Bright's Blog

The travelling man

During the Labour party conference in September, one big beast was doing the rounds of the parties with a plan for Gordon Brown. First, the Prime Minister should fall on his sword for the greater good of the party. It was then necessary, according to this former cabinet minister, for the party to find a role for Brown travelling the world, talking to international economic experts. "There is no one ... read more

Last December, when it looked as if Boris Johnson's mayoral campaign was in trouble, senior Tories were in despair. The media were accusing their candidate of laziness and lacking an appetite for the fight. Unable to take advantage of the obvious weaknesses in the Labour camp, the Tories were sleepwalking towards defeat. Enter George Osborne. Aides to the shadow chancellor and Conservative election supremo are said to have been astonished ... read more

With a colossus-like Gordon Brown still striding around the globe, tributes being paid by world leaders and nobel prize winners alike, it would only seem right that the Sunday political commentators hail the great unelected one.

But for some reason it isn't working out like that. The scale of the the Brown bounce depends on whether you believe the Independent on Sunday's ComeRes poll, which has the Tories 11 ... read more

Recession blues

Anyone who has ever experienced the misery of unemployment will have felt a chill on hearing this week's labour market statistics. It is a truth universally acknowledged that rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and depression rocket in times of recession. Joblessness has a devastating effect on people's health, physically and mentally, and the full social consequences of an economic crisis are felt in the criminal justice and education systems for ... read more

The comments of Trevor Phillips in this morning's Times about the difficulty Barack Obama would have encountered in the British political system are timely. His words chime with Hazel Blears's views on the UK political class earlier in the week.

There is no doubt that the British political system remains dominated by white middle class men (as indeed does the US system). There was the usual sense of righteous ... read more

Leaders-in-waiting

Future Labour leaders are like buses, sometimes you wait for ages without seeing one and all of a sudden three come at once.

This was the experience for the audience gathered in London on 3 November for a debate about the future of the Labour Party. Its doom-laden title was "After New Labour". The speakers included Harriet Harman, who won the party's deputy leadership election last year. Close friends ... read more

Why I'm on the outside

Something very odd is happening. People have started joining the Labour Party again. It's a trickle rather than a torrent, but around 1,000 people a month are now being recruited. Although the trend in membership is still down, party officials are delighted that the rate of decline appears to be slowing. Many are lapsed members returning to the faith. There has been a decided upturn since the Labour party conference ... read more

John Stuart Mill once famously dubbed the Conservatives "The Stupid Party", but surely few Tories have ever been as stupid as George Osborne. Why on earth did he take on Mandelson while knowing what he did about his activities on and offshore in Corfu? It's almost as if he knew what he had done looked bad and, like a little boy who has done something naughty, was unconsciously desperate for ... read more

Can it really be the case that Peter Mandelson has finally turned his love of the high life to the political advantage of the Labour Party? As the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, struggles to extricate himself from the swirling allegations made by the scion of an international banking dynasty, involving party fundraising and a Russian aluminium oligarch, it is tempting to think so.

Lord Mandelson is like a political cluster ... read more

We were warned

Credit where credit is due - and you have to say that a £37bn injection of cash into high-street banks is one shedload of credit - Gordon Brown has had a good autumn. There is a year between Brown's darkest night as Prime Minister when he called off "the election that never was" (Friday 5 October 2007) and the announcement of the government's part-nationalisation of the banking system (Wednesday 8 ... read more

It couldn't have been a better day to bury bad news. Gordon Brown's rescue package for the world's crumbling financial system has blown his defeat on 42 days off the front pages. Let's hope his judgement on the bank bail out is better than it was on the war on terror.

To be fair, the justice system was never his strong point. One wag once suggested that there were only ... read more

The Political Betting website is always worth a look and today it has a fascinating piece about the betting on Vince Cable to succeed Alastair Darling as Chancellor. The Betfair next chancellor market (something I must say I didn't know existed) now has him as favourite at 2.15/1.

The site quotes a piece for The First Post website by their "Westminster Insider" The Mole asking what will happen ... read more