Labour Leadership Election? A Futile Displacement Acitivity

Jeff Randall typically has come up with the best opinion piece so far about the total dearth of quality, both in terms of its tainted, lightweight candidates and its inability to interest the country, in the current Labour leadership election sham.

So far, observing the battle for Labour's captaincy has been like watching a 0-0 draw between reserve sides in a Sunday pub league. Lots of huffing and puffing, but no goals, little excitement, and a gloomy acceptance among supporters that it really doesn't matter who wins, because the players are simply not good enough, and no amount of post-match lagers can change that.

Of course, Randall soon homes in like a well-targeted cruise missile on the real weakness underpinning the current incarnation of the parliamentary Labour party foundations and leadership: rank, institutional, barefaced, epic hypocrisy. Only, it's not just Dianne Abbott's hypocrisy he rightly lambasts (as I did here a while back) but the hypocrisy of that entire rotten political organisation. But what he does to the Milibands is priceless. Of Mili Major (Dave), before writing him off: "Offer him a platitude and he will contrive a soundbite."

For Mili Minor (Ed): he manages to muster only a cursory put down for the ugly one with a voice like a defective waste pipe, as if he just isn't worth it (he isn't):

This week, he said that he wanted Labour to become "the party of small business". Too late – Mr Brown already tried that. He began with lots of big businesses and turned many into small ones.

Boom! Two targets with one bomb.

The bottom line, of course, is that everyone has just had a complete bellyful of the whole package: the lying, the spin, the waste, the arrogance, the pocket-lining, the risible incompetence at every level and, it almost goes without saying, the huge levels of hypocrisy that have outraged so many for so long but who have only recently had the chance to show their displeasure. That gulf, between the Labour leadership's public pronouncements and private behaviour, grew so fast under Blair that the leader of the people's party was somehow able to leave office a millionaire many times over. But even all that is trumped by people's contempt for Labour's diabolical economic record in government (again):

Labour's problem is that none of the candidates can accept the real reason for the party's abysmal performance at the ballot box. As research by Demos, the think tank, revealed this week, the public is sick of borrow, tax and waste. The days of bribing voters with their own devalued money are over.

Let's hope "the public" really is that sick of it and has seen through the oldest Labour ruse of all (bribing voters with their own money). And let's hope public memories are a bit longer this time. My view is that this leadership campaign signals the death knell for Labour, for the reason implied in Randall's opening: it is now a party of alley cats, fat cats and pussy cats led by a bunch of common or garden careerist donkeys.

That lack of real new leadership will kill it.

Balls: What A Piece Of Work

Just a short note to record my astonishment at the hypocrisy and arrogance not just of Labour but of a particularly bad Labourist about the roots of the Coalition on that Robinson thing on telly just now. I had thought, foolishly, that Ed Balls was incapable of getting any worse. I was, of course, wrong. Hearing him whine about Labour's negotiations with the Lib Dems after the hung parliament is extraordinary.

I think some cognitive malfunction in his mind, combined with some serious weakness in his character, together mean that he simply is incapable of comprehending what it means to be honest. He just lies all the time, effortlessly, and has no awareness whatsoever that his habitually revised narrative of events is just that: lies - and, what's more, is known to be lies by everyone outside his mind who has seen the evidence - and the truth - laid out, crystal clear, before their very eyes. But it doesn't stop him - oh no! - because it's pathological. He talks, for instance, about this idea that Nick Clegg about-faced on cuts just for leverage in the negotiation process. Not so (read more about that in the Speccy online here). It was a bare-faced lie, on camera, for the film - but Balls didn't care because he doesn't understand what he did. Maybe we should pity him, he's that bad. (Nah.)

Anyway, I could go on but this is, thankfully, all cold water under Westminster bridge. The right - the only - outcome for Britain came to pass, so none of it really matters to anyone other than various breeds of historian and fading BBC journalists like Robinson any more.

Apart from Balls, that is. He wants to a party leader, but his party (no doubt with him - along with Straw and the other usual suspects - the ringleaders) are about to renege genuinely on a manifesto promise for the sake of political expediency with the AV/constituency restructuring Bill. That's genuine, pathetic, grubby opportunism and it's also why I and other people who feel, for the current incarnation of the Labour party, nothing but utter contempt, would very much like to see Balls win. It would be a great day for the nation (the death of Labour).

But remember, always, there was at least one joyous ending to those strange days of uncertainty back in May: forget Balls because his rather more lunatic mentor, Gordon Brown, was gone, gone, gone! at the end of it all. And the nation breathed a heavy, collective sigh of relief because of it.

Now that's what I call "victory". So, what the hell: good luck to the Coalition deal that fashioned that happy outcome, Tory and Lib Dem members both. Hats off to the nationalists, too (a party of which I happily and tactically voted for).

And why not?

The Final Delusion

My utter and entirely justified contempt for Gordon Brown is well-documented on this blog. But even he's managed to surpass himself in terms of delusion and sanctimonious bullshit flammery in his post-prime ministerial speech to a bunch of corrupt socialist African 'leaders' (dictators) in Kampala yesterday. 
But hey, that's just my view of the utter Brown catastrophe. Here's a bit of what he said. I think the entire speech, taken as watertight evidence of a diseased mind, conclusively demonsrates that he is, at heart, a quasi-totalitarian egoist with messianic tendencies. But, naturally, you must make-up your own mind:

All of our lives are connected: we can all impact for good or ill on the lives of people we have never met. And yet we don’t currently share a common society or effective global institutions that allow us to treat strangers as neighbours or give life to our feelings of fellowship, solidarity, compassion and care.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I believe that it is possible for people, acting together, to build a global society, and design the institutions that would best serve its values

OK, Gord, you get on with 'building a global society'. But while you're busy designing the brave new world, the rest of us normal people will be searching for ways to harness individual compassion as a social force, lowering taxes to reward hard work and freeing the education system so that our brightest no longer have to feel disadvantageded because they aren't part of the anti-excellence Labour average.
I digress. The simple point is that Brown is a well-known, now-talkative lunatic, and Balls should just resign,

Blair To Blame For Brown

Quite aside from all his other disastrous decisions, mainly on foreign policy, it seems perfectly fair to me that Blair be blamed for not seeing while he was Prime Minister that Britain wasn't saddled with a successor he himself thought was unfit to govern. This is, according to Andrew Rawnsley in his extraordinarily excoriating assault on virtually the entire Labour administration, the thing for which Blair, ultimately, is most guilty. It's a heck of a read and should be disastrous for all Labour's leadership candidates, tainted as they are with the charge of cowardice, arch and chronic dishonesty and, simply put, self-interested misgovernance. Anyway, here's a taste of something which, if you haven't already read it, is well worth a look:

If Blair thought that Brown was unfit to be prime minister – and there's now lots of evidence that this is precisely what Blair thought – he had an obligation to his party and his country to do something about it. At the very least, he should have, as he could have, ensured that there was a contest for the succession in 2007 rather than allow Brown to be crowned without proper scrutiny. It was one of Blair's most selfish acts and a gross dereliction of duty to swan off to make his millions while leaving his party and country to cope with the consequences of a Brown premiership.

The implication from this is that by the time he had finally given in to the forces of hell unleashed by Brown in the form of Balls, Wheelan et al in 2006, Blair simply didn't give a toss about what happened next. A more damning indictment of the man as Prime Minister is simply inconceivable, even one involving his misleading the House of Commons, the country and the world over WMDs in Iraq. It's actually quite difficult accurately to describe a person like that, whose self-interest and vanity is only trumped by his greed and dishonesty. In some ways if one views it in the light of this unforgivable dereliction of duty, as Rawnsley rightly calls it, Blair ends up as an even worse national leader than Brown, difficult though that might be for some (like me) to swallow.

If you do accept Rawnsley's characterisation of Blair, it is, however, perfectly possible to argue that he was worse than Brown as a man and as a leader. The only difference between the two frauds being, therefore, that Blair was a far better con man than Brown ever could be, which meant that Blair was able to trick the country into believing him and then voting for him. By contrast, Brown was just Brown: paranoid, delusional, vicious, incompetent even in disguising his many falsehoods and, ultimately, a total electoral liability and a catastrophe for the nation.

The impact of these realisations on the Labour leadership campaign as I said should be massive. All the candidates are as discredited as each other for failing to make the decision Blair couldn't be ar*ed to make and stopping Brown once it was crystal clear he was utterly hopeless. As Rawnsley says, quite fairly and quite mildly in truth:

Andy Burnham was one of the nodding dogs who would declare to TV cameras that the cabinet had every confidence in Gordon Brown when the reverse was the case. Ed Balls ran the thuggish Brownite machine and the decade-long insurgency against Tony Blair to put his master in Number 10. Ed Miliband makes pious noises denouncing "factionalism" as if he is a saintly figure who never had anything to do with it. "The emissary from Planet Fuck" – as he was known among Blair's aides during the civil war – was at the heart of the Brown faction.It is a bit tricky for David Miliband. He was one of the senior members of the cabinet who knew Brown was taking them to defeat and failed to act before it was too late.

So they all should be screwed - and rightly so. For all his hypocrisy, Mandelson doesn't really matter because he's not a leadership candidate. So, assuming (and this is a big assumption) the MSM ends its own version of Labourist dishonesty and begins to treat the rest with the contempt they should have coming to them for their pathetic behaviour in propping up Brown, the only untainted candidate in the Labour leadership race is, hilariously, Diane Abbott!

Either way, and this is essentially Rawnsley's conclusion, Labour is truly, deservedly and royally buggered. And in the end, of course, they themselves are the ones who are to blame for it. After all, Blair only gave us Brown because he'd given up, and that's how history will judge him. But the Milibands, Burnham and Balls (and Mandelson) are the ones who propped the disastrous loser up. That was unforgivable - and the country isn't going to forgive them, ever.

Now, thankfully, their past seems finally to be catching up with them. Soon there'll be nowhere left for them to hide any more and no amount of continued lying will save their collective political bacon. If the PLP is stupid enough to elect one of them, (and it's almost certain that it is that stupid) then they should prepare to be out of power for decades, if not forever. Mind you, exactly the same thing will happen if they choose bonkers Abbott.

Catch 22 for the Labourist wreckers - and music to my ears!

Another Day, Another BBC Online Pro-Labour Report

200K London Superhead? Yer 'avin a larf in't ya?

I know, I know - if you wanted to read about how bad the BBC is, you'd make your way to the first rate "Biased BBC" blog. But I just can't help it, mainly because every day with relentless regularity, the BBC - particularly its online news incarnation - confirms all my suspicions about it. The chief suspicion, of course - that the BBC is institutionally left wing, pro-Labour and viscerally Tory-hating - can hardly be called a 'suspicion' any more since so much evidence to prove this is right beyond any reasonable doubt has been forthcoming over the years. Lame BBC managerial and editorial statements to the contrary have become a joke.

You, as I often do, might be wondering to what lengths the BBC will go in pursuit of its propaganda goals. Well, today we have yet more data to show that "any" is the answer. Consider the farce of Ed Balls' entire education strategy for the past three years, given plummeting literacy and numeracy levels and ever-dumber standards in exams. Consider, for instance, the £10Bn+ that has been frittered away over and above the £30Bn school building and refurbishment programme, now being gallantly corrected by Michael Gove.

Consider also today's extraordinary news that a primary school head teacher has been raking in 200 large a year on the back of, we assume, some half-decent administration of a small school, the consequence of another Balls brainchild, "City Challenge". Jackpot! At least for Mark Elms, that is, who, it seems, is some kind of hyper-teacher, a true saviour capable of healing the educationally sick and giving the word-blind sight. At least I assume that's how good he is otherwise why is he troughing eight times more for running a primary school than a close relative of mine retired on after 35 years of highly distinguished teaching and administration in the secondary sector? No one, but no one, in the education industry is that good.

It seems the BBC's reporter, one Hannah Richardson, disagrees. I'll quote a bit of it, but you will need to read to whole thing to get a taste of just how extraordinarily one-sided it is - and I mean in favour, by implication, not of the teacher in question, but of the brains behind the ridiculously expensive but "prestigious" (according to Richardson - you betcha, girly! Anyone who can syphon off 200k from the government for running a primary school deserves some kind of admiration) "National Leader of Education" programme, Edward BALLS.

For this work, at his 400-pupil school, Mr Elms receives a basic salary of £82,417.This is well within the maximum head teacher pay rate of £109,000 for large inner London state schools.

The bulk of the £200,000 pay package he received last year was for the work he did on the London Challenge and City Challenge project over two years.

These schemes support schools in challenging circumstances and have been very successful in improving education in deprived areas of the country.

Well now, pardon me for complaining, but does this or any of the other half-baked comments she makes in her little piece remotely justify giving one man two hundred grand for running one school, no matter how bad it had become in a Labour-run inner city area. As I said, however, it's important to recognise that that's not the real purpose of this dizzyingly-spun article. The real purpose for this editorially on-message young BBC hackette is to speak out for a very expensive, and highly divisive, Labour schools policy, and therefore, by implication, up for Balls.

Gladly, if the rider at the top of the old Department for Children, Schools and Families, website dedicated to this policy from the incumbents is anything to go by, the "City Challenge" policy Ms Richardson seems to like so much, and Mark Elms obviously loves, is now as defunct and kaput as the failed government that spawned it. It goes:

A new UK Government took office on 11 May. As a result the content on this site may not reflect current Government policy.
All statutory guidance and legislation published on this site continues to reflect the current legal position unless indicated otherwise.
To view the new Department for Education website, please go to http://www.education.gov.uk

I like it! Seems Hannah Richardson was reporting on a dead policy walking, regardless of her motives for doing so.

Time she and the BBC woke up to the fact that Labour is out of office, and that their cosy world of protected political bias is no longer as safe as they might like to believe. Just as Mark Elms can expect no more ridiculous bonuses (or perhaps "bribes" would be a better word) for doing his job in a less than salubrious area of the Smoke, left wing BBC hacks, editors and managers can expect no more sanctuary in a public institution that urgently needs to be given back to the public, or go the way of the "Department for Children, Families, Schools, Pets and Wasting Money", Ed Balls and the entire, trainwreck New Labour Government.

Do you think they get that yet? I don't.

A Word About Michael Gove

Education is an area that interests me intensely so it might not be surprising that I'm spending the early evening watching the education funding statement on the parliament channel at this very moment (exciting, eh?).

Suffice to say, and in the spirit of his refreshing brevity and precision, Michael Gove is giving one of the more polished parliamentary performances I've seen in defending his policy of suspending Ed Balls' pie-in-the-sky, dishonest pre-election plans for building and refurbishing 700 schools. A number of facts are emerging thanks to Gove's extraordinary mastery of the detail, not least among them the bureaucratic waste, vast inefficiency and dreadful mismanagement of PFI contracts by Ed Balls and the department he apparently headed (even though he seemed far more busy most of the time trying in his role as Gordon Brown's barely house trained thug, propping up the auld fraud and protecting him almost 24/7 from his own cabinet, a full time job in itself).

Gove's handling of the various whining Labour opposition MPs, moaning about things that their own pathetic leadership brought down on them, is just breathtakingly good. The more insulting and detached from reality they become, the more witty and precise his answers become and, in a spiral that can only ever tarnish the grim image of the socialists further, causes the Labour MPs to become even more insulting and detached from reality.

The reason for this is simple: the principles underpinning Gove's policy initiatives, even ones that amount to large but necessary cuts in the education budget at a time, thanks to the disastrous failures of the previous government, of great insecurity in the public finances, are bullet proof. Better value for money, less bureaucracy and higher standards through greater choice are on offer. And you would bet your house that Gove is the sort of man who will deliver.

All poor old Balls, the biggest villain of this piece, can do meanwhile is moan about the list of affected schools not being available in the Commons library for a handful of minutes. That really is the best he can do - and it's not very good, is it? I think I can predict Gove's response: "Ball, E: must do better, but on the strength of past performances probably won't. D-".

Gove is a truly impressive figure - everyone knows that. But when he's up against the likes of feeble Balls and his ilk on the opposition benches, he looks like a world beater. Cameron beware!

Oh dear. And Balls is still moaning away - this time about his money fiddling of that dodgy Islamic faith school some aeons ago. Labourists - you've gotta love 'em (sort of). They are totally clueless. It's a wonder to me they remember to breathe.

For them to be whinging about pre-announced policies is just priceless!

Temperature's Rising...

This is what I like to see, and thanks to the superb Daily Politics for spotting it and blogging it so fast. Here we have a some real journalistic pressure being brought to bear by Adam Boulton, and even Nick Robinson, who's been marginally better of late.

One thing's for certain, it is, as the DP says, a trainwreck press conference - for Mandelson in particular. You know that when he adopts that menacing, patronising tone and starts telling reporters of Boulton's calibre to 'calm down', he's lost it.

When he was saying 'calm down' to Boulton, Mandelson was talking to himself. Have a peek:

A shocker for Mandy, the pair of Balls either side of him, and for Labour. You call that 'losing the plot'. More please!

Labour Illiteracy

You couldn't make it up if you tried

We always knew Labour couldn't do its sums, well now it seems it's utterly illiterate too. Tory Bear has spotted this rather telling typo from Labour's own rehashed manifesto.

That it appears in the education section turns a simple slip into a right Balls up.

And it's so generally naff, too, that it hardly inspires confidence, does it?

No, it doesn't. Losers.

"A Future Vague For All"

I nearly missed this funny Marten Morland cartoon summary of Labour's and Brown's whole campaign strategy from the Sunday Times. Never a truer word, as they say.

At least the Tories are committed to some genuine policies, which will be life-changing (if not life-saving) to thousands of people as they right Labour's wrongs.

Brown plans to "create a million skilled jobs" if the country's stupid enough to give him a mandate, or so he told us this morning. I think that comes under the "raise fuzziness" category. Or is it "build haziness"? It's so difficult to tell with Brown what he or his party really mean.

And there you have the problem in a nutshell. Because they'll say anything to try to woo voters, they end up saying nothing. And we're all left wishing they'd just keep their noiseholes shut, especially the prime movers - you know, dissembling thugs like Whelan and Balls, strangers to the truth both and entirely.

"A future vague for all". Indeed!

Gunning For Balls

I've donated. You should too. As Guido says:

Antony Calvert is the Tory PPC fighting to win in Morley and Outwood. He is aiming to give Labour a “Balls moment” to match the 1997 “Portillo Moment”. Ed Balls has a notional majority of 9,000, Portillo had a 15,000 majority, the symbolism would be perfect.

The neutering of Balls would be a sweet moment indeed. I can't think of any Labourist liar more deserving of total electoral humiliation (apart from Brown himself). Can you?

Hat tip: Iain Dale

E. Balls, A. Balls, PIMCO and Gilts

I was just skimming through the comments beneath Jeff Randall's latest all-out assault on Labour's epic economic incompetence when I stumbled upon something rather interesting of which, in my ignorance, I knew not (thanks to the poster "BD MATHERS," I do now). The European portfolio manager (chief buyer) of the biggest bonds and gilts dealer in the world, PIMCO, is none other than one Andrew Balls, Ed Ball's much smarter little brother.

"So what?" you may well ask. Well, for one thing, PIMCO holds $183Bn of assets and, as such, is the biggest company of its kind in the world. What is more, it's playing a vital role in keeping the British economy's head just about above water, for now - (or, at least, keeping the Labour shipwreck afloat). However, PIMCO announced yesterday that it will be withdrawing from both the US and the UK markets. The US will just about be able to cope with this since it has many other options open to it. Not so the UK, a far smaller economy where debt dependency means we are orders of magnitude more leveraged than the States. As the "economic voice" blog says:

In what amounts to a massive vote of no confidence PIMCO has announced that it will cut back on its UK and US government debt holdings. They see government borrowing rising and the central banks no longer buying through quantitative easing, which will push the supply / demand balance into negative territory for them. They are expected to move into European government bonds as these have not had the same level of government support. If a flood of UK Gilts are dumped on the market we could see yields rise (prices drop) more than anticipated.

This leaves the questions of where will the government raise the circa £180 billion it needs for the next year? And how much more of a premium in the form of increased bond coupons (interest) are we going to have to offer before investors are happy to take the risk of buying new Gilts? Also, when will the Bank of England be able to sell its accumulation of Gilts back into the markets without suffering a massive loss?

Next stop the IMF?

Indeed. This is a very, very serious development which has all-but been drowned out by all the noise coming from Brown's latest pathetic leadership crisis over the last 24 hours or so, although some bloggers, most economists and some broadcasters did pick it up. It is a stark truth, but Jeff Randall is absolutely right: Britain is broke; the coffers are [worse than] empty. He was wrong, however, in his assessment that both main parties are too scared to talk about managing this calamity. As I said earlier, Philip Hammond was refreshingly candid, forensic and solid in appraisal of the Labour-led crisis in the PBR debate today. It's only Labour that's delusional about the scale of the problem, in particular the Prime Mentalist himself - oh, and one Edward Balls.

Which brings me back to the theme of this post: the embarrassment the Balls brothers connection might (should) cause the government. Why? Guess who will be steering through PIMCO's dumping of UK gilts. One Andrew Balls, European portfolio manager. The "economic voice" again:

Apart from the economic repercussions for Britain, it also embarrassingly appears that Andrew Balls (younger brother of Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families) will be overseeing this withdrawal as head of PIMCO’s European investment team.

But in a huge, gobbledigook in-house interview posted after Christmas on the PIMCO Europe website, Balls Minor puts a bit of English on what the company calls its "European Cyclical Outlook and Strategy" (aka, its "Get the hell out of the UK as fast as possible" plan).

...there is more uncertainty around the forecasts than usual, and it is even more difficult to identify the turning point in the economic cycle because larger, secular changes are also underway. Over the long term, we expect to see a major shift to lower growth in the developed economies, higher growth in the emerging economies and greater government intervention and regulation overall. PIMCO calls this new economic reality the New Normal.

Compared with the core eurozone countries Germany and France, we see the UK as having a more difficult adjustment to make to the New Normal due to weaker initial conditions, greater ongoing need for deleveraging and, in the household sector, the need to rebuild savings, which are low compared with the savings rates you see in Germany or France.

However, the UK has benefited from more aggressive policy interventions and related to this, the depreciation of the British pound versus the euro and the dollar. We also consider the UK a more flexible economy than Germany or France. That is a benefit for the UK in terms of handling the big shocks we have seen hit these economies.

Taking all these factors into account, the growth forecast ranges are similar for the UK and the eurozone as a whole, and their outlooks are broadly similar, but the midpoint for the UK is a little bit higher than that for the eurozone.

Another important point is that while we see unexciting growth at the eurozone aggregate level, we expect to see considerable differentiation across member countries because of weaker initial conditions and greater deleveraging requirements in some countries.

Get that last bit? "Weaker initial conditions and greater deleveraging requirements in some countries [in Europe]." For 'some countries,' read the UK. For 'weaker initial conditions,' read Gordon Brown's total cluelessness in his decade of lunatic spending into a massive property bubble that he helped to create and fuel. Seems spinning the facts could therefore be in the Balls family genes. To be fair to A. Balls, though, he is stuck between a very thick rock (filial loyalty to an older brother - and sister-in-law - who helped cause the UK's current economic chaos) and a very hard place (doing his job). It seems he plumps for the latter in the end, though, in his assessment, stating (in econo-nerd speak, naturally) that:

In the UK there is also uncertainty over what the Bank of England (BoE) will choose to do with the stock of gilts it has bought during 2010. The BoE has bought gilts across the curve, whereas the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing purchases have largely been focused on mortgage-backed securities. So there is a bigger question mark over the exit strategy here for the BoE, whether it will continue to hold these bonds or whether it will at some point try to reduce those holdings.

Because the eurozone does not have large-scale quantitative easing programmes to unwind, we remain moderately bullish on eurozone duration. We also remain positive on covered bonds in the eurozone. The impact of ECB purchases of covered bonds is very minor compared with the quantitative easing programmes in the UK and the US...

This is why his bosses have told him to dump the UK (and US) and buy European debt instead. He goes on (boy, he goes on!)...

On the UK side, in addition to the risk associated with the end of quantitative easing, there is also political uncertainty surrounding the elections, most likely happening in May, and the implications there for fiscal retrenchment and for fixed income markets. The chance of renewed pressure on the British pound remains a source of tail risk, a risk that poses a market crisis or systemic event that can severely hurt portfolio returns, in the UK.

In other words, the UK is the most likely candidate for basket case status in the entire continent of Europe. I wonder if Ed knows what his brother's been up to? Andy knows what Ed's been up to, that's for certain. You know what, I think Britain ended up with the wrong Balls in the government.

Anyway, that's enough of that. It's all just too unspeakably depressing for words. My God this country has been fubar-ed by Labour. Again.

The Purnell Effect

Messiahs Die Young

There comes a time in every young man's life when he realises he will never be Prime Minister. It seems that time has not yet come for James Purnell, who, it can now be confidently speculated, harbours not-so private ambitions to take over the salvage operation of the heavily damaged Labour ship, rudderless and drifting, after the final electoral salvoes blow the remainder of its current, clueless crew out of the water, probably in 2010, but maybe sooner. His plotting is misconceived, in my view, however, since the fault lines running through the Labour Party are so deep these days, it is quite possible it will cease to exist in its present form after it is destroyed in the GE. It's impossible to lead a party in a state of civil war - and certainly no fun at all.

Yet there seem to be quite a few Labourists ready to take up the challenge, one of whom is Purnell. But hoping that some sort of unifying "Purnell Effect" will pull the many claques, cliques and factions into a coherent body seems to me to be just another woolly-headed pipe dream. For one thing, where is there any evidence that Purnell isn't just another bog-standard Nulab intellectual lightweight? Apart from his resignation from Brown's cabinet, that is.

No matter how much he might want it, he's not up to the job. Let's hope he gets it, then. I can only assume that the recent outbreak of Purnell-worship in the right press is in fact a product of this ulterior motive: to sabotage Labour for a further decade by encouraging it to elect a twit like Purnell as its post-apocalypse leader. Otherwise, it's just journo-luvvie, village nonsense (and if we've come to expect that kind of crap from the Telegraph, I for one demand more from the Spectator).

Despite all this, it just goes to show how paranoid they've become that the Brownite faction is in a right old tizzy over Purnell's manoeuvres, with over-rated lunatic Edward Balls last night launching a radarless exocet in his direction (which, it seems, failed to explode as it impacted harmlessly on the Daily Telegraph, to the sound of general hilarity in camp Purnell).

“There are times when individuals in their early 40s have crises. They buy motorbikes or go off and travel round the world and have a gap year. Sometimes people do that. I don’t think for political parties to have those kinds of moments is very sensible, especially when you are at your moment of greatest clarity and vision.”

Mr Balls can hardly hide his disdain for Mr Purnell’s latest career move, joining a Left-wing think tank.

He says now is not the time “to be going off to think tanks to find out what your identity really is”.

You would think the particular claque that Balls leads, however - let's call it the "Gordon for World Emperor" brigade (I don't want to exaggerate) - would steer clear of the word "crises" given that they seem to attract, create and mishandle them at a rate which defies all analysis. As for "clarity and vision" - well, it's difficult to know whether to put my fist through the monitor in fury at the sheer scale of the mendacity, or to seek medical attention for uncontrollable laughter. Best stop reading Balls' bollocks for now, then.

What an outburst like Balls' usually proves, however, is that Brown's rating on his (unique) vulnarability meter has just ticked-up several notches after his complacent reaction to the Norwich North fiasco failed miserably to strike the right note of contrition and regret his fearful party required. The real Purnell effect, therefore, is that he's acting as a defective lightning rod for criticism of Brown. Instead of that criticism earthing harmlessly through him, it's become a focused, million-volt discharge crackling all over the Number 10 bunker and short-circuiting all the low-grade robots like Balls which dwell therein. Brown is unprepared this time for the kind of summer storm he barely weathered last year.

Speculation about his imminent demise just became front page news again, folks. Yippee.

Balls Goes Mad

Fraser Nelson reports that earlier today he received a threatening call from Ed Balls about his latest article exposing the government's lies over debt and cuts, entitled pithily, "Balls Lies".

Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning , hopping mad. He instructed me to "take that post down now". I thought he was joking: has there been some change to the constitution where ministers now have power over the media? But he was deadly serious. "You should not call me a liar," said Balls. I told him that if he doesn't want to be called a liar, “he shouldn't tell lies”.

Extraordinary. Nelson continues:

Balls told me if I keep the post up, it will "expose" the sort of publication that we are - and our "political" bias. A curious point. McBride used to make pathetic little "threats" like this - now he's gone, Balls has to do the dirty work himself. You'd think Balls has perhaps by now worked out that The Spectator is rather pleased to consider itself a thorn in the side of this tawdry, mendacious government. "So you will take the post down?" Balls said. I just laughed. He hung up. Matt d'Ancona was later surprised to find out that he had four missed calls from Balls on his mobile.

The rest of article concerns the substance of Balls' economic lies (or 'false proxies' as Nelson reveals they are known in political circles) and it is most certainly worth reading. But I wanted to focus on the threats from a minister of the Crown made directly to a professional journalist. Channels, anyone?

It's just not acceptable behaviour - it's undignified, bullying and brings an office of state into disrepute. Nelson appears to be pretty good-humoured about these threats, but then he's that sort of a chap. We should not be so forgiving. This kind of outburst from a government minister is intolerable, not least because it appears to be an attempt to muzzle the press.

It's simple. Balls is unfit for office and should be fired for this outburst, though precisely which department he would be vacating remains unclear.

Hattip to Plato.

PS: Nelson's parting shot is certainly worth repeating:

If you're reading this, Ed (and I suspect you will be) then we have a serious point to make. Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs - as we did - to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying - no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed - by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you're in for a rude awakening.

Now there's a rallying cry if ever I heard one. Get on with it, then ;)

Farewell Darling: A Tribute In Toons

In no particular order of fun:



























































































































































And meet your ultra house-flipping, tax evading, smearing, backstabbing, Brownite lickspittle new 'Chancellor', Head Balls.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

Darling Down Balls-Up

Meet the new Chancellor

I know it's been up for a while, but it's so fantastically naff that I had to do something on it. The Sunday Times says Gordon Brown wants Ed Balls to replace Alistair Darling. In a scoop sourced to a "top-level leak from Downing Street" [update: Guido thinks it's Mandelson. The farce is complete!] it's revealed that this is some sort of desperate strategy by Brown to reinvigorate his dead government.

...the prime minister wants to make the appointment the centrepiece of a sweeping reshuffle on Friday, after the local and European polls.

With Balls, the schools secretary, one of the most divisive figures in government, the move would be a huge risk, which could trigger a ferocious backlash within the Labour party that could spiral into a leadership challenge.

The Sunday Times understands that Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, has warned Brown of the potential dangers, but is ready to support the move as part of a final attempt to revive the government’s fortunes.

It's difficult to know which part of this to laugh at first: one of the "most divisive figures in government" ousting a man who could well turn into Brown's Geoffrey Howe; Lord Mandelson giving his qualified blessing while warning of the "potential dangers" - something he knows all about; the "dangerous backlash" from supine Labour backbenchers frightened by the prospect of imminent unemployment and losing all those delicious perks. Whichever bit of this hairbrained (and now leaked) scheme unravels first, what's certain is that this is going to be a real blockbuster summer of political bloodshed.

But it gets worse (better, I mean):

Brown’s authority has become so weakened that some ministers are openly defying Downing Street. Insiders claim the most audacious are dodging his calls – deliberately “going to ground” when he tries to phone them.

It's amateur night at Whitehall, folks. Low farce in a paralysed regime. This is your 'government' remember. And people still wonder why we so desperately need a General Election. Well, maybe this part will finally convince them:

According to the well-placed insider, Brown has been working on the scheme to make Balls chancellor since the expenses debacle engulfed Westminster, taking a handful of his closest aides into his confidence.

Brown knows the appointment would be highly controversial and is ruminating over the possible consequences.

"Munch, munch...er...munch." The consequences will be the political equivalent of multi-megaton nuclear devastation for you, Gord - happily.

While few question Balls’s economic competence, many backbenchers remain deeply distrustful of the prime minister’s closest henchman.

Yesterday one senior Blairite figure warned of devastating consequences for the prime minister if he pressed ahead. “If Gordon wants to bring the whole house of cards tumbling down, this is the way to do it. The reaction will be apoplectic,” he said.

See?

A Downing Street spokesman said: “We do not comment on reshuffles.”

That's OK, spokesman geezer, you don't have to. We've got everything we need.

As the Brown slowmotion trainwreck enters its final phase (taking out the station and exploding in flames), one can't help but be curious about how poor old Darling, Brown's loyal retainer for so many years, feels about all this. Howe will he react, I wonder ;)

Boy oh boy, though, watching Brown tear Labour to pieces and probably destroy it for generations as a serious political force over the next few months will be absolutely captivating. If it's allowed to happen, that is.

[Insert Your Caption in the Comments Below]

Sadly, even Labour knows now that Darling or Balls, Harmon or Smith, Blears or any other of their incompetent, sleazy ministers you care to pick are not really the main problem (serious problems though they all are): it's Brown. And they're going to get rid of him - within weeks.

Shame. We won't get to see the show. I'll just have to settle for seeing Brown ousted, then. What a pity.