Don't do it, Eric!

According to the DT's Andrew Pierce, reported all over the place, the Conservatives are going to pile in extra resources to target Labour's big hitters in seats that the party has a chance of winning. With the swing that the party achieved in Norwich North we could have a very good chance of removing John Denham in Southampton, Jack Straw in Blackburn and Ben Bradshaw in Exter. Also rather appealing is the thought of winning the Yorkshire seat of Balls and Darling's Edinburgh Berth.

I have to admit that I worry about having a so-called decapitation strategy. I warned against it when the LibDems tried it before the '05 election and - as predicted by this blog - it came across as being nasty, neative and malicious. I think for the same reasons we ought to avoid it too.

If these MPs fall as the Tory tidalwave crosses the country then so be it, but to pour in resources to try and defeat big hitters would come across as being arrogant and wrong. Don't do it Eric!

It's Cruddas vs. X (where X is any moderniser)

Gordon Brown is not going to resign; no matter how low they go in the polls, or how much local or by-elections they lose or how much he destroys the country. He slogged through the Blair years, yearning for this job and he will not go down in History as one of the shortest serving and most useful Prime Minister's ever.

However ... if he were to fall under a (political) bus, what is clear is that it's Jon Cruddas who will carry to flag of real Labour forward. His excellent showing in the Deputy Leadership contest - coming from nowhere to winning on first preferences - plus the dignified way he has handled himself since has put him in poll position. With all of the other Deputy Leadership candidate pretyt much humiliating themselves (including the eventual winner), he still holds a place in the heart of the Labour Party membership and the Trade Union movement if not the PLP.

So, if its Cruddas then who will he be against? I believe that the deal will be done to ensure only one candidate emerges from the Blairite right of the party; they won't want to split the vote and will want to be seen to be united. They may find themselves against a self-styled "unity" candidate like Jack Straw, but the Milliband-Balls-Burnham-Purnell alliance will be at work.

If I were in that alliance, I'd be working out who is going to be doing the challenge in the next 2 years - because they'll need all the traction they can get to beat Straw out of the traps and beat Cruddas to the votes.

Labour's General Secretary Resigns

This started as one of those stories that was very very simple. A rich but slightly controversial businessman wants to give shedloads of cash to Labour and uses friends and employees to do so without being named personally. Labour's General Secretary - the most important paid official in the party - knew of this very dodgy and illegal practice. He resigned. Simple? Well, no...

Now it is claimed that these friends-of-Ambrahams have also donated to the funds of cabinet ministers including Deputy Leader of the Party, Harriet Harman, who is also married to the Labour Patry Treasurer. Now it also seems the the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn, may also have benefitted. Yet nobody within either camp bothered to check who these donors were because, if they did, they would discover that such people were unlikely to be able to donate such four figure sums.

And to make it worse, poor Justice Secretary Jack Straw (who is becoming Gordon Brown's lightening-rod-in-Chief) went on Channel 4 to say that no cabinet minister knew of this.

Oh dear...