Full List

The full list of ministers is now online:

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page2988.asp

I need a bit of time to absorb the detail but my impression is that this is a reshuffle that will really unite the Party and consign all the historic TB-GB stuff to the dustbin of history.

Brown has been astonishingly generous to many MPs considered Blairite. For instance he has made Siobhain McDonagh a whip even though she was one of the handful who didn't nominate him for Leader.

Well done to Tom Watson on getting back into the whips' office - I hope this won't see his blog go completely into mothballs.

Congratulations

to Hackney South MP Meg Hillier who has been made a junior minister at the Home Office after only 2 years in Parliament.

The Brown Bounce picks up momentum

Tomorrow's Guardian ICM poll:

Lab 39% (+7%)

Con 35% (-2%)

Reshuffle bits & pieces

Excellent news that Jim Murphy - one of the most talented and politically clear-thinking ministers - has been promoted to Minister for Europe and that another bright and sound minister, Liam Byrne, is staying at Minister for Immigration.

Sad that Adam Ingram is stepping down as Armed Forces Minister - he is another of the veterans of Neil Kinnock's team in the '80s - his PPS from '88-'92 - who laid the foundations for Labour's electability.

Hilarious that the left are so worked up about Digby Jones - he's going to be promoting trade, not writing employment laws.

Churlish that Cruddas didn't take the job offered him - if he wants to change things then at some point he actually needs to be a Minister taking decisions.

Reaction from the hard left

Susan Press - http://grimmerupnorth.blogspot.com/ - says this is her "Nightmare cabinet". Well done Gordon! Already giving Labour Briefingites nightmares after only one day in the job.

Commenting on Dave Osler's blog - http://www.davidosler.com/ - she says this "Has to be the most right-wing Labour Cabinet EVER".

This is probably technically correct.

Me, I'm having a good day and looking forward to the next 10 years.

A return to discipline

Hopefully the experienced and popular in the Commons Geoff Hoon/Nick Brown combo running the whips' office means an end to the era of mass backbench rebellions and a return to PLP collective responsibility. My hunch is they will combine an ability to consult and report back to Gordon on the PLP's concerns, so that they are addressed before they come to a head, and the ability to take short, sharp disciplinary action if MPs don't accept their side of the deal, which is to vote with their own Party.

Congratulations

to Hazel Blears if it's true that she will be going to Communities and Local Government.

The reshuffle

I like what I'm hearing so far. I hope the speculation about a big promotion for Jacqui Smith is correct.

Thanks

Whilst most bloggers have already started reacting to the incoming Cabinet I thought someone ought to express thanks to the people who are going. John Reid in particular has made a massive contribution to the first ten years of the Labour Government. Indeed, he and Pat Hewitt were key figures in Neil Kinnock's office in the '80s helping to restore Labour to electability. It's important amid the excitement of a new generation of ministers coming in that we don't forget the people who are passing on the baton.

Starting as they mean to go on

Nice to see a warm welcome to our latest recruit to the PLP, combined with loyalty and a sense of giving the new leadership a chance to bed in being exhibited by the McDonnell camp, over at Owen Jones' new blog: http://laboursfightback.blogspot.com/

A solemn moment

And so I'm sat watching Tony Blair leave for his last PMQs on News 24, the solemnity of this profound moment is only broken by being on annual leave at home and my 20 month old son accompanying the high political drama with both a running commentary and discordant noises from his ZippyMat electronic keyboard (£4.99 from the bargain bookshop, more features than Kraftwerk had available in the '80s, guaranteed parental exasperation).

You Gov - spot off.

Remember the YouGov poll - http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/labmember.pdf - not very accurate was it?

Members:
Johnson 24% on YouGov, 17% in vote
Benn 24% on YouGov, 22% in vote
Harman 17% on YouGov, 24% in vote
Hain 13% on YouGov, 12% in vote
Cruddas 12% on YouGov, 17% in vote
Blears 9% on YouGov, 9% in vote

Unions:
Johnson 26% on YouGov, 14% in vote
Benn 22% on YouGov, 15% in vote
Harman 16% on YouGov, 13% in vote
Hain 15% on YouGov, 21% in vote
Cruddas 15% on YouGov, 27% in vote
Blears 7% on YouGov, 11% in vote

Who switched?

The recorded votes of MPs and MEPs are going to make interesting reading.

At close of nominations the MPs and MEPs section was split thus (based on numbers of nominators):

Johnson 7.4%
Harman 6.0%
Hain 4.7%
Cruddas 4.6%
Blears 4.5%
Benn 4.4%
21 MPs and MEPs - 1.9% of the entire electoral college - did not nominate.

After the actual voting this switched to:
Johnson 8.08%
Harman 6.54%
Blears 4.99%
Hain 4.81%
Cruddas 4.63%
Benn 4.26%

Each MPs' vote will have gone up a fraction in value because a handful didn't vote but the numbers suggest Benn's tactical nominators didn't then vote for him and each of Johnson, Blears and Harman picked up some PLP support during the campaign.

I can't help thinking ...

that just a bit more aggressive courting of the members' section by Johnson, instead of the perceived top-down focus on the MPs carrying it for him, and he might have done it. My calculation is that if he had persuaded 1300 extra members to put him 5th and Harman 6th he would have won. Maybe the problem is that most of us who could have delivered that kind of a campaign for him were working for Hazel ... though one reason we were working for Hazel was that he didn't seem that interested in that kind of focus to the job.

Stats

The internals of our 6 round 3 part electoral college:

1st round: MPs, Members, Unions, Total
Benn 4.26, 7.21, 4.93 T:16.4
Blears 4.99, 3, 3.77 T: 11.77
Cruddas 4.63, 5.67,9.09 T 19.39
Hain 4.81, 3.87, 6.64, T:15.32
Harman: 6.54,8.04,4.35 T;18.93
Johnson 8.08, 5.53, 4.55 T:18.16

So:
Most popular with MPs was Johnson, 2nd was Harman, 3rd was Blears
Most popular with members was Harman, 2nd was Benn, 3rd was Cruddas
Most popular with affilates was Cruddas, 2nd was Hain, 3rd was Benn

Right/left split (counting Benn, Johnson, Blears as right)
MPs: 17.33 vs 15.98
Members: 15.74 vs 17.58
Affiliates: 13.25 vs 20.08

Final round even stranger:

Harman 15.42 18.83 16.18 50.43
Johnson 17.91 14.5 17.15 49.56

Johnson won in 2 sections - affilates and MPs, but still lost.

It was the Cruddas transfers from Amicus and TGWU wot won it.

As the gossip from the count is that the union members polled heavily the way they were advised to by their executives the internal party political priority for the long term is to get the unions back to being what they historically have been - the bastion of the right of the party. If we don't ensure the successors to the current generation of General Secretaries when they retire are from the moderate wing of the party we'll end up in a decade's time with Brown's successor in a contested election being from the left.

Good stuff from Brown

Brown saying:

There will be a housing minister attending Cabinet (Cruddas?)

Harman is party chair as well as DL - so not DPM? She looked pleased.

Douglas Alexander will be GE Co-ordinator (any bets on a September 2007 election?)

NEC to set up policy forums in every constituency

OMOV decision on manifesto

More power to Parliament

Local govt to be strengthened

Salt in wounds

Just what I needed - a gloating text message from Diane Abbott. Thanks Diane.

Harriet

She's paid tribute to Kinnock so maybe I'll have to revise my opinion.

Oh well.

I can't help thinking that all this stems back to Sir Ken Jackson losing the Amicus General Secretaryship by a couple of hundred votes a few years ago.

At least we know Harriet will follow instructions from Gordon.

Those of us on the right of the party need a serious strategic rethink - the two most left-talking candidates came 1st and 3rd so something was badly wrong with our campaigning or our organisation.

Benn

What happened to Benn? Eliminated 3rd???

Ooops

Hmmm looks like my 1st choice came 6th and my 6th choice came first ... time for a little humility I guess.

BBC saying Harman

Well that's a surprise...

Another change of leader?

With MORI saying Labour is on 39% (+4%), the Tories on 36% (-1%) and the LDs 15% (-3%) the real question is which of Cameron and Campbell will be kicked out by their own party first.

There's lots of rumblings from the David Davis camp so it could be the former.

After all, Blair was able to get away with a radical reform of Labour because people were desperate to win and couldn't argue with a 20% poll lead. Slaughtering your ideological sacred cows for the glory of being the same 3% behind Labour that you were under Michael Howard doesn't quite have the same appeal.

DL Turnout

BBC Politics Show is saying turnout is 53% amongst members, only 9% amongst affiliates. Former should help Johnson, latter is probably good for Cruddas.

All-time Labour Cabinet

OK the rules of this one are - you can only name people that actually were ever Labour Cabinet Ministers - and they are being judged at the height of their powers and with no reference to subsequent wanderings off to the SDP etc.:

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Deputy Prime Minister: Clem Attlee
Chancellor: Gordon Brown
Home Secretary: David Blunkett
Foreign Secretary: Ernest Bevin
Education: Shirley Williams
Health: Nye Bevan
Transport: John Reid
Trade & Industry: Harold Wilson
Attorney General: Lord Goldsmith
Local Government: Stephen Byers
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Herbert Morrison
Chief Whip: Michael Cocks
Environment: Tony Crosland
Justice: Roy Jenkins
Work & Pensions: Hugh Gaitskell
Leader of the House of Commons: Michael Foot
DCMS: Chris Smith
Northern Ireland: Mo Mowlam
Leader of the Lords: George Brown
International Development: Barbara Castle
Defence: Denis Healey
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Hugh Dalton
Scotland: Donald Dewar
Wales: Jim Callaghan
Minister without Portfolio: Peter Mandelson

Something sensible in Tribune

... for once. A really good article by thoughtful Wrexham MP Ian Lucas about why Brown should make more use of the PLP in policy development and as a policy sounding board - so that Labour MPs are consulted early in the policy process through the PLP Departmental Committees rather than presented with legislative faits acomplis. Better policies, fewer rebellions. Unfortunately Tribune has yet to fully enter the digital age so you'll have to buy a copy.

Fantasy Cabinet

Everyone else seems to be producing fantasy Brown cabinets, so here's my effort - apologies to anyone I've accidentally sacked:

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy Prime Minister: Jack Straw
Chancellor: Ed Balls
Home Secretary: Hazel Blears
Foreign Secretary: Alan Johnson
Education: Jacqui Smith
Health: Caroline Flint
Transport: Douglas Alexander
Trade & Industry: Stephen Byers
Attorney General: Geoff Hoon
Local Government: Nick Raynsford
Housing: Jon Cruddas
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Margaret Beckett
Chief Whip: Tom Watson
Environment: David Miliband
Justice: John Denham
Work & Pensions: Yvette Cooper
Leader of the House of Commons: Alastair Darling
DCMS: Andy Burnham
Northern Ireland/Scotland: Des Browne
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock
International Development: Hilary Benn
Defence: John Spellar
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Miliband
Wales: Jessica Morden

And as Party Chair is being abolished: Labour Party Vice-Chairs X4: Ian Austin, Baroness McDonagh, Frank Dobson, Ian McCartney

The political spectrum

Interesting stats in a YouGov poll for C4 News earlier this week about where the public put themselves and the political parties on the left-right spectrum. The public as a whole say:

Very left-wing - 3%
Fairly left-wing - 11%
Slightly left-of-centre - 15%
Centre - 20%
Slightly right-of-centre - 13%
Fairly right-wing - 11%
Very right-wing - 4%
Don’t know - 22%

The 3 leftmost categories more or less equal Labour's rock-bottom core vote - 29%. The core 3 rightwing categories equal about the same - 28%. So you need to win over people who define themselves as centrist, or just don't know, to get anywhere near winning.

Current Labour voters consist of 7% very leftwing, 20% fairly leftwing, 26% slightly left of centre, 22% centre, 15% don't know, 8% slightly right-of-centre, 1% fairly rightwing and 1% very rightwing!

The myth that the Lib Dem vote is now generally to the left of Labour's is slain: only 1% of LD voters are very leftwing, only 7% fairly leftwing, 25% slightly left of centre, 31% centrist, 4% slightly right of centre, 3% fairly rightwing and 1% very rightwing. 23% don't know.

Women are slightly to the left of men but twice of many of them don't identify with any of the labels at all.

The under 34s have the largest number of people who don't know what they identify with of any of the age groups, but those who do have an opinion place themselves slightly to the left of their older counterparts. The over 55s are the most rightwing age group - bad news for Labour when we have an aging population and the old have by far the highest voter turnout.

The middle class ABC1s are more partisan than the working class C2DEs - they include more leftwingers and rightwingers whilst the working classes include more centrists and don't knows i.e. New Labour triangulation is probably more appealing to C2DEs than to the middle classes.

Scotland is overwhelming the region/nation where people see themselves as on the left - the north is the only other region where this is the case and then to a far lesser degree. The Midlands emerges as the most rightwing region! London, contrary to all the stuff about it being to the left of the rest of the country, has voters who (although the bell curve is spread further left) on average are positioned identically to the rest of the South - just to the right of centre.

Oh, and 65% of voters think Cameron is a lightweight politician.

Belated gratitude

Former Barnsbury Ward member T Blair may take some consolation as he leaves office that, having condemned him on various issues over the years, Islington South & Finsbury CLP's GC last night passed the following motion, with only 2 dissenting votes:

"This GC notes that Tony Blair will shortly resign as Prime Minister after 10 years in office. This GC believes that the last 10 years left Britain a wealthier, happier and healthier place. This GC applauds, in particular, the introduction of the national minimum wage and now the raising to £5.35, the virtual abolition of long term unemployment and the lowest unemployment rate of the major economics in Europe; the writing-off of Britain's third world debt and trebling of the overseas aid budget; free entry to museums and galleries; the three-fold increase in NHS spending and resultant 85,000 more nurses and 32,000 more doctors; the 30,000 more teachers; devolution to Scotland and Wales and a mayor and assembly for London; introduction of civil partnerships, equalisation of the age of consent and repeal of section 28. Each was only possible with a Labour Government, and was achieved in the face of Tory opposition. This GC therefore thanks Tony Blair for his leadership of the Party and wishes him well for the future."

Blair always said he would know he had succeeded when he persuaded the Labour Party to love Peter Mandelson. He hasn't quite got there with Peter, but persuading the Islington South GC to praise his own record - however late in the day - ain't bad.

Lib Dems

I'm instinctively queasy about this.

We've got quite enough talented Labour MPs to fill every position without co-opting our political enemies.

If more social democratic Lib Dems like Vince Cable (who started out as Labour Candidate for Glasgow Hillhead in the 1970 election and a Labour Special Adviser to John Smith at DTI) want to be Ministers they should defect back to the Labour Party.

I don't think the Lib Dems have much to offer intellectually in terms of input on constitutional issues - there's a kind of mythology that somehow they are experts on constitutional reform when in fact they have a pretty narrowly self-interested stance on PR and most of the interesting thinking on the constitution is coming from Labour people.

The weakness of Campbell as a leader actually gives us a chance to put the Lib Dems back in the box and erode their local government base. It will be very difficult to give the Lib Dems the electoral kicking they deserve for their opportunism at a local level if we are cosying up to them nationally.

I'd prefer a bit more tribalism from the new PM rather than less.

Tories and term-limits

Tories in the House of Lords have voted to limit the Mayor of London to two 4-year terms.

This strikes me as fundamentally undemocratic - it should be up to voters whether they want Ken to do 4, 8, 12 or 40 years in the job.

It's ironic that people who themselves have no democratic mandate are trying to limit voter choice like this.

And it's a bit of an admission that the Tories already concede they can't actually beat Ken in an election - so they're having to resort to constitutional fixes.

Good news from YouGov

Poor David Cameron. He is increasingly looking like he'll be not the Tories' Blair, but their Neil Kinnock.

Yesterday's YouGov poll - http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/results070615st.pdf which had Labour up one at 35%, the Tories down one at 37% and the Liberal Democrats down one at 14%, make satisfying reading if you plug the numbers into the "make your prediction" bit of http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/ - we are back in Labour majority territory.

This is without the further lift we should get from what promises to be a bold reshuffle, and any policy announcements Brown has up his sleeve over the next few months.

The poll says people want an early General Election.

I would dispute that there is any constitutional requirement for one, but if the numbers keep moving like this it might make a lot of sense for Labour to call the Tories' bluff and go to the country early, giving Brown a full-term mandate.

Same Old Tories

Still the nasty - and divided - party, find Populus.

Survey of MPs finds:

"Labour turns out to be more cohesive than the Tories. On every statement apart from one, 83 per cent or more of Labour MPs agree (the exception being whether Britain is a united country, where there is a 59 to 41 per cent split)."

"against the view of Mr Cameron, just 46 per cent of Tory MPs agree that gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, with 54 per cent disagreeing. For comparison, 83 per cent of Labour MPs and 92 per cent of Lib Dems agree. "

"there is a 52 to 48 per cent split among Tories on whether “the diverse mix of races, cultures and religions now found in our society has improved Britain”. By contrast, 92 per cent of Labour MPs agree, as do all Lib Dems surveyed. And while Labour MPs are virtually unanimous (94 per cent) in agreeing that “one of the things that would most improve life in Britain today is people being more tolerant of different ethnic groups and cultures”, that is the view of only 67 per cent of Tory MPs."

"Roughly nine out of ten Labour and Lib Dem MPs agree that “if we were starting with a blank piece of paper and designing a health system for scratch, we would still create something very much like the NHS”, but only two fifths of Conservative members agree."

"Private schools appear as a sharp dividing line. More than four fifths of Labour MPs (85 per cent) believe “it would be better for the country if everyone who sends their children to private schools chose to send them to state schools instead”, a view backed by only 7 per cent of Tory MPs."

Félicitations aux camarades du PS

Congratulations to Labour's sister party in France, the PS, for gaining seats, completely against expectations, in yesterday's second round of the parliamentary elections, and wiping the smug smile of Sarko's face by ousting senior minister Alain Juppe from the National Assembly.

The PS and its allies won 185 seats, up from 149, whilst the centre-right UMP was down from 359 to 314. And Le Pen got precisely zero seats.

Full constituency results here: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/elections/2007/circonscriptions/index.asp

UMP 314 (down from 359 in 2002)
Other right-wing parties 32 (up from 8)

Democratic Movement 3 (up from 0)

Socialists 185 (up from 149)

Communist party 15 (down from 21)

Green party 4 (up from 3)

Other left-wing parties 22 (up from 6)

Others 2

Total 577


I await a formal message of congratulations to the PS from the Labour Party. But I'm not holding my breath.

Rattled

I'm trying to work out why Cruddas is bothering to concentrate his fire on Hazel.

I think he's rattled.

He's boxed himself into a position where he keeps saying things that will upset Gordon Brown, who is determined not to allow the Tories to portray him as tacking leftwards. It's probably not very clever to distance yourself so much on policy from a guy who has just become Leader by the most overwhelming parliamentary mandate in the Party's history, when you aspire to be his deputy.

Question Time

Belatedly, my reactions to last night's Question Time Deputy Leadership debate, large chunks of which I spent shouting at the TV scream or with my head buried in my hands.

Defining moments:

Hazel: the bit where she, alone of the candidates, paid recognition to the rest of the electorate listening to the debate and said it wasn't just about saying things (allegedly) popular with an internal party audience: "We won three elections because we are in tune with the British people, there are new challenges around housing, climate change, international terrorism, but if we move away from that combination of a strong economy and social justice, if we go into punitive taxes, if we start to slide back into the territory, then that is a real warning to us."

Alan: came across as very relaxed, funny and a nice guy: "Our focus in '97 was about taking the centre ground and about keeping that centre ground.
"The only traditions we broke with was Labour party losing elections, because that's what the Labour party did in the past.
"We did that by capturing the centre ground and shifting it to the left. Issues like international development, national minimum wage, work-life balance would have been considered left-wing issues - now they're mainstream issues.
"That's why Cameron wants to get onto our territory. That's why we mustn't move off of it"

Hain: the moment when he realised that invited to praise each other, none of the rest had mentioned him. I felt genuinely sorry for him. Also proved he is ignorant of Labour history by claiming every Deputy Leader has been Deputy PM - incorrect as George Brown's final 3 years as DL were as a backbencher. But he was a Liberal then so he probably didn't notice.

Benn: excellent answer to the idiot in the audience who suggested Iraq was more important than dealing with poverty. Managed to summarise why the Labour Party exists in his attack on inequality.

Harman: the master of unsubstantiated assertions: "I would make the best team with Gordon" ... er, why exactly?

Cruddas: suit purchased from surplus wardrobe of 1940s time-travel sitcom "Goodnight Sweetheart". Politics of a similar vintage. Not just lurching left but burning any remaining bridges with mainstream opinion in the party at a rapid pace. How exactly would we fight a General Election with a Deputy Leader opposed to Trident replacement? Answers on a postcard please to the Tory HQ Attack Unit, who must be preparing their "Cruddas and Brown disagreements dossier" and rubbing their hands with glee. Needs to stop rubbing his nose on national TV as well. Still seems like a clever, nice bloke though. Just a totally wrong clever, nice bloke. And all his best ideas (party reform, housing) have been picked up by Gordon anyway, so he doesn't need the job now.

Hazel - supported by the Times; AJ - supported by the Mirror and Sun; Cruddas - supported by the Morning Star?

Hat-tip to Harry Barnes for spotting the unusual company Jon Cruddas is keeping this weekend.

Neither he nor his promised video address made it to the soft left Compass conference last weekend.

But he's found time out from the Deputy Leadership campaign this weekend to address the Morning Star's Conference. The Morning Star is a journal whose editorial policy is to support the platform of the Communist Party of Britain, a dwindling cadre of hard-core Leninists - some of them Stalinists - who rejected the EuroCommunism espoused by the official CPGB/Democratic Left.

Other speakers include from the Labour Hard Left Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell and Tony Benn, Salma Yaqoob of Respect, and a whole bunch of people such as Andrew Murray who are the CPB's cadres inside various unions and campaigns.

Imagine the outcry if another Deputy Leadership candidate was to speak at a conference, similarly entitled "Politics After Blair", if it was organised by, say, Lib Dem magazine The Liberator, or Conservative Party News. But apparently lending credibility to Britain's residual cell of hardline Stalinists and their newspaper is an appropriate way to spend the final Saturday of your Deputy Leadership campaign.

As Harry Barnes says:

"Does Jon really want us to believe that he is part of this camp? And will those attracted by the Conference really believe that he has become one of them?"

David Clark - wrong as usual

David Clark is part of the tag team of commentators in the Guardian - alongside Polly Toynbee and Neal Lawson - doing their best to make Labour unelectable, despite having worked in the '90s to help make it electable.

As usual today he is putting forward dangerous nonsense with an added sprinkling of sectarian bile about Hazel Blears.

His starting point is an understanding of where the British public is at politically that takes the single genuine case when the public was to the left of the Government - Iraq - and extrapolates from it to make the almost moronically deluded case that the "grassroots" (by which he presumably means people that whinge a lot at their GC, or join Compass) are more in touch with public opinion than Ministers are.

A) He must be canvassing a different planet to me, because - again with the genuine exception of Iraq - the attacks on Labour I hear from ordinary voters are based on a perception that we are obsessed with political correctness and not seriously enough tuned into dealing with their preoccupations about their tax burden, crime and anti-social behaviour and immigration. I have yet to ever meet a voter who wants a 50% higher rate of tax, or renationalisation of the railways, or any of the other "please vote for me for Deputy, I'm ever so radical really" election-losing policies floated in recent weeks.

B) If I hear one more person try to make "grassroots" a synonym for the left of the Party I will scream very, very loudly. Jon Cruddas and Harriet Harman do not own the grassroots of the Labour Party. They represent a legitimate strand of it, yes. But there is an equally legitimate strand of GC delegates, leafleters, canvassers, councillors who are not members of the whinging tendency, who do not want to apologise for 10 fantastic years of an excellent Labour Government, who are loyalists who would have did in a ditch defending Blair and now offer the same loyalty to Brown. We are the grassroots too. It is our Party too. Our votes have not been counted yet and when they are it may surprise a few people.

Anyway, I don't think much of David Clark or what he stands for. The fact that the Government actually paid him to advise the Foreign Secretary takes my breath away.

End of rant.

"The principled candidate deserves our support over the pack of panderers"

The Times editorial today is - almost - a perfect analysis of the Labour Deputy Leadership contest and a spot on recommendation to those people who haven't voted yet.

It marks Hazel Blears down as a winner from this process in terms of her status as a serious front rank politician who has put her principles first, even if she does not win this election.

I've said "almost" because I disagree with the Times' critique of the electoral college delivering "undue influence to trade unions" - in fact the electoral college delivers "due influence" to hundreds of thousands of ordinary Labour voters who happen to be trade unionists.

Here it is in full:

"Hazel Blears is the principled choice for the Labour deputy leadership
It has been said of sausages that it is best not to think too much about how they are made. The same is true for the post of deputy leader of the Labour Party. The contest has not been an edifying spectacle for several reasons. It is not obvious that the position is required at all. Even the candidates cannot agree on what they believe the portfolio will, in practice, be about. The victor will emerge via an electoral college which is complex and awards an undue influence to trade unions. David Cameron sought to embarrass Tony Blair about this at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday (although Mr Blair subsequently hit back at him with a ferocity that bordered on the feral).

Yet the ballot papers have been printed and a choice has to be made. Some of the candidates can be dismissed almost out of hand while others merit more substantial consideration. Peter Hain and Harriet Harman have spent the campaign wooing the trade union barons, distancing themselves from policies to which they have been bound by collective responsibility and courting the most unreconstructed parts of the electorate. Labour would take a large step backwards if it rewarded this behaviour by embracing them. Jon Cruddas has proved to be a more rounded character than these politicians and run an imaginative campaign but has again been unwilling to tell public sector trade unions the hard truths.

Three rational runners are thus left in this race. The soft choice for Labour would be Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary. He is the front-runner according to most assessments. He has acquired that advantage for reasons which are not impressive. His surname is an asset to him due to the surreal development that his father has morphed in the past 25 years from national terror to national treasure. That he almost destroyed the Labour Party has been forgotten. Mr Benn II is the more moderate but being amiable and unobjectionable are not virtues of such a magnitude that they qualify a man to be deputy leader of a party. Labour would not do itself any harm by selecting Mr Benn but it would not do itself that much good either.

A more interesting choice would be Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary. He is an engaging individual with an astute reading of politics. He has not appeased the unions in the course of the hustings, perhaps because as an ex-trade union leader himself he appreciates the futility of that strategy. In terms of personality and style he would be an effective counterbalance to Gordon Brown and that would benefit both of them.

Mr Johnson can, though, bounce about the political spectrum according to issue and, it seems, the day of the week. To describe him as a “Blairite” would be inaccurate. The principled choice is not Mr Johnson but Hazel Blears, the Labour Party chairman. She has been consistent and candid in the course of the past few weeks and has defended the Prime Minister on matters where the Labour Party is, mistakenly, too suspicious of him. Were she to win it would send the most forceful signal that new Labour will survive the transition from Mr Blair to Mr Brown. It is in the interests of the incoming Prime Minister that this message does come across loud and clear.

Yet if the bookmakers are correct that will certainly not happen. But no matter how many or how few votes she secures, Ms Blears should be at the top table of a Brown government. Those who back her should offer their second preferences to Mr Johnson. The principled candidate deserves our support over the pack of panderers."

Think before you blog

The danger with blogging is that it enables and encourages you to publish your thoughts in a very immediate and instantaneous way.

And what feels the right reaction can after only a little bit of hindsight look crass or embarrassing.

Kerron Cross fell foul of this yesterday with a fairly predictable jokey post about the building housing Hazel Blears' campaign collapsing.

This looked a lot less funny after a few hours when it became clear that some poor construction worker was trapped in the rubble. The fire service couldn't get him out until 1.30am - some 9 plus hours after the accident. He's still in hospital this morning.

Moral to Cllr Cross - and indeed all of us who blog - pause for a moment before joking about what could be a serious incident - and if determined to proceed, have the sense to go back online regularly and delete or amend your post if new information suggests it's in poor taste.

One Diane is quite enough

I'm a big supporter of having a more diverse PLP, and particularly of improving on the current derisory number of BME women MPs.

However, I'm not sure that Jackie Ashley's call for Parliament to have more Diane Abbotts will aid the cause of BME women's representation.

Diane has a unique set of qualities as a politician - but they are her personal qualities, not ones that apply to every BME woman.

We need ethnic minority women MPs from all wings of the Labour Party, rebels and loyalists, media stars and conscientious constituency campaigners, loud and quiet. We particularly need BME women MPs with an approach to politics that, in contrast to Diane's self-created role as the perpetual outsider and oppositionalist, will see them become Whips and Ministers and involved in creating policy, not protesting about it.

To her credit, Diane is actually pretty supportive of BME candidates who don't share her style or politics - she backed David Lammy who was obviously the New Labour candidate in the Tottenham by-election selection because she wanted to see a bright young Afro-Caribbean man get into Parliament even if he didn't share her politics - though she doesn't extend this to Trevor Phillips who she had a go at at our GC when he came up for reselection to the GLA a few years back.

There are quite a few excellent BME women trying to get selected this time round - people like Dora Dixon-Fyle from Southwark, Sonika Nirwal from Ealing, and Nargis Khan from my own borough. I think they'd all be a bit put out by Jackie Ashley trying to define them as extra Diane Abbotts. Diane Abbott might not be too happy either.

"Not the candidate the party leader actually wanted"

Full marks for persistence to Steve Norris who has yet again put himself forward to be Tory Candidate for Mayor of London.

This latest effort is more than slightly undermined by his own comment less than two months ago (after David Cameron's botched attempt to get a joint candidacy with the Lib Dems in the shape of Greg Dyke):

"The unfortunate reality for whoever the Tories choose is that Ken will also know they are not the candidate the party leader actually wanted."

Note "for whoever the Tories choose", which obviously includes him - as he must have known when he wrote it.

Norris has already set out his vision for London over the last two elections and it would have been a disaster - abolition of the congestion charge; cuts to the bus subsidy; less investment in public transport; no extra resources for the Metropolitan Police Authority.

His opposition to the congestion charge shows his unwillingness to take tough decisions - and it means that if he was elected there would be no move to emissions charging for the zone, meaning no action against the gas guzzlers and 4x4s clogging up central London (showing the sharp difference between Cameron's "green" rhetoric and the reality of the Tory party in London - we've had similar locally in Hackney with obsessive defence of car use from opposition to controlled parking to trying to stop a 20mph zone around a school).

Brown on Party Reform

Good stuff from Brown yesterday on Party reform.

A word of caution though - whilst the proposals for "establishing policy forums in every constituency, as well as regular questionnaires to members, and "citizens' forums" designed to improve Labour's campaigning edge and engage local people outside the party" are the right way forward for CLPs that are already doing the basics, in too many areas - particularly those where Labour is either in a very safe position or in a weak third place - our organisation has atrophied to a level where the basics of party organisation are not taking place.

We need some base line targets to bring every CLP up to a minimum level of activity so that we remain a truly national party:

- every CLP to send a delegate to Annual Conference (at the moment only about 2/3 do)
- every CLP to have regular political debate, campaigning and social events, even if this happens in a cluster with neighbouring seats - I've heard anecdotally of some CLPs that only meet once annually to elect a Secretary, or quadrenially to select a paper general election candidate
- every seat in every election at district council and above to have a candidate - no more situations like this May when over 30% of council seats had no Labour candidate
- target minimum membership levels based on a % of the Labour General Election vote

this kind of capacity building requires organisational muscle - more full-time organisers - but if we can't fund those then perhaps between General Elections we need to do the pay back for the Key Seats strategy - after all the times that Key Seats have been given support by safe or non-Labour seats, between General Elections this should happen in reverse, with a systematic effort by Labour MPs and key seat activists who have had support to go back into areas where the party structure is less healthy and help re-energise it.

Putney Selection

Congratulations to Amicus National Political Committee member, and former Wandsworth Labour Group Leader, Stuart King, on his selection as Labour's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Putney yesterday.

The fact that we are picking such strong candidates for seats narrowly lost in 2005 is excellent as it means we can take the battlefield for the next General Election into Tory held territory and look for gains, as well as just defending Labour marginals.

Ballot papers

Good to see that Amicus, as well as inserting a call to vote Cruddas with their ballot papers, has put in a party membership form and the nominations booklet with statements from all the 6 candidates, so every one has had some chance to communicate with members of the union. This is a big improvement from my memory of 1994 as a TGWU member when I think we just got a letter of instruction on who to vote for from Bill Morris, and no material about the non-TGWU nominated candidates - maybe this is a false memory but I don't remember getting the nominations booklet with my union ballot that time.

TGWU have done the same as Amicus this time, though their pro-Cruddas leaflet features the same picture of Jon as Amicus', but carefully trimmed down the left hand margin so you can't see that he was actually having his pic taken with Derek Simpson - shades of Soviet era air-brushings out.

The Fabians have gone one better and sent a nice little book of essays -http://fabians.org.uk/publications/book/deputies-choice-07/ - with the ballot paper, though it does have some rather unflattering cartoons of the candidates.

Anyone know what material other unions and affiliates have sent with the ballots?

I was trying to think of a pun about compasses but couldn't

Ever one to engage in dialogue with the left and/or a glutton for punishment I trekked to Westminster Central Hall today for the Compass Conference at the invitation of CND, whose opponent of choice in debates I seem to have become.

I arrived in time to catch the end of Ken Livingstone's plenary speech - the bit I heard was eminently sensible stuff about tackling climate change through city-level measures.

The CND fringe was supposed to be about future opportunities for disarmament and fulfilling our Non Proliferation Treaty obligations, but I guess inevitably got dragged back onto the recent Trident replacement decision. My opponent was Jon Trickett MP, Chair of the Compass Group of MPs. He seems to be calling for another vote on Trident as early as 2 years' time - i.e. between the concept and design phases - can't see Gordon being up for that in what could be a General Election year, somehow. Rather than keep trying to reopen a vote they lost, I don't understand why Trickett & co don't use their energy to push Ministers to be more proactive in kick-starting multilateral disarmament talks, or leading efforts to get nuclear free regions in places where there is a danger of conflict such as South Asia and the Middle East - which would be policies that would not only be more likely to be adopted by the Government, they would be likely to have a bigger impact on global disarmament than unilateral non-replacement of Trident.

I bumped into and had a friendly welcome from Compass Chair Neal Lawson, which was kind of him given that I'm not a fan of his current political project, and also saw Francis Prideaux of CLPD and fellow Labour bloggers Tom of http://newerlabour.blogspot.com/ and Peter Kenyon (http://petergkenyon.typepad.com/peterkenyon/). There were even a few people who I hadn't seen since LCC days who may have thought I was there as a Compassite ...

I didn't stay for the video address from Cruddas, but if Neal wants me back next year for a broader debate on Party matters, I might well accept the invitation ...

Why Cruddas is still getting a transfer from me

I've repeatedly said over the last 6 months that I would put Cruddas 4th.

In recent weeks he's done his best to lose my 4th place transfer with his policy pronouncements. I was tempted to only vote 1 to 3 and give no ranking to Hain, Harman or Cruddas.

But now that the ballot papers are here I have decided to stick with Plan A and put him 4th.

Why?

- Primarily because a comrade yesterday reminded me that back in the mid-90s when the Labour Group in Hackney split (literally - 17 councillors defected), Cruddas was instrumental in getting union members on the NEC like Vernon Hince and Brenda Etchells to intervene on the side of the forces of light. That was critical to my borough getting back on its feet and being won back for Labour. I want to see more of that kind of Jon Cruddas. Can we have him back?

and

- because my union is backing him and that counts for something with me
- because of Tom's involvement in his campaign, which reassures me
- because the campaigning stuff is good and someone talking left but doing the campaigning slog is better than someone just talking left

He could have got my 3rd preference if he'd toned down the policy stuff, but there you go.

Unintended endorsements

Former MP Harry Barnes is on good form over at http://threescoreyearsandten.blogspot.com/

Perhaps unsurprisingly he's 6th placed Hazel. But the reason he gives sounds like an endorsement from where I'm sat:

"Last Of Them All - Hazel Blears
She is the most Blairite of the candidates and willingly grabbed the appointed Party Chairmanship when it was offered to her. She is a loyalist to the hilt. More dangerous still, she is an able loyalist. Give her a script and she will ram it down your throat. "

Exactly why I'm putting her first of them all.