Labour plan fightback after more dissapointment

Political Producer Ben Burton blogs from Parliament

Massive disappointment for Labour MPs in the South and South-East after the stunning Conservative victory in Crewe and Nantwich.

That kind of swing repeated at a General Election would see most of them pondering life outside of the Commons. A re-shuffle from the Prime Minister still looks unlikely with Gordon Brown hoping to move on as quickly as possible.

However a change of personnel could form part of the fightback and the help the Labour party to grab hold of the agenda.

Already some are tipping the Southampton Itchen MP for a move.

John Denham has kept a relatively low profile at the Department for Innovation, University and Skills and MPs from all sides of the house often talk about him taking on a bigger role.

Some are talking about Defence where Des Browne hasn't had the easiest of times particularly as he has to look after Scotland at the same time. However after he resigned over the conflict in Iraq that looks unlikely.

More credible is the belief amongst others that the former Home Office Minister is heading back to his old department to take over from Jacqui Smith.

Expect the rumours and gossip to only get louder.

When Parky met Sally

Political Correspondent Sally Biddulph blogs from Parliament

The guy is a living legend, a broadcaster, knighted for his chat-show prowess and on Tuesday I met him – the one and only Sir Michael Parkinson. I had gone to Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospital in Westminster to interview him about his new role as Dignity Ambassador for the NHS. Yes me, interviewing Parky! Having seen him talking to the great and the good for my entire life on the telly, I was, I have to admit it, a tiny bit nervous. But he was a dream, a consummate professional and utterly charming. Being married to a Barnsley boy myself, maybe I’m a bit biased, but he had a little twinkle in this eye and the first thing he did when I shook his hand was serenade me with, “Sally, Sally, pride of the Alley!”, that Gracie Fields classic I’ve heard more than a few times in my life, but never before sung by a Sir.

Before the interview began I asked him to tell me his name so we could check his sound level on the camera equipment, not, I add, because I didn’t know who he was. “I’m Ross, Jonathan Ross”, came the reply followed by a little snigger from my crew. So then I asked, “How does it feel to be interviewed, rather than doing the interviewing,” “Oh I like it, it’s much easier,” he replied. The next few minutes passed without incident as we talked about his new role promoting dignity and compassion in elderly care. He spoke passionately and candidly on the subject and talked about his mother’s last few years suffering from dementia and the care she received in the Thames Valley.

When the interview was over we chatted a bit more, that warm Yorkshire accent holding my attention. I mentioned that a little bird had told me he was a Reading fan, living as he now does in Berkshire, so I asked what Barnsley FC made of him supporting the Royals. “Were they jealous?” I uttered. “Oh I support three teams, Sally, and in a very specific order, Barnsley first, Man U second and Reading third, so I’m looking forward to Reading playing Barnsley next year in the Championship!”

Watch Sally's Parkinson report here on ITV Local.

Libs Dems struggle for the limelight

Politcal Producer Ben Burton blogs from Parliament

Many Liberal Democrats complain that their party doesn’t get a fair share of coverage in the media. In our part of the world in particular - whilst they only hold a handful of seats - they do have a substantial number of voters and believe they deserve more attention.

But with all of Gordon’s trouble leader Nick Clegg (pictured right) isn’t leading the TV bulletins and all eyes are on Crewe and Nantwich. The ever growing consensus is that the Tories will finally win a by-election in a seat they don’t already hold, their first gain from Labour in 30 years.

Normally the Lib Dems cause a storm when a by-election is called and few would write them off. But this time around thanks to the Tories things don’t look so good and the Lib Dems might be wise to not go courting any more publicity.

They’ve imposed a candidate on the association there and are still hoping that they can mop up all those voters fed up with Labour and some that can’t bring themselves to vote for the Tories.

But things don’t look good.

David Cameron’s Conservatives appear to be running away with things and Britain’s third party could be left with a very small share of the vote.

Nick Clegg hasn’t had the best of times since he took the top job. This contest could prove a major test for the young leader and if it’s a bad result he won’t want to be answering too many questions.

If their poll ratings don’t improve (they went down in overall vote share in the local elections at the beginning of the month) even former leadership contender Chris Huhne could be seriously worried about his future employment.

His majority in Eastleigh is less than 600 hundred!

Political memoirs pack punches

Political Correspondent Sally Biddulph blogs from Parliament


Another day, another memoir….there has been quite a run on them of late in Westminster. We’ve got the former Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott’s: “Prezza: Pulling no Punches”, Cherie Blair’s “Speaking for Myself” and Labour’s former chief Fundraiser and Tony Blair’s tennis buddy, Lord Levy’s “A Question of Honour” – all released within a week of one another and all making uncomfortable reading for a wounded Prime Minister.

All of them talk about the stormy relationship between Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, and the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. We’ve heard about the keys to Number 10 being rattled above Tony Blair’s head from Cherie, "Prezza" saying he told Tony Blair to sack Gordon Brown and Lord Levy saying he felt let down by both Number 10 and Number 11 during the “Cash for Honours” investigation. The PM has said he won’t be swayed by such memoirs and is getting down to the “serious business of politics” and running the country. He may have decided to turn his attentions to fixing the 10p tax fiasco, but journalists’ bags up here are weighed down with the three tomes, as we all search for that next nugget of intrigue. With serialisations in major newspapers, there’ll be more revelations to come.

I actually bumped into Lord Levy yesterday in Millbank, our Westminster Studios, and said to him I had bought his book. He shook my hand firmly, looked me straight in the eyes, pulled me close and kissed me on both cheeks and said “how marvellous my dear!”. I have never met this man before and was quite taken aback by his sheer exuberance. He went on to say “do tell me what you think, even if you think it’s total rubbish (he actually used a far more emphatic word, which we can’t print here) drop me a line at the Lords”

And as a final thought, at a press lunch on Tuesday, the Tory leader and Witney MP, David Cameron, was asked, “whose memoir would you fear most and why?”. Without hesitation he said, “My wife, Samantha’s!” An instinctive answer perhaps and one that left me wondering if it was a veiled warning to Tony Blair about Cherie’s!

Morale low as Labour return to work

Political Editor Phil Hornby blogs from Parliament

MPs are back at Westminster after the long weekend. And what a long, long weekend it's been for Labour MPs from the south and southeast.

Almost all of them know they are staring down the barrel. Last week's local election results were so bad, and morale in the party is so low.

Conversations I have had with some of them today suggest they weren't cheered up by the Gordon Brown's weekend TV appearances.

To watch a Prime Minister sit in TV studios and be accused of being 'strange' and having a cabinet full of 'youngsters and pygmies' didn't do much to reassure them about their party's prospects.

Tory MPs on the other hand just can't stop smiling in the Westminster sunshine. Many of them will be heading north in the next few weeks, to help out in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, which has taken on huge importance in the past few days. If the Tories win there, the pro-Cameron momentum will feel unstoppable.

The Conservatives though have quite a few awkward questions to answer. What will their policies be? There are lots of generalisations, but not many specifics.

Take the environmental agenda, for instance. Being pro-green sounds attractive, but what about green taxes? Will the Tories be bold enough to talk about increasing the tax on fuel (making driving, and flying, more expensive)? What about the bin tax, which is so unpopular Gordon Brown has now un-announced it twice? What about airport expansion? What about a tax on plastic bags?

And, again, on poverty, it's easy to criticise the fiasco over the 10p tax rate, but what exactly would the Tories do to help the least well-off?

They will say they don't have to come up with specific proposals until the next general elections, which is true - but these are difficult decisions, whenever they are made.

As for the Liberal Democrats, their southern MPs know a big Tory comeback would sweep most of them away. They desperately need Nick Clegg to make an impact, and not just in the pages of GQ magazine.

The next election is probably two years away, and that's an awful long time in politics. Remember just eight months ago Labour were riding high in the polls and some grumbling Conservatives were saying David Cameron's days were numbered.

But things do feel very different here at the moment. It's as if something very significant is happening, a big change which will be incredibly difficult for Labour to do anything about. In fact it feels here just as it did in the early 1990s, when the tide turned against the Tories. They suffered three landslide by-election defeats in the south - in Newbury, Christchurch and Eastleigh. And Tory MPs knew they were doomed.

That's just how quite a lot of Labour MPs feel right now.

Bottled water debate hits parliament

Political Editor Phil Hornby blogs from parliament

MPS BOTTLE WATER CHANGE

Hildon, the mineral water company based at Broughton in Hampshire, are raising a glass to MPs here at Westminster - after a decision not to ban bottled water from the Commons.

A campaign by the Evening Standard has led to many restaurants in London offering thirsty diners tap water instead of the bottled stuff.

It's all about saving the planet. Why drink expensive water from expensive bottles which have been driven in gas-guzzling lorries, when you can have it straight from the tap?

MPs discussed the possible change in the Commons last month. And it put Sandra Gidley, the MP for Romsey, in an awkward spot.

Her environmental credentials are second-to-none But Hildon, which supplies all the Commons' bottled water, is based in her constituency, and jobs could be on the line. Not least hers (she has a majority of just 125).

Well, after weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions, today the Commons Administration Committee - a cross-party group of MPs - today announced their historic decision.

No change. The status quo.

Some MPs are furious, saying it sends out completely the wrong message. At a time when we are all being told to reduce our carbon footprint, they are going to continue knocking back bottled water.

It's very good news for Hildon though. Over the past five years MPs have got through 850,000 litres of their still and sparkling.

Oh, and they've clocked up 77,000 miles driving it from Broughton to Westminster.

Cheers, everyone!

Phil Horby: UKIP enters Westminster

Political Editor Phil Hornby blogs from parliament.

UKIP are celebrating today - they have their first MP at Westminster. And I am partly responsible.

Castle Point MP Bob Spink (pictured right) left the Tory party last month, and said he would continue in the Commons as an Independent Conservative. But behind the scenes, UKIP leader and South East MEP Nigel Farage was busy wooing Mr Spink, and this morning the defection was announced at a news conference held in one of the Commons' old committee rooms.

And yes, unwittingly, I am the man who brought them together. In 2003, the House of Commons Press Gallery held a dinner to celebrate its bicentenary. I invited a group of parliamentarians, from all different parties, to celebrate with us. Among them were Messrs Farage and Spink, who, purely by chance, were seated next to each other. They’d never met before in their lives. Today Mr Farage told us that was the moment his friendship with Bob Spink began, and today, five years later, we saw the result.

It's a coup for UKIP, and really the only way they can expect to get representation at Westminster. The chances of UKIP actually winning a parliamentary seat under the first-past-the-post system are as remote as ever.

It's a different matter in the European Parliament, of course. Proportional representation means smaller parties have a much better chance of being elected. It was the Meridian region which elected the first ever UKIP MEPs in 1999, and the Meridian region which returned the largest number in 2004.

Their most high-profile MEP then was elected in the East Midlands - none other than Robert Kilroy Silk, the former Labour MP and TV presenter. His victory gave UKIP fabulous publicity at the time, although the love affair was short-lived and Kilroy Silk soon fell out with just about everyone in UKIP and ended up setting up his own political party in a blaze of publicity. He was going to transform the system with a brand new kind of honest politics, he told us all. But it didn't happen, of course. Hands up anyone who can remember what his party was even called?

It's unlikely Bob Spink will go his own way anytime soon, but UKIP's enemies - and there are lots of them - are already predicting a disastrous clash of egos between Messrs Spink and Farage.

Mr Farage seemed remarkably relaxed about everything when I spoke to him today - just delighted at last to have a UKIP presence on the Commons green benches.

And people underestimate UKIP at their peril. In the early days, they were dismissed by many critics as, at best, an irrelevance, and, at worst, an undisciplined bunch of nutters. Now they have representation in the European Parliament (where, incidentally they outnumber the UK Greens 9 - 2), the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

As for Bob Spink, he faced the inevitable question today: The people of Castle Point voted you in as a Conservative MP, so now you've changed parties, why not stand down and fight a by-election? To which he gave the inevitable response: The people of Castle Point didn't vote for the Conservative Party in 2005, they voted for Bob Spink.

Well, that's as may be. The Conservatives say you could hear the popping of champagne corks at their party HQ this morning. In other words, good riddance. And the Tories can afford to be fairly unruffled by a UKIP defection at the moment. After all, it's the economy, not Europe, which is dominating politics. Nevertheless, recent history tells us that if UKIP get, say, 1000 votes in a marginal seat in a general election, that can be the difference between victory and defeat.

The Meridian region has the most marginal seats in the country - especially in Kent and Bob Spink's Essex. To reduce the impact of UKIP at the next election, the Conservatives must do their best to neutralise Europe as an issue. UKIP's plan is the exact opposite, and Mr Farage, with his new MP Mr Spink, will be pulling out all the stops between now and polling day.

Oh, and congratulations if you remembered the name of Robert Kilroy Silk's party - Veritas!

Watch Phil Hornby's lunchtime report on Bob Spink here.