91Èȱ¬

There are two serious allegations doing the rounds about the 91Èȱ¬'s coverage of John Prescott's office antics that need to be laid to rest.

False allegation 1 - The 91Èȱ¬ censored the Prescott story on the day it broke

The Prescott story ran prominently on Radio 4's morning news bulletins, was the subject of the Radio Five Live phone in and was the third element of the Ten O'Clock news coverage of "Labour's Black Wednesday". On the 91Èȱ¬ News website, the story received over 500,000 page views.

It's true that it ran less prominently on some other 91Èȱ¬ outlets. This proves there was no "censorship". There is - and was - debate and, yes, even some disagreement between and within programme teams about the significance of a politician having an affair, when compared with the significance of foreign prisoners being released without being considered for deportation and nurses having lost faith in the Health Secretary.

As a result the 91Èȱ¬ has offended some who believe that Labour is guilty of double standards for attacking Tory sleaze, and that the 91Èȱ¬ appears to be in the government's pockets for not pursuing the story as vigorously as we did "Tory sleaze".

Equally there are others who complain - and ring, email and text the 91Èȱ¬ to say so - that they are simply not interested in the sex lives of politicians (yes, even if, like Bill Clinton, they do it in their office).

For what it's worth, I believe that because the Deputy Prime Minister's affair was with a civil servant paid for by the taxpayer, and because he was vigorous in attacking the morality of Tory ministers, this is a legitimate story for us to cover.

False allegation 2 - The 91Èȱ¬ was rewarded with an exclusive interview with the Prime Minister

Downing Street rang me last Monday to offer a day's filming with Tony Blair on the campaign trail. This is standard fare in an election campaign. They usually offer an exclusive day's filming to each of the 91Èȱ¬, ITN and Sky. This was before the Mirror had told them about Prescott's affair.

I thought they'd probably scrap the arrangement when the story broke. I'm delighted they didn't. Not everyone else is. Journalism's a competitive business!

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Black Wednesday? Who are you kidding?

That's Tony Blair's reaction to coverage of his day of treble troubles (I've just been speaking to him on an election visit to east London - you'll can watch the interview here).

He insists that John Prescott's affair is a strictly private matter and that he has asked the questions that need to be asked about it. He insists he was right not to sack Charles Clarke. He angrily dismisses the idea that Patricia Hewitt should have offered her resignation. Finally, he compared himself with Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger - who months ago faced calls for the sack but now...

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Yesterday I said I had been told the story about John Prescott's affair "was a bombshell to Prescott's colleagues and family". A few of you raised eyebrows to that word "bombshell".

Reader George Mason said:

How can you say you Prescott's escapades are a bombshell when the majority of lobby journalists and even research assistants in Parliament have declared this to have been a long-term open secret?

And blogger Guido Fawkes wrote: "It was hardly a bombshell to the lobby or his colleagues."

I should have been more precise. This relationship revealed at this time was a bombshell. The phrase 'long-term open secret' is journalistic code for 'everyone's heard the gossip but no-one's proved it because if they had they would have printed it'.

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The theme throughout today's Prime Minister's Questions (watch it here) was just how uncomfortable Tony Blair looked. He only really had one thing to say - "yes, it's a mess, we've tried to sort it out, but we didn't manage to sort it out very quickly." In truth he was like a man on the ropes, taking the punches

Earlier today, reader Colin wrote:

Three things puzzle me over this Clarke story Nick.
1. Does this signal that no minister will ever again have to resign for anything that happens in their department?
2. Will the story change if and when we get a 'Willie Horton' moment - ie "They freed the man who went on to rape me"
3. Is it a pure coincidence that John Prescott's affair story comes out on the same day? Truly a good day to bury bad news.

Well, there is much talk of the dead tradition of "an honorable resignation" - in other words resigning because something goes wrong in your department even if you are not directly to blame. No-one I speak to can recall an example of this since Lord Carrington stood down as Margaret Thatcher's foreign secretary when the Falklands were invaded. So the accepted wisdom in Westminster is that you resign if it can be shown that you wilfully misled Parliament or public or if your personal failings as a minister are the cause of a scandal.

Charles Clarke admits that "I failed…we failed…there was systemic failure…it was shocking" but insists he won't resign. Why? Because he's saying - in effect - this failing had been going on for many years. I wasn't told what was going on by civil servants. When I was told I did act but they failed to deliver the policy change. I now want to stay to sort the mess out.

His critics are saying - in effect - once you knew the failure you neither informed the public honestly nor ensured that the failure stopped straight away since 288 prisoners were not considered for deportation after you learnt of the problem.

Who's right? You tell me.

As for the "Willie Horton" moment, it's a gruesome thought but, of course, yes - a re-offence by someone who could have been deported wouldn't change the facts but it would increase the temperature yet further.

And as for whether it's a pure coincidence that the story of John Prescott's affair comes out on the same day, yes. Call me naïve but I have no reason to think it was anything but pure coincidence. I'm told that the was a bombshell to Prescott's colleagues and family.

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So 91Èȱ¬ Secretary Charles Clarke has admitted mistakes were made when foreign inmates were freed instead of deported. You can see my full interview with him by clicking here.

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Who on earth would want to be home secretary?

For years, Tory holders of that great office of state would quake when the phone rang late at night, fearing news of another prison break out or a riot. I don't know if prisoners are less revolting these days but Labour home secretaries seem more bothered by immigration rows.

Pity then Charles Clarke as he faces a double whammy - . Wonder too at his bravery or foolhardiness in , on the eve of the announcement.

It's so much easier commenting than governing!

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Breathe easier dear taxpayer. A couple of Vulcans, a bevy of groundhogs, Cherie Blair's paranoia about her hair and Michael Howard's about his "5 o'clock shadow" may have saved you a fortune (see ).

The revelation of how our political parties spend their election funds is likely to have set back the cause of the state financing of politics more than any debate, pamphlet or speech.

By the way, can it really be true - as The Guardian reports - that Tony Blair sought £53.46 for the drive from Number Ten to the Palace on the day he dissolved Parliament? Perhaps this is regarded as party not government business. I think we should be told.

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Earlier I asked you to suggest what question I should put to Tony Blair during his monthly presser (which you can watch here).

I was so so tempted by Chris's suggestion to ask "Is this your best ever year yet?". It was a clever, witty idea which would undoubtedly have got a laugh but in the end I plumped for asking him simply why he hadn't repeated the Health Secretary's "best ever year" claim.

Chuck no doubt speaks for many when he says that Blair never answers the question but in truth you do learn quite a lot from these news conferences - often not on the main story of the day.

I will recall today as the day he said he was only "marginally open-minded" to the idea of a democratically-elected House of Lords and that the more you looked at the idea the more problems there were. Oh yes, and his insistence that giving cash to his favourite schools - city academies - was the biggest contribution that you could make and might merit an honour.

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"It's a bit like breaking wind in a hurricane". Top Gear's former man Quentin Willson has given the best political analysis of the day so far. That was his description (on Radio 4's Today programme) of the environmental significance of David Cameron shunning the oh-so-green and picking instead the luxury but not quite so green instead. With the entire British economy contributing just 2% of the globe's warming gases, political journalism risks focussing on what car Dave's picked when he's not on his bike.

That is, of course, partly his fault as he's chosen the politics of symbolism - , and - to launch his Conservative "green revolution".

It's partly our fault too for finding the personal so much more interesting than the political. We love learning about - and then usually condemning - the lives of those who aspire to rule us whether it's about hairdos, MMR or (that last example's for the nostalgic among you)

It's my fault too. In my interview with Gordon Brown last week I asked him how green the Brown household was.

He visibly winced and then talked rather uncomfortably and indirectly about what he did. After the interview he chided me gently for the line of questioning. His implication was clear - it trivialised important policy dilemmas which is what politics should really be about. At the time I thought him unduly defensive, unappreciative of the ways we try to make politics interesting and nervy that Cameron is so much better at talking about himself than he is. Ever since, he's been mocked for telling people that they should switch off their tellies at the mains and should unplug their mobiles overnight. So maybe he had a point.

Yes, the personal is the political. Yes, the success of political ideas depends on them resonating with people's own lives - Cameron is tapping green sentiment in just the same way that Brown channelled symapthy for the poor of the third world. But, no, the future of the planet does not depend on a choice of a Lexus or a Prius or on whether junior Brown or Cameron's nappies are binned or washed. It depends on who can find a way to persuade us to live within our planetary means but, more importantly still, who can persuade the Chinese, the Indians and the Americans to do it too.

P.S. Off to Tony Blair's monthly presser soon to discover why this is the NHS's best year ever. Or maybe I should ask him the Mrs Merton question about Labour and peerages. What do you think? Ideas gratefully received.

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I've a confession. I like . He makes me smile - but will caricaturing the Opposition leader as a reptile work for Labour?

It already has. Party Election Broadcasts are a national excuse to go for a pee, switch on the kettle or to get another beer out of the fridge. Our changeable friend has already got masses of what American political consultants call "free media" - in other words, ads you don't pay for.

Ah but, you say, the public hate negative advertising. To which I say - nonsense, poppycock and balderdash. People say they don't like negative advertising and they may even mean it but, boy, they remember it when it's good.

Yes but, you persist, Labour are merely helping to remind people that David Cameron rides a bike, that he claims to be green and surely if being a chameleon were a problem then Tony Blair would never have won 3 elections. He proved that the public (or enough of them, anyway) do not belief it's inconsistent to say you care about poverty but are tough on crime or, even, Iraq. Fair point but not, I believe, a clincher.

Too often people assume that an ad has to persuade people to switch their support if it is "to work". It doesn't. It needs to cheer up your activists and persuade them to go out in the rain to get others to go out in the rain to vote. I supect that's why "Dave the chameleon" was seen in last night's broadcast wearing a straw boater sipping champagne whilst being driven around in a stretch limo. That's why he was pictured with John Major & Norman Lamont. That's why they used a Cameron quote about him being "Conservative to the core". Labour was reminding its own that Cameron is one of "the same old Tories".

Only one person will ultimately decide whether this ad works though. It's the real "Dave". If, when he starts to commit himself to any policies, they appear to contradict his claims to be green, to being driven by the need to help the disadvantaged or to support working Mums then the chameleon charge will stick. If not, "Dave" will go the way of the Tories "New Labour New Danger" poster. Into the bin.

Remember though that the real Dave's in a much trickier position than Tony was when he became party leader. A lot of the policy heavy lifting had already been done by Neil Kinnock. The Tories have barely yet begun.

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All being well, I'm going to be off until after Easter. Mind you, bearing in mind how much happened last time I was on holiday, you might be hearing from me before that. Happy Easter everyone.

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A Labour Party memo emerges suggesting that the party DID intend to take questions at its local elections launch today. They didn't - in case you haven't heard. "Who cares?" you may scream. And you would have a point. "Isn't this the sort of dull Westminster village process story that switches people off politics?" you may ask.

Maybe. And yet and yet…it does tell you something when a party can't agree about how to run an election launch and briefs against each other about whose fault it is. Now that is a story that is hard to ignore.

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So, am I "a squeaker, a scribbler or a snapper" or, perhaps, it's a case of all three?

That was the Labour Party chairman's description for what John Prescott described rather more directly as the "damned media" this morning at Labour's local election launch.

We, in return, sulked and whinged that reporters were not allowed to ask questions at the event. Yes, we TV guys did get to ask the PM a question or two, but the newspaper hacks got shut out and none of us could ask

• Gordon about Tony,
• Tessa about David (her husband who thinks his Italian trial is such fun);
• Ian - the party chairman - about loans;
• John - the DPM - about how plans for a "stable and orderly transition" were going;
• or anyone about the cut in the £200 council tax benefit paid to pensioners.

Read that list and you can see why they fixed it the way they did.

My growing sense is that Tony Blair regards these past few weeks as an unpleasant storm which will eventually pass overhead. He looks remarkably untroubled by it. It's Gordon Brown who looks edgy (he does, mind you, have a cold).

Perhaps the PM is calculating that despite all the sound and fury there is simply no appetite in his party to turf him out against his will. Gordon Brown will never wield the knife and the rules make it nigh on impossible for his enemies on the left to run a "stalking horse" to trigger a wider contest.

It's still possible that the electorate in May will alter that calculation but, if not, Gordon Brown is going to have to get used to another long wait.

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A couple of comments to deal with. wrote:

Nick, why is it necessary, on your part, to trivialise this important debate by characterising it as a soap opera?

Not my phrase, David. The prime minister dismissed it as a "soap opera" - hence the inverted commas.

wrote:

Nick, Do you feel this latest spat between TB and GB is based on political principles or is just political posturing.

Both. Gordon Brown is dubious of the claims that a big increase in the state pension is the way to solve "the pensions crisis". He believes that the stock market's bounce back and the strength of the housing market will underpin private savings. He's also genuinely worried re the long term cost and would rather spend the billions involved on others things - such as his aim to increase spending in state schools to the level in private schools.

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What links Tony Blair's retirement with the retirement of us all? A man called Turner and a battle taking place in Whitehall over how far to implement his plans to reform pensions.

What makes Turner's recommendations politically explosive is his call for the basic state pension to be linked once again to rises in earnings rather than prices. Ever since Margaret Thatcher broke the link, many on the left have demanded its restoration. Ever since Gordon Brown became chancellor he resisted on the grounds that it could not be afforded. So too did Tony Blair - until, that is, Turner came along.

Turner came up with new reasons to restore the link to add to the old cry of "ending the indignity of means testing". His Pensions Commission argued that people would only have the incentive to save for themselves if means testing didn't punish them for doing so and if they had the certainty of knowing what level their state pension might be at in a decade or more.

Long term, Turner said we could pay for this by being forced to work longer before receiving our state pension. The problem comes in that phrase "long term". Before then, it's now clear, Turner is arguing that more of our taxes should be spent on pensions and, therefore, either less will have to be spent on other things or taxes will have to rise. That's what the Treasury is resisting.

Behind the scenes in Whitehall negotiations, Gordon Brown's men have proposed increasing the basic state pension by 3% a year - just a little more than the average 2.7% a year increase he's already been implementing. Restoring the link with earnings would have meant increasing it by 4.8% annually. So, they say, we're not against Turner per se. It's just that we want to downgrade his figures to make the whole thing more affordable.

Not so fast says Turner and his supporters at Number Ten and the Department for Work and Pensions. A little increase in the state pension won't halt the spread of means testing or provide much needed incentives to save. You can't ask people to work longer, ask employers to spend more on pensions and not also restore the link. If you knock one leg off the Turner stool it will, they argue, collapse.

Notice that, so far, I have not mentioned the Brown/Blair "soap opera". Now, though, there's no avoiding it.

The Blairites regard Brown as over-protective of his policy prescription - the pensioner credit targeted on the least well off (targeted is a nice word for means tested). Last week Blairite "outrider" Stephen Byers stood up in the Budget debate to say so.

The Brownites suspect that Blair wants to be seen to have delivered a once-in-a-generation reform of pensions to form part of his legacy - securing all our retirements before he himself retired. The bill, though, will be post-dated and paid when Gordon Brown is in Number Ten.

I reported this morning that one of those close to the negotiations had told me that "Blair's minded to overrule the Treasury. It's hard to see a meeting of minds". A Brownite responded "you cannot have a pension policy which the Chancellor doesn't agree to".

This would, in any event, be the sort of genuine policy dilemma which politics is all about. There are, in any government, tensions between spending departments and the Treasury. The "soap opera" makes it that much harder to resolve. In this particular episode we've all got a stake in how the plot develops.

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:

Friday's Daily Telegraph says that Tony Blair's "friends" predict he will be gone by Christmas. Are you picking up anything to lend credence to this revelation Nick?

No. The debate I'm picking up is about whether Tony Blair will be forced to leave Number Ten next year as Brownites hope, or not until the year after, as his supporters want. He is also weighing up how to escape from the constant stories about his future.

Does he dismiss it as a "media driven frenzy" which will eventually pass overhead like a tropical storm? Or does he have to more clearly set out a policy agenda for the next couple of years designed to prove that he's not run out of steam? Or should he even name a date for his departure?

My guess is that he and the Chancellor will put on a show of unity at tomorrow's local elections launch as it's in neither of their interests for Labour to fall apart. The electorate will then decide whether to produce results that inspire panic or reassurance that, whatever his difficulties, Tony Blair is far from a liability. That, it has to be said, is what the polls currently suggest.

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The Labour Party is dusting itself down after its latest family bust up. Senior figures are wagging their fingers at the troublemakers and telling them not to be so silly.

They - in words any parent will recognise - insist it's not their fault and, anyway, they didn't start it. The prime minister then dismisses the whole thing as a soap opera unconnected with governing the country or the things that really matter to ordinary voters.

If only it were that simple.

It's true that the subject matter of the latest string of spats between Brownites and Blairites scarcely matters - even to those of us paid to follow them.

But what DOES matter is that they are symptomatic of a battle about both power and policy. These often apparently petty squabbles are a proxy for a battle over whether the prime minister should stand aside for Gordon Brown sooner - early next year - or later, 2008 or 9.

They also represent a struggle over Labour's policy direction - on pensions, the NHS, schools and Lords reform. A poll out today - albeit a far from scientific one - suggested that a third of the public were sick and tired of the Blair/Brown feud.

Anyone who's lived through a family feud would say the same BUT that's a very different thing from saying it doesn't matter.

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