanations for abolishing the 10p rate this morning it is clear that the Brownies can't see that their preference for taxing with one hand and then paying benefits back with the other hand, is a wasteful bureaucratic merry-go-round that doesn't work - except on paper.

Darling says "tax is complicated". Who complicated it? Simplify it by raising thresholds dramatically. Why should people on earnings of less than £10,000 pay any tax? They only have to fill out endless forms to get it back in welfare payments. Crazy. Raising the threshold on the low paid will incentivise people to come off benefits and work. It will reduce the cost of collection which is disproportionately higher on low incomes.

The Tories are too timid, the mood of the public has changed. New Labour has always referred to "unfunded tax cuts" and demanded to know how many hospitals and schools would correspondingly be cut. The Tories should be pointing to Labour's "unfunded spending commitments" which have given Britain the highest budget deficit in the Western world. We can't afford Labour's reckless spending commitments - they are literally mortgaging our children's taxes to pay for current spending. It is the economics of the "never, never".

Brown at Close Quarters

Fascinating and sympathetic Guardian piece by Tom Clark about what it was like to deal with Brown and the Brownies at close quarters for four years. It confirms a lot of what we have already surmised about the core method of policy development through dithering.

Tom Clark was a SpAd at the DWP and the old DTI hired from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He clearly admires Brown whilst recognising his faults. Faults that make him unsuitable to be PM. Well worth a read.

Bad Start for New No. 10 Digital Media Guru

So on the day No. 10 confirms the appointment of their new web / digital media guru an email drops in the inbox from the webmaster@pmo.gov.uk himself!

Subject"Add your voice to the debate" - PM

The Prime Minister has urged people to add their voice to the debate on "some of the biggest challenges of our times" by logging onto a website dedicated to the Progressive Governance Summit ...

Guido, keen as ever to share his thoughts with Gordon, clicks through a couple of times to the website to add his "voice to the debate" to find:

Can they get anything right? Doh!

UPDATE 18:40 : Guido *waves* to Number 10 geeks. They have now added some waffle saying, basically, come back later. So why send out the email today to tens of thousands of people from the PM urging us to log on before it is working? Please stay away from any breweries...

Blinky Balls on Marr

Ed Balls was spinning happily away on the Andrew Marr show when all of a sudden the blink rate went into overdrive when he was asked about the bottled election. Marr asked him had he told Brown to raise his game, Ed said words to the effect "of course not", Marr retorted "shouldn't you?", Ed started mumbling.

For Andy Marr, this constitutes an all out attack. Mrs Marr's articles in the Guardian are less than adulatory of late. Are they disappointed?

Government of All the Clowns

Left-winger John McDonnell MP is putting the boot in on GMTV

“I think we’re in a mess. I think people are demoralised. I think Labour party members can’t understand how we’ve got in this mess. I think Gordon has shown, to be frank with you, ineptitude on a number of issues and so have some of the people around him.."

This follows Blairite Matthew Taylor yesterday telling the Guardian that the government was "inept"

"Politically, it doesn't look particularly attractive if you are going round trying to shift responsibility. ... too early to say that the position for the government is terminal."

So there you have it, from Labour's left and right, they are inept clowns.

Spare a Thought for Quentin Davies

As the Labour party polls below Blair's worst, as the majority of voters think it is tainted with sleaze, as bookies make David Cameron the hot favourite to be victorious at the polls, spare a thought for Quentin Davies. The Tory to Labour defector who switched from backing David Davis to Gordon Brown. You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh...

Fox News

Liam Fox just came out with a great line about Des Browne; "He spends more time fighting the SNP than the Taliban". Stinging...

UPDATE : Former Labour defence Minister, Lord Gilbert, told Channel 4 News that the troop's families would find it very hard to understand when their loved ones were risking their lives in Afghanistan, why the Secretary of Defence was opening a Scottish golf course.

Browne's Part-Time Priority

Gordon Brown is treating British troops with "contempt" by appointing a part-time defence secretary says Admiral Lord Boyce. Troops feel insulted by the Prime Minister's decision to appoint Des Browne as Scotland Secretary as well as Defence Secretary. Boyce, who was chief of the defence staff in 2003, puts it bluntly:

"I feel that Mr Brown has let the armed forces down by not appointing a secretary of state who is full-time. When you have got people who have been killed and maimed in the service of their Government, and you put at the head of the shop someone who is part-time, that sends a very bad message. And that is the message I get back from our soldiers, our sailors and our airmen. They feel insulted, they feel that he is treating them with contempt."

The New Labour spin machine does what it always does when panicked, it started rubbishing the five former top brass who have come out on behalf of the troops, it went on attack, briefing that they are only speaking up after they have got their peerage and pensions. Derek Twigg, Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans. is going around the news studios ludicrously claiming that army morale is high and everything is tickety-boo.

It is not just retired generals, the former Labour defence minister Lord Gilbert has backed the criticism. If the defence of the nation is a part-time priority, the government has no sense of priority.

UPDATE : Guido fan John McTernan, the former Blair henchmen, spins for Browne. Good to see he is doing such a good job.

Brownie Bollocked Again by Speaker

Guido can't recall a time when the speaker has bollocked an MP not involved in debate two weeks in a row during PMQs. Following that disastrous Brown spanking at PMQs Geoff Hoon has been orchestrating cheering and Iain Austin is clearly over-doing the jeering.

Ian Austin MP is a former press officer with the West Midlands Labour Party, a political advisor to Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and now his PPS who attends cabinet meetings. He is another second-rater who owes his rise only to being a loyal Brownie. Clearly he is also a bit of a numpty.