´óÏó´«Ã½

This morning David Cameron called on the government to accelerate legislation to protect savings.

This afternoon Gordon Brown said in my interview* with him that the Banking Bill would increase protection for depositors from £35,000 to £50,000.

This evening the Financial Services Authority are making it clear that neither man has affected what is their decision to raise depositor protection. It will not be in the Banking Bill.

The rise from £35k to £50k does not require legislation. The FSA has the power to do it and has been consulting on the proposal for some time. They were keen to announce their decision at a time of relative calm.

The FSA's fear was that announcing increased depositor protection at a time like this would increase anxiety amongst savers about the safety of their deposits and would lead to calls for a higher level of protection (like that in Ireland where today ).

Did the politicians not understand or did they ignore the FSA's fear in a race to claim the credit?

* This is the transcript of my interview :

Nick R: But government did say it would look again at that issue of protecting depositors after Northern Rock, and it's still not happened. Why isn't it right to say to people, rest assured, all your savings are safe?

GB: We did raise the amount from £35,000 and we're raising it to £50,000...

Nick R: But it hasn't happened yet?

GB: Yes yes, it's in the Banking Bill and it will go through very quickly and I hope it will go through with all-party support

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

We have just witnessed a prime ministerial address to the nation. Well, we would have done if David Cameron were actually prime minister. It was memorable not so much for the actions he proposed but the tone he struck.

"We are all in this together, let's stick together and together we'll find a way through" he declared in a message targeted directly at people he described as "worried, confused and concerned". His pledge was not to repeat the political wrangling seen in America because "today was a day for safety, security and protection".

After a few days of failing to grasp how the national mood was changing, David Cameron sought to capture it. The consensus here (in what is, of course, a conference bubble) was that it was politically pitch-perfect. What, though, about the substance?

In reality, there is no chance of the being repeated here, whatever Mr Cameron said. Our system gives the prime minister much greater power to get his way than the president enjoys. There are, also, no elections here to frighten parliamentarians into vetoing proposed bail-outs.

The Treasury says that the Tory leader's specific proposals are either unnecessary or would have no impact on the immediate crisis:

• David Cameron promised to drop opposition to the Banking Bill which is being debated in the Commons next week. However, the chancellor believes that he already has all the powers to handle failing banks that he needs as the partial nationalisation of the Bradford & Bingley demonstrated. The Bill is a long-term replacement for emergency powers (granted to ministers after the run on Northern Rock) which run out in February.

• The Tory leader called on ministers to accelerate new legislation to protect savers' deposits beyond the £35,000 currently guaranteed, and to compensate savers in seven days, not months as now. The Treasury say that they support extending the guarantee but insist that the FSA already has the power to do so. It is considering the impact on the banks before doing so.

• Finally, the Conservatives are calling for a temporary suspension of what's called "marking to market" - a process whereby banks daily price their assets which, it's argued, is causing bank stocks to spiral downwards. This is an issue that Alistair Darling has discussed with other EU ministers because he believes it would help banks reconstruction. However, he believes that it would have "zero effect" on the current crisis if it were announced tomorrow.

The Conservatives have looked wrong-footed by this crisis - unsure whether to defend the financial markets or to criticise it, uncertain whether to condemn state intervention or to support it in the national interest, unclear whether this is a crisis of regulation or of Gordon Brown's making.

Opposition leaders know that, in times of crisis, they can offer only words and not actions. David Cameron used his words today with considerable skill.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Here are some highlights from the Panorama programme "Next Stop Downing St?" when I travelled to Birmingham with David Cameron to meet five undecided voters (which I wrote about last week).

The Tory leader tells me why he hates the use of the term "our people" in politics.

A single mother from one of Birmingham's poorest estates tackles Mr Cameron about the number of millionaires in his cabinet.

Another of the people we spoke to, a radio DJ called Dennis, challenges him about corporal punishment.

Panorama: Next Stop Downing Street? is on ´óÏó´«Ã½ One at 2030, Monday 29 September.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

One comment came to haunt the last Tory government. It was uttered by the then Chancellor Norman Lamont. Watching him was his adviser - a young politician on the rise by the name of David Cameron.

Lamont said "Je ne regrette rien"* in answer to a question at a by-election news conference - words subsequently used by the then Labour opposition to suggest that a callous Tory party did not regret the economic mess the country was in and the personal cost of it in terms of repossessions, soaring interest rates and unemployment.

Cameron believes - hopes - that is another similar gaffe. Again and again you will hear Tories claim this week that he was responsible for that irresponsibility whereas they will restore responsibility to government.

Hence, their to stop a future government bingeing on cash and to restore powers to the Bank of England to stop the banks allowing us all to binge on money we haven't got.

* Lamont was, in fact, simply cracking a joke to try to avoid answering a skilful question posed by my colleague John Pienaar in the by-election in May 1993. Pienaar asked Lamont at a press conference whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or "singing in his bath". He replied by quoting the song "Je ne regrette rien".

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Tomorrow sees the beginning of the Tory conference. It's a moment of risk for the Conservatives and their leader David Cameron. With conventional wisdom now suggesting that they're heading for power, they'll be under more scrutiny than ever before to test whether they look like a government in waiting and whether he is ready to be prime minister.

On Monday night, will screen a film I've made called It's the story of a single day on which I took the Tory leader to Birmingham - the city where the Tories are holding their conference - to meet five undecided voters and to be quizzed by them one on one.

The programme is a mirror of a Panorama I made with Tony Blair when he was leader of the opposition, called . Cameron, like Blair then, is ahead in the polls although those same polls suggest that they don't know what he stands for.

As deputy editor of Panorama in 1994, I .

In 2008, I suggested the same format to David Cameron's advisers.

The Panorama team picked undecided voters (without the involvement of or knowledge of Cameron or his aides) to test the Tory leader on a range of issues and to see how the man who's currently on course to be our next prime minister would handle them.

It is these voters that determined the agenda of the programme. My job - this time as reporter - was to pursue their line of questioning and to try to ensure they got answers.

Now, as then, the most memorable parts of the programme are about the human interactions rather than the policy detail.

In 1994, Tony Blair told an elderly couple who wanted the return of corporal punishment that he had been caned at school and it hadn't done him any harm. In a bizarre coincidence, David Cameron is also pressed on the return of the cane but this time it's by a DJ on a black community radio station called Dennis.

Tony Blair confessed to Panorama all those years ago that he didn't mind if people got very rich. In 2008, David Cameron is tackled about his privileged background and that of many of his shadow cabinet who are millionaires by a single mother who works on one of Birmingham's poorest estates.

In addition, the programme sees the Conservative leader pressed by a doctor on increasing corporate involvement in the NHS; by a small business man on how he'll pay for tax cuts; and by a green activist on whether he'll have the guts to tell us all to pay more to fly.

At the end of the programme, those who met him are asked for their verdicts and they give some interesting responses.

PS. The day we filmed (8 September) was the one on which, as I reported at the time, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, ended up a carriage apart on the same train back to London from Birmingham.

UPDATE, 29 September: I've posted a couple of clips ahead of the programme here.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Washington DC: The "age of irresponsibility" must be ended, this morning. It is language with which the son of the manse feels comfortable.

Here in Washington, Congress, under pressure from their angry constituents, is the president's plea to foot the bill for that age of irresponsibility.

Politicians find themselves in a terrible bind. Either they have to ask their hard-pressed voters to pay for the rich bankers' errors or, they're told, the banks will go under leaving those same voters without their savings, homes and jobs. Who says it's easy being a politician?

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

NEW YORK: Gordon Brown's got his wish. He's heading to the White House tomorrow afternoon.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

NEW YORK: There is only one story in town. Indeed, there is only one story in the world today. Everyone wants to be at the centre of it. The race to save the global financial system from collapse affects all of us, but politicians know that it has the capacity to make or break their careers.

Thus, Gordon Brown, like presidential contender John McCain, is desperate to place himself at the centre of events. McCain suspended his campaign to head to Washington DC for talks at the White House. The prime minister would love to do the same. He is but he knows that today "it's the global economy, stupid" that matters.

Brown and McCain both represent the incumbent parties with most to lose from this economic crisis. However, if they, not their opponents, are seen to be making the running on solving it, the politics could work the other way around.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

So the conference ends with the same news that led up to it: a resignation from the government. Although this time of course, it was a cabinet minister who insisted she was a mother who was - and not a rebel with a cause.

The fact is, though, that Ruth Kelly has been profoundly worried about the direction of her party and has spoken with other cabinet ministers who were contemplating resigning too, to make their point.

What this illustrates is that there is a big gap between talk behind the scenes and action. There is also a sense here that Gordon Brown has taken the first step - of many needed - for a political recovery.

And what today's news also reminds us all is that one speech doesn't change a prime minister's electoral prospects. There is still for him, and his party, a long way to go.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

How very curious. In the early hours of this morning it was confirmed that , the reason, it was said, was for family reasons. It is clear that this is not the timing that Ms Kelly would have chosen.

Downing Street are already denying suggestions that they released the news in order to reduce its impact. The official statement makes clear that Ms Kelly's decision is for family reasons.

It's certainly true that she's talked to friends of making a "life change" saying she's done her time and that the family needs her more. Indeed she asked Gordon Brown four months ago to leave the government; he asked her to stay on until the next reshuffle.

So why the mystery then? Well it is well known that Ruth Kelly was among those most unhappy with the direction of the Labour Party under Gordon Brown. Indeed some cabinet colleagues had talked of joining her in a group resignation in order to make a statement about Gordon Brown's leadership and possibly to help precipitate a leadership contest.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

"This job" - the prime minister declared today - "is not about me. It is about you". His speech, however, was all about him. It was an invitation to both party and country to look at him again.

A man normally so awkward talking about himself did just that - trying to turn weaknesses into strengths. Just as Tony Blair claimed he was the man to deal with the world post 9/11, he presented himself as the man to deal with the world that had, he claimed, just spun on its axis.

The conference reacted with joy and relief at seeing a Gordon Brown that some had never seen before. He restored some of their faith in him and themselves. It is, though, the public's verdict that will decide whether the party will keep him as their leader.

Today Gordon Brown was, in effect, reapplying for his own job - well sometimes you have to in difficult times.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The prime minister will, we're told, tell the country who he is, what he believes in, and why he's determined to lead his party and his country, not just now and in the future.

Before every leader's speech, the spin doctors always say that they will be highly personal, but my sense is that that is exactly what this speech will be.

Addressing, head on, the doubts people have expressed about Gordon Brown's capacity to win, and his purpose and vision. It will not however be, in that old cliché, a make or break speech. It will be the public, and not one speech, one conference or indeed the reaction of the Labour Party, that will determine Gordon Brown's future. It will be whether the public shows any signs of being prepared to reassess him in the weeks to come, or whether they show signs of having made their minds up against him once and for all.

PS. Ahead of Gordon Brown's speech, I chatted to Alastair Campbell and Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics about what the PM was likely to say.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Don't build up your hopes they said before the speech of "Labour's next leader". David Miliband had only been given seven minutes to speak, they said, and, besides, he could only talk about foreign affairs. That's what you call depressing expectations.

When the speech came, though, it was more than 20 minutes long and strayed a long long way beyond foreign affairs. Thus, "Labour's next leader" hailed Gordon Brown for his achievements in the past - increasing international aid and banning cluster bombs - whilst stressing that what mattered was what Labour would do in the future.

Thus, he spoke of "defeating fatalism with hope" and made it abundantly plain that this is what he could offer his party. Thus, he sought to rouse the audience by declaring that "these Tories" (a Blair phrase) "are beatable". Nothing in the text was openly disloyal but everything about it declared "I'm here if you want me to lead you".

It was a much better speech than last year's although he still delivers a text like an eager company executive briefing his junior staff. The party was warm towards him although the hall was far from full for the biggest speech at this conference after Gordon Brown's.

This, then, felt like the performance of a man slowly establishing himself as one of his party's big players. However, from my position in the hall, I detected none of the buzz, none of the electricity, none of the raw anticipation necessary to inspire people to resign their ministerial jobs in order to depose a sitting prime minister.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

In those four words - new world, new Brown - you can sum up the prime minister's interview with Andrew Marr this morning. The new world he spoke of was captured in his phrase '"it's a global economy stupid". The new Brown - in his words "I want to do better" and his acceptance that he's made mistakes including the 10 pence tax fiasco.

But just how new is any of this? When it comes to the running of the economy, the former chancellor admitted no mistakes only regrets that the rest of the world had resisted his proposals for regulation of the global financial system.

In truth, all that was new this morning was Gordon Brown's demeanour. He looked relaxed, he looked as if he realised that he was not under immediate threat. The irony is that the worse things have got in the global economy, the cheerier Gordon appears to be.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

So the prime minister is promising to clean up the financial system. He is calling for global action. He intervened directly, to facilitate the .

Thus, his economic strategy and his political strategy have become aligned. The extraordinary economic events of the past few days have written the script for his conference next week and for a visit to New York which will follow it.

John Prescott read the script this morning when he declared that Brown was the man with the economic experience and the international status to see us through. In the short term, at least, Wall Street may well have saved Gordon, as I suggested earlier this week.

The long-term political consequences depend on a series of questions that simply cannot be answered yet:

• Will voters blame Labour for the events happening on their watch or can they be convinced that only a party of the left will "clean up" the City?
• Will economic fear lead voters to rate experience above newness and change? And, crucially:
• Will the fallout of this crisis have ended before the next election or will we still being feeling it?

Above all, this crisis is a reminder to political pundits of the sheer unpredictability of the future.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

If you thought you knew what the Liberal Democrats stand for, think again. That was the single, simple and relentless message that ran right through and the .

Nick Clegg has taken a party known for years as "those rather nice people who want to spend more and tax more to pay for it" and is trying to re-brand them as "those tough people prepared to make the cuts to give you your money back".

This - he insists - is not merely about political re-positioning. It is, he claims, a vital part of an economic recovery plan. It is nothing if not audacious. Rhetoric that would induce ecstasy at a Tory conference was greeted here with polite applause and occasional bemusement.

This young, charismatic new leader - who wore a blue tie and strode about the stage without any notes - has always rejected those who've dubbed him "Cameron Lite". Today he sought to sell himself as Super-strength Clegg. His party have swallowed it but will the country?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

It's a fickle business politics.

The man who resigned his ministerial job tonight to call for a leadership election declared on television just a few weeks ago that Gordon Brown was the right man to see us through. That, though, was before Labour lost the Glasgow East by-election which David Cairns had campaigned in day after day.

Mr Cairns insists that he's not part of a plot and had resigned with a heavy heart. The signs are that's the truth. Faced by a hardening of opinion in the cabinet that now is not the time for a leadership contest a growing number of more junior figures are going public with their belief that that debate cannot and should not be avoided.

Everyone involved in this is asking the same question? Where will it end? Everyone has the same answer - I don't know. This is not a battle between two camps with fixed views. People from the cabinet down are - like Mr Cairns - changing their view day by day.

Oddly, the one thing that may give the prime minister hope tonight is the severity of the economic news. Is this - his friends will ask - really the time to create even more instability and uncertainty?

´óÏó´«Ã½ One's Question Time (July 3rd): "GB is the man to see us through these difficult economic circumstances...I am absolutely convinced that GB is the right man to see us through."

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

So . He becomes the first minister to quit because he wants Gordon Brown to go.

He will give us his reasons in an interview shortly.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The crisis on Wall Street may prove to be bad for pretty much everyone else other than Gordon Brown.

This morning's political cabinet was profoundly affected by a sense of the seriousness of the economic situation, according to several of those who were there.

One minister declared, to widespread approval, that "we have at the helm the person who knows more about the economic realities than pretty much any other leader". Another said that the next election would be fought "less on Labour's record and more on their relevance" in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis.

Gordon Brown will address the state of the economy when he addresses Stormont this afternoon and seek to ignore questions about his leadership. What he won't say but hopes that others will is:

• Would the public forgive a party that turned in on itself during an economic crisis?
• Would the markets react well to a vacuum at the top of government at this time?
• Would Alan Johnson, David Miliband or Jack Straw really know better how to run the economy ?
• Are the Tories with their close links to the City and the hedge fund millionaires really going to be trusted to clean up the mess?

Perhaps those are questions that David Cairns is being invited to ponder.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Is David Cairns - the Minister of State at the Scotland Office - going to become the first minister to resign in protest at Gordon Brown's continued leadership of the Labour Party? The word on the street is that this former Catholic priest is examining his conscience as to whether he should stay or go.

As I write, Downing Street say that they have not been informed of his intentions and we are trying to contact him in his Inverclyde constituency. If he does go, Team Brown will point out that he is closely linked to the MP whose public call for a leadership contest began this whole business. Cairns worked as researcher to Siobhain McDonagh and served as a councillor in the London Borough of Merton before getting a seat in Scotland.

Indeed, he was only able to become an MP thanks to her efforts to change the law to allow former clergy to take their seats rather than being barred for life. Without the House of Commons (Removal of Clergy Disqualification) Act 2001 Cairns would never have been a minister and never able to consider resignation.

UPDATE, 1100AM: A source close to the Scottish Secretary Des Browne has insisted that David Cairns, Minister of State at the Scotland Office, has "no intention of resigning".

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

David Miliband condemned "Kremlinology gone crazy" yesterday as he argued against a leadership election and declared his support for Gordon Brown. Sorry to disappoint you, David, but there is still plenty of work for we Kremlinologists to do pointing out what the cabinet are, and are not, saying. (If you find textual analysis wearisome, I suggest you skip to my last sentence.)

The foreign secretary was much clearer than he was in July but did add a test that the PM had to pass - "the test of our conference is about how we respond to very different circumstances, and that is what we have got to develop, a political agenda that is adequate to the changed circumstances that we face."

The business secretary, John Hutton was more ambiguous. On the one hand he did say that we've "got the right leader" and "I am supporting the prime minister, we should all be supporting the prime minister today and in the weeks ahead because it is a hugely difficult job that he's got to do". However, he added riders pointing out that "in the government, your job is to support your leader and to support the government, and that is what I am doing" whereas "if you're not in the government, then you can make a different set of choices" before adding "I think you've got to be absolutely clear on these occasions that it is right and proper for there to be debate about the direction of the party".

The chief whip, Geoff Hoon, made clear his view that Gordon Brown would still be prime minister by Christmas and his belief that a public worrying about paying their bills and their mortgages did not want the distraction of a leadership contest. However, careful lawyer that he is, Mr Hoon chose his words with precision when asked about a leadership election - "I don't think at this stage that it's appropriate".

None of this textual analysis would be worthwhile if any member of the cabinet had uttered words along the lines "Gordon Brown is the right man to lead Labour and the country now because...". None of them came anywhere close.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

I've been taken up on the claim that it was Charles Clarke who stopped the routine sending out of nomination papers. His recollection is that this nomination process started before Labour came in to government, ie before 1997 and well before he was Party Chair in 2001-2.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Under Labour's rules the hurdle facing those who want to force their leader out is very high. They have to get 70 Labour MPs to sign the nomination papers for a rival candidate. They cannot merely ask for a leadership contest or cast a vote of no confidence in their current leader. So, what's going on?

A small group of Labour MPs have grown frustrated that the party's leadership - in the Cabinet and the unions - cooled on the idea of a coup over the summer. So, they are trying to create momentum for a contest which will either flush out a rival to Gordon Brown or force him to call a "back me or sack me" contest.

Their tactic - for now - is to demand that the party sends out leadership nomination papers to all Labour MPs rather than just those who request them. Brown's aides claim - with some glee - that it was plotter in chief, Charles Clarke, who stopped the practice of circulating them when he was Labour Party chair.

They know that they don't currently have 70 Labour MPs willing to trigger a contest or agreement on who they should nominate to succeed. However, they also know that many MPs share their doubts about Brown and were waiting to see which the wind blew. Finally, they know the lesson of recent history (during the attempted coup against Tony Blair two years ago) that if enough people kick up a fuss they can force change whatever the rules say.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

The curse of Robinson has struck. No sooner had I penned a piece saying the threat to Gordon Brown had receded than the first call came from within the government for a leadership contest.

Siobhain McDonagh is the first government member (now ex) to call, in effect, for Gordon Brown to go, She is not, though, the first Labour MP to do so and others look set to follow. What no-one expects is that there will be the 70 necessary under Labour's rules for a contest.

The piece I wrote was based on extensive conversations with critics and backers of Gordon Brown's at the top of the party reflecting the view that now is not the time for a putsch.

Today's news is a useful reminder that sometimes it is the peasants that revolt. It was, after all, Sir Anthony Meyer - the obscure Tory backbencher - who first stood against Margaret Thatcher. It was relatively junior members of the Lib Dems who ed the revolt against Charles Kennedy. The same was true of the autumn push two years ago against Tony Blair. If there were a couple of dozen Siobhain McDonaghs that would make Gordon Brown's position difficult whatever the rules said.

Tomorrow, a group of backbenchers have penned their own critique for Progress magazine of Brown's leadership although they don't call for a contest.

Team Brown must now await nervously to see what happens next. One of them has expressed his hope that I do not turn out to be the Michael Fish of the political world!

07:15 PM UPDATE
The article written by a dozen Labour backbenchers, including former Health Secretary Pat Hewitt, is a no-holds-barred critique of the way Gordon Brown is leading the party.

It says that Labour has "no explanation yet" as to how it will "steer the economy through the troubled waters ahead" claiming that "one-off taxes and pay-outs, no matter how justified in their own terms, do not amount to a strategy." There is a "yawning chasm" which the Labour party needs to fill, or the government will suffer a "hammer blow".

They suggest the government needs to be better at communicating what it's "going to do about the things that affect people day to day", noting that Harold Wilson's "pound in your pocket" and Thatcher's likening of the economy to a household budget may have been "derided by the pundits" but "understood by the public".

The MPs label recent policies to deal with the crises of 10p tax and the housing market "defensive" and suggest instead Labour needs to be "championing change", "leading the debate about new ideas" and "renewing confidence in our economic competence".

Some of the 12 authors are known critics of Brown's. They all claim that their thoughts are unconnected with calls for a leadership contest although they know that their views will make one more likely.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

"Save money, save energy" read the slogan on the lecturn at the prime minister's news conference yesterday. Not so long ago, some journalistic wag - who knows, even me - might have quipped that the words "save Gordon" belonged there as well. Somehow, though, it didn't quite feel right. Gordon Brown no longer appears to be under threat. The cool political climate of the autumn has replaced the heated frenzy of the summer.

Back then, David Miliband would not answer the simple question "Can Gordon Brown win the next election?" This week, he insisted that he could whilst leading members of the cabinet in praise of Mr Brown. In the summer, ministers believed that Jack Straw might lead a cabinet coup. Now, though, he declares that there will be no leadership challenge. Then, there was talk of letters to be signed by dozens of Labour MPs calling on the PM to stand down - like those that forced Tony Blair to bring forward his departure. Now, Charles Clarke calls for his leader to buck up or stand down and no-one comes out to support him.

So, what has changed? Why has the "centre of gravity moved in Gordon's favour" as one cabinet minister put it to me. The critics admit that they cannot see a way to get from here to there - from a world with Brown as leader to a world without him. He'd resist being removed, they say and you can say that again. There's no-one obvious alternative, they go on - aware that neither the party or the public rallied to David Miliband when he emerged as the young pretender. There would, in any case, have to be a leadership election lasting at least six weeks since the public wouldn't accept another leader being imposed on them. Indeed, the demands for a general election would be hard to resist.

Friends of the prime minister put it more positively. MPs have come to realise, they say, that it's not Gordon Brown that's the problem but "the economy stupid" and he's the best man to sort it. In this respect, and this one only, the polls are helpful for Mr Brown. The public does not say it wants a change of Labour leader nor that the party's position would be improved if there was one.

So it is that Gordon Brown has neither been backed or sacked. So it is that he has not re-launched his leadership but does not face a challenge to it. So it is that ministers say "we'll give him his conference" or "we'll wait until the by-election" without saying or knowing what they'll do when those supposed milestones are reached.

The PM, it seems, has been saved for now at least not by anything he's done but by an atmosphere of weary resignation that has taken over much of his party.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

So, is the class war back as the claimed this morning? I think not. What may be back is determination to fight the Tories instead of (or, perhaps, as well as) each other.

In her to the this morning Harriet Harman promised to "step up" the fight for equality and not to put it "on the back burner" as the economy slowed. She went onto attack the Tories as "false friends" of equality and fairness. The Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's portrayal of the Tories as the true progressive party was a provocation too far.

Harman didn't mention the word "class" once in her speech announcing the membership of the National Equality Panel - a group of academics who will study inequality in Britain. She spoke instead of "investigating how "people's life chances" are impacted by "where they were born, what kind of family they were born into, where they live and their wealth" as well as their gender, race, disability and age.

A major theme of Gordon Brown's Conference speech will, I'm told, be fairness and how Labour not the Tories can be trusted to deliver it. Gordon Brown's article, which I wrote about yesterday, admitted that Labour had not done enough to increase social mobility. A White Paper on the subject is due by the end of the year.

So, what is the motivation for all this ?

Belief - that this is what Labour is for.

Anger - that the Tories are "getting away" with presenting themselves as the party which will reduce inequality.

Hope - that this is a theme which will allow others to highlight David Cameron and George Osborne's privileged backgrounds given that Labour's crude attempts to exploit the "toffs in top hat" factor played so badly in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election.

Not quite class war then but a hope to redraw the dividing lines with the Tories.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Gordon Brown, it has emerged, does not believe "it is time to adapt and rethink" the way he has been operating as prime minister. This was, however, the impression created by an written for the, somewhat obscure, Parliamentary Monitor magazine.

No 10 is now making it clear that Mr Brown was promising merely to adapt and rethink the policies of the past which are no longer appropriate for the new economic challenges.

To decode, he is promising to rethink Blairism and not Brownism, as many people assumed when the article appeared. There has been much speculation that Gordon Brown is about to humbly unveil a rethink of his approach. This is not it.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Platform 5, Birmingham New Street: Delicious. The Panorama team has just seen David Cameron on to the train home to London. Thanks to an extraordinary coincidence, the Tory leader finds himself sitting in the next door carriage to the prime minister, also on his way back from Birmingham. If either needs to pop to the gents or for a cup of tea, they may well meet halfway.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

On board the train to Birmingham: Never before has any one train seen quite so much political traffic. I am travelling with the Tory leader David Cameron up to Birmingham to make a Panorama to be broadcast at the time of the Tory conference.

By remarkable coincidence, the . One cabinet minister brushed past Mr Cameron and myself on his way through first class to make the point perhaps that in these straightened times, he and other members of Gordon Brown's top team would be travelling standard class. I'm told that word went round on Whitehall that that might be a wise thing to do.

Happily perhaps, for Mr Cameron and Mr Brown they managed to miss each other. Mr Cameron joking that he managed to get there first not just because he's travelling on an earlier train, but because he took his shadow cabinet to the West Midlands two years ago.

Meantime, ringing in our ears is the prime minister's declaration that "my own response to the great challenges in my own life has been to confront them, resolute in the belief that there would always be something that could be done to overcome them and there always have been".

This is, it seems, a licensed reference to those things that he so rarely likes to talk about, the loss of an eye because of a rugby accident when at school, and of course the tragic loss of his daughter a few days after she was born. The point presumably of this is, I assume, to remind people that Gordon Brown is tough, determined and can bounce back after terrible adversity. The question is whether that answers voters' concerns.

What the PM is being told by his advisors is that the public want to know his analysis of what's gone wrong and what he's going to do about it. In other words, that he is capable of self-awareness and analysis. Expect more uncharacteristic Brown introspection in the weeks to come.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Hopes that ministers might be about to give consumers one-off payments to help with their fuel bills are at an end.

The government had planned to unveil a a package of help for consumers faced by soaring gas and electricity bills this week but they are still locked in difficult negotiations with energy companies.

Whitehall sources are making it clear, however, that the focus of the talks is now not on cash help but, instead, on extending energy efficiency measures and the offer of lower tariffs to poorer people.

Expectations that ministers were hoping to unveil a significant package of help with fuel bills including payments of between £50 and £100 a head followed reports of a conversation involving the most senior civil servant at the Business Department which is leading negotiations with the energy companies.

BERR's Permanent Secretary Sir Brian Bender was overheard by other passengers on a train discussing a plan to help "ordinary people" by creating "a fuel rebate for everybody on child benefit".

At the time Number 10 confirmed that discussions were ongoing but said that no decisions had been reached.

Last week the Business Secretary John Hutton declared that "the era of cheap energy is over".

He and other ministers are likely to defend their plan to promote energy efficiency by arguing that it will help reduce bills not just this year but in years to come. One source claimed that consumers would be "better off" than they would have been if they'd been given cash help.

However, those Labour MPs and activists who have argued for a windfall tax on the energy companies are likely to regard this outcome as a significant disappointment.

Tonight the Prime Minister is delivering an important and interesting speech to the Scottish CBI in Glasgow. He will promise not to let down families who are struggling and express his confidence that Britain can make it through challenging economic times.

The question after Charles Clarke's invitation to the PM to buck up or step down will be - is it enough?

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Well, if Labour does go down to a disastrous defeat at the next election, Charles Clarke will be able to sport a T shirt (XL, of course) with the slogan "Don't blame me. I did warn you".

He has brought into public in full technicolour the private conversations which have been had amongst senior Labour figures for many months. The conversations, I believe, go something along these lines :

CLARKE : You do realise, don't you, that Gordon's finished - the public's made up their minds about him?

MINISTER : Well yes but...

CLARKE : And you do realise this won't be any old defeat - we're heading for disaster?

MINISTER : Mmm, it looks that way now but...

CLARKE : You do understand that it doesn't really matter if he were replaced by Johnson, Straw or Milliband - anyone would do better than this?

MINISTER : I know what you mean Charles but Jack's tainted by the Iraq war, Alan says he's not up to it and young Milliband didn't exactly wow the public in July did he?

CLARKE : But look at how John Major emerged from obscurity and won an election or David Cameron ...

MINISTER : But Gordon wouldn't just go quietly. There'd be a bloodbath.

CLARKE : He would if the Cabinet told him to. Margaret Thatcher did ...

MINISTER : But even if he did go we'd have to go to the electorate. They wouldn't accept a second PM that they hadn't chosen. And then we'd be destroyed.

CLARKE : But we are going to be destroyed if you don't do anything!

MINISTER : Look Charles, I've got to get on with my red box now. Keep in touch...

In the short term, Clarke's intervention will force ministers to declare their public support for Brown. It will ensure that the party's and the media's focus is not on the economic renewal plan that never was but on the Brown renewal plan that better had be .....or those private conversations may well end in a different way.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?

Briefly, it looked as though questions about Gordon Brown's leadership had been put on hold. Not any more.

The former Home Secretary Charles Clarke has written an article for this week's which will re-open them. , he writes, is "destined to disaster" and "utter destruction at the next general election" unless it changes course.

His article denies that there is any "Blairite plot" against Gordon Brown before adding, menacingly, that "There is, however, a deep and widely shared concern which does not derive from ideology - that Labour is destined to disaster if we go on as we are, combined with a determination that we will not permit that to happen." What could he mean by that? He doesn't say.

Here's my guess. Mr Clarke knows that there is a sizeable section of the Labour Party who have concluded that Gordon Brown cannot recover and that their party is heading for defeat at the next election. He will also know that many of that group have also concluded that removing their leader could be even more damaging than letting him stay in post. His message to them appears to be "some of us won't keep quiet whilst the ship heads for the rocks".

It is, of course, not news that Mr Clarke is not Mr Brown's biggest fan. However, he has once again said in public and his usual eye wateringly blunt way what many are saying in private.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Are ministers being blackmailed?

Yes, according to the Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg. He says it's the energy companies who are doing it.

He claims that the message coming from the companies to ministers, who are asking them to fund more help for people struggling to pay their fuel bills is - in effect - if you force us to cough up for that we won't invest in the new nuclear power stations and renewable energy sources that you need to meet your climate change targets.

An announcement on a new energy package which was, at one stage, slated for this week is now not due till next. Negotiations are, I'm told, still ongoing.

Ministers are not ready to adopt the idea of a windfall tax which is so popular amongst Labour MP's and activists for fear of further undermining business confidence in the government. Publicly, they refuse to rule it out hoping that the threat of it will focus the minds of the industry.

The idea of auctioning off the remaining carbon trading permits is complex and would require European Commission agreement.

So, for now, ministers need the industry to cough up voluntarilty and, what's more, they are reliant on the companies to deliver their goals for them. It will be the energy companies themselves that offer a better "social tariff" (cheaper energy for the poor) to more customers. It will be them too, along with government, who will have to promote energy efficiency measures to cut household bills. My Whitehall sources claim that the delay is precisely because ministers are ensuring they're not blackmailed and that the companies do not simply pass on the cost of helping the poor other customers.

After a lukewarm reaction to his housing plans Gordon Brown will want to be sure that his energy plans are not greeted in the same way.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

This was not the much hailed government economic recovery plan. It will not affect whether the OECD was right today to by the year's end. It will, therefore, disappoint those who thought that that was what ministers had spent the summer working up.

Downing Street insists that the talk of an economic plan never came from them. The intention of today's announcements was, they say, simply to target support on those who need help. Behind the scenes the government is struggling to persuade energy companies to fund another package to help the poorest pay their fuel bills and to help everyone to cut theirs by using energy more efficiently.

The chancellor is well aware that the impact of any of these measures could be dwarfed by the impact of economic challenges which he famously said were "arguably the worst in 60 years". He went out of his way today to make clear that he was not saying that we were living through times that were worse than the recessions of the 70s, early 80s and 90s, let alone the Great Depression. It will not be until next month's pre-Budget report that we learn how bad his forecasts are or what changes in economic policy he'll announce in response.

What about the future of Alistair Darling himself? My instinct is that he is now, rather curiously, safer than before his infamous interview.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Stamp duty scrapped for a half of all home purchases. Subsidised mortgage for poor new buyers. State help if you run into trouble with the payments. Will be enough to get the housing market moving again?

This morning the Treasury are being very very careful not to make that claim. They know that the level of interest rates, the availability of mortgages, the rate of unemployment and economic confidence knocked so recently by the chancellor himself will be much more important factors in determining that.

Meanwhile the bills rack up. You may remember the government found £2.7bn from nowhere to give us a tax cut this month. Now this package is costing £600m upfront and another billion is being raided from future spending plans. One day, somebody will have to pay the bills. I hear rumours that it's the regional development agencies that have had their budgets raided.

PS. I have just spoken to Alistair Darling about the economy, which .

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

Not only is it worth taking another look at Alastair Darling's Guardian interview, it is also worth watching the whole of my colleague Brian Taylor's interview with the chancellor on Saturday.

At one stage his lip trembles, he shuffles awkwardly in his chair and has the crushed look of a schoolboy who's been caught stealing from teacher. This comes when ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland's political editor quizzes him on whether he said that Wendy Alexander, the former leader of the Scottish Labour Party, was "unlikeable". First Mr Darling says he has "the utmost respect for her", then he denies saying "unlikeable" and then, when realising that he almost certainly did say that, he begins to visibly crumble (which ).

Earlier, when asked to justify his statements on the economy Mr Darling repeats the same formula four times in answer to four different questions.

First he's asked why he had given such a bleak assessment of the economy. He replies: "I think it's important that I tell people that we, along with every other country in the world, face a unique set of circumstances where we have got the credit crunch coming at the same time as high oil and food prices..."

Then Taylor asks: "But isn't it the job of the leader of the opposition to say - and I use your words - "we are pissed off" about the economy?"

Darling: "I think it's important that government ministers and me in particular are level with people..." etc.

Taylor persists: 'But chancellor, the strategy here is puzzling. Shouldn't you be reassuring people rather than talking down the economy and saying it's the worst for 60 years?'

Darling replies: "I think it's important that..." (you can pretty much guess the rest)

Taylor ploughs on: "Do you regret blurting out the truth in such a frank fashion?"

Darling briefly falters and abandons the "I think it's important" formula saying "I have been saying for many weeks now that we along with every other country in the world are facing a unique set of circumstances: the credit crunch along with very high oil and food prices...'

Taylor spots that this is a different way of saying the same thing and says: "Chancellor, forgive me, but you have made that point a number of times. What I am after is what was the thinking behind this? Usually chancellors of the exchequers should provide calm reassurance. You are talking about people being 'pissed off' with the economy and the worst crisis for 60 years. Won't this make things worse?"

Darling is having none of this. He reverts to the answer he gave previously: "I think it's important that ..." etc. ()

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• - What's this?

What on earth do you mean by that? That is the question that is still being asked about at the weekend. The one in which he declared that the economic times we're living through were "arguably the worst they've been in 60 years".

It pays to return to the original interview with the feature writer Decca Aitkenhead to find an answer to that question. The chancellor declares, amusingly with hindsight, "for most of my political life I've kept out of doing this kind of interview. You have to be quite careful". Oh yes Alistair, you do.

So, why did he invite Ms Aitkenhead to his croft on the Isle of Lewis? Why did he, as one cabinet minister pointedly said to me yesterday, invite a hack to his holiday? The answer, I am sure, was not to attack Gordon Brown but to assert his own independence.

Those close to Alistair Darling have grown tired with the fact that he is being attacked, and his reputation sullied, for mistakes they're certain he did not make. It was, after all, not he who toyed with an election, and altered the pre-Budget report accordingly. It was not, after all, he who dithered over what to do about Northern Rock. It was not, after all, he who abolished the 10p tax rate, and was then in denial about what to do about it.

Those close to Mr Darling wanted the world to get a glimpse of the man others see in private. Not grey but amusing. Not indecisive but competent. Not panicky but in control. Thus the chancellor let his guard slip whilst looking out at the landscape he loves so much. Not just about the state of the economy, not just about Labour's political problems but also his dislike of the former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander, and the fact that he loathes the metropolitan habit of kissing people you don't really know.

So, will Gordon Brown reward his old friend's indiscretions with the sack? Will there, as , be an imminent reshuffle in which the chancellor's moved? It's no secret that some at No 10 were considering that. I reported as much earlier in the year. However, Mr Darling's assertion of independence, just like that of David Miliband in July, now makes the cost of a reshuffle that much higher for Gordon Brown.

Perhaps the prime minister will care to ponder his chancellor's words in the very same interview on that subject. Mr Darling declared "you can't be chopping and changing that often. You name me a reshuffle that ever made a difference to a government". Perhaps it would have been more accurate to observe that reshuffles that make a difference tend to be botched ones or ones that create dangerous enemies for prime ministers.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Reddit
• - What's this?