91Èȱ¬

Consider for just for a moment the word "tosh". It's pithy, it's rounded, it's expressive. In short it's a splendid word. I fear though that my affection for it may have got me into a spot of bother. Readers with long memories may recall that a couple of months ago I deployed it to describe talk of an early election. I sense that, by now - with the sound of the election drum beat filling your ears - you may just be coming to understand my problem.

Now I could, of course, have chosen not to remind you of my potentially inaccurate prediction… to hope that you hadn't noticed or didn't care. But no. Let me try to explain why my view of an early election has turned from "tosh" to "gosh, it might actually happen".

What had provoked me to use the T word way back in July was the frankly gullible reporting by some of an allegedly leaked memo outlining secret plans for an early election. It was clear to me that the story was a plant to unsettle Labour's opponents. On the day of my broadcast I was, as it happens, meeting a close ally of Gordon Brown for breakfast. I told him what I was about to say. Quite right, he said. Gordon had no intention of dashing to the polls. He had, after all, taken 10 years to get the job and wouldn't risk it rashly.

In the weeks that followed came the floods and foot and mouth, a Tory fightback followed by an apparent recovery in the polls and then Northern Rock. Hardly a recipe for electoral victory.

Or so it seemed. Curiously, it was the run on the bank which changed everything. The first polls taken after the crisis had ebbed showed Labour's position not to have weakened as most expected but to have strengthened. This was the moment, I'm told, when talk of an early election became really serious.

Thus over the past week by the seaside Labour have not merely nudged and winked that they're thinking about having an election. They have poked us all in the ribs repeatedly. The platform speeches have not merely been peppered with populism. They've been covered in a rich sauce of it. And the party moved from drawing up contingency plans to asking individuals to leave their jobs and to begin work on a campaign starting on Monday.

Now Gordon Brown has not yet made his decision. He will sit down with his closest advisers and a sheaf of polling data on Sunday. The Cabinet kids - the young men who were his aides for so many years - will advise him to go for it. The grey hairs around his top table will urge caution - worrying that the weather - both political and actual - may rapidly cool.

Will he listen to the kids or to the grey hairs? No-one knows. Perhaps he'll remember the advice of another pundit - Match of the Day's Alan Hansen, He famously said that you never win anything with kids. You may also remember that he was proved embarrassingly wrong. That happens to pundits - whether in football or in politics.

Of course, if Brown decides not to call an election, I can always say that I told you so.

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Who'd have thought it. That was the wry, the apt, observation of a senior Cabinet figure at the end of this week.

Who'd have thought that Labour could airbrush Tony Blair out of the picture without someone - anyone - so much as raising an eyebrow?

Who'd have thought that, instead, Margaret Thatcher would be hailed for her conviction and Tory converts welcomed with open arms?

Who'd have thought that the unions would agree to abandon their right to debate topical motions and to bury their demands for an EU referendum without a squeak?

Who'd have thought that Gordon Brown would lift a series of Tory policies - from protecting have-a-go heroes to bringing back matron - and hail them as new?

Who, finally, would have thought that the polls would put Labour so far ahead that delegates have gone home with a mounting sense that they'll soon be campaigning in a general election?

In short, every idea, every plan, every manouevre that Team Brown has tried has worked this week. Everything is in place for the prime minister to take a decision to go the polls as confident as he could hope to be of winning.

Does that mean he'll do it? Of course not. He's been around long enough to know how quickly the weather can change. Nevertheless, he'll remember this week in Bournemouth when the sun always shone.

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The 91Èȱ¬ has learnt that over the past 24 hours the Labour Party has begun recruiting key staff to work on an election campaign. The 91Èȱ¬ has spoken to a number of individuals who have been asked if they can begin work on Monday. The people approached are currently self-employed or work for lobbyists, organisations sympathetic to Labour or in other political posts from which they can be released immediately. Their jobs range from campaign logistics to voter liaison and press relations with the media for a general election campaign which could be launched in the next fortnight.

The recruitment of campaign staff is not proof that a decision to call an election has been taken and these staff could just as quickly be told to return to their normal jobs. Gordon Brown's advisers continue to insist that he has taken no decision on whether to hold an early election. It is clear, however, that Labour have moved beyond contingency planning to active preparation for an election campaign which a growing number at this Conference believe the prime minister is about to launch.

PS: Was I only the one to feel like a wimp when hearing Jack Straw - or "The Justice" as he's known on the streets - outline his have-a-go hero antics? Jack's more than a tad older than me and much much fitter. It is he who is to blame for stirring me out of my darkened hotel room and onto Bournemouth beach for a jog this morning.

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The battle for Gordon's ear is fast becoming a battle of the generations. It is the kids of the Cabinet who are arguing most vociferously for him to go the polls. It is the Cabinet's grey hairs who are worrying about how it might go horribly wrong.

This morning when Ed Balls was asked whether the PM was likely to risk an early election he replied, "it's a very interesting question as to where the gamble really lies". His point - one made often behind the scenes - is that things may only get worse from now on. The gamble, in other words, could be to hang on rather than go early.

Meanwhile Margaret Beckett spoke today for many of her generation still in the Cabinet when she warned about the volatility of the polls - as seen in 1970 - and recalled the difficulty of getting voters out to vote in the dark and the rain - as in October 1974.

If you believe that Brown will listen to those he's worked with closely for years as his aides - Messrs Balls, E Miliband, Alexander and others - then go put your money on an early poll.

If you think he'll listen to others - Messrs Darling, Straw, Hoon, Johnson - keep your cash in the bank.

Remember this as you decide what to do. The generations have very different interests. The oldsters will be happy with another year or two in government. The youngsters dream of crushing the Tories so that their generation of Labour leaders can hold power for another decade.

There is one factor that the kids should bear in mind. If Gordon Brown were to go to the polls and win it wouldn't be long before people asked whether he planned to fight another election. If there were any doubt about it then a long shadow leadership campaign would begin threatening the very unity which they're so treasured this week.

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• - What's this?

He came to bury Blairite foreign policy, not to praise it. He came to lament the "scars of ten years of government". He came to explain patiently how we all must learn (a word he used no fewer than six times) from the past. This was Tony Blair's former policy chief David Miliband speaking. Politics is a brutal business.

The foreign secretary's speech (read it ) proclaimed a "second wave of New Labour foreign policy" and was spun in advance as a significant break from what had come before.

But hang on a second. Beyond the words and beyond the carefully calibrated signals what has actually changed in British foreign policy?

Mr Milliband worried aloud that Muslims think, "we're seeking not to empower them but to dominate them". The lesson, he said, was, "that it's not good enough to have good intentions". Quite right, you might think. What, though, will that mean for policy? He didn't say beyond, that is, backing the age old British position that Turkey should be welcomed into the EU.

The foreign secretary declared that "there never is a military 'solution'". Did that mean he didn't back any of the four Blair wars? No, he made clear he had backed them and still did. So, what did it mean? Well, he went on, we need to work with all the neighbours of Iraq. So too said Tony Blair.

He did talk of stronger international institutions - or what Gordon Brown has talked of as a "new world order" - without spelling out what they were.

Now, it may be that David Miliband could not say what he really thinks. It could be that his message was that with him and Gordon running foreign policy there'll be no more wars, no more messianic rhetoric about spreading democracy, no more bypassing of the UN. Or it could be that that's the impression he wants to create with voters who left Labour in protest at the Iraq war.

The lesson of the first wave of New Labour foreign policy is that it was shaped by events and was best assessed by what ministers actually did and not the speeches they gave. The same, I suspect, is true of the second wave.

UPDATE, 03:30 PM: Before he became prime minister, Gordon Brown talked of building "a new diplomacy in the next few years to build better institutions".

He went on to say that, "the American alliance we have, the European cooperation we welcome and are going to strengthen in the years to come, and our role in the Commonwealth are the basis on which we move forward - but I believe that there is a collective interest that the world can be persuaded of, in the United Nations playing a bigger role in security, Nato playing a bigger role out of theatre, and also the European Union as a collective institution playing a fuller role in world politics."

He was speaking in an interview I did with him . You can hear it by clicking here.

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To go, or not to go. That was the question which hung over Gordon Brown's first party conference speech (watch it here). As it happened, he did nothing to reveal his intentions, not mentioning the word election, or talking about his opponents once.

But this was, nevertheless, a speech designed to sell his personal story, his values and his policies to the parts of Britain which other leaders cannot reach. Not since the era of have the words 'Britain' or 'Britishness' been used so often - 71 times, as it happens. Not since her day have there been so many references to conviction, to discipline and to responsibility. He even went so far as to promise to deliver her hugely controversial dream - that people in the NHS should be able to see the doctor they want, at the hospital they want.

Though there was plenty to cheer and to inspire his own party - pledges to increase the minimum wage, extend maternity pay and student grants - this seemed to be a speech designed to appeal to the Tory press, and to unsettle the Tory party. If they respond as he hopes they will, he'll then be able to make that decision about whether to go to the polls.

However good the write ups though, however good the polls, he'll still reflect that if he calls an election and doesn't win it, this first conference speech will turn out to be his last.

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So much for the talk of Gordon Brown calling a "mandate election". On the Today programme this morning (listen to it here) he made it plain that he did not need a "personal mandate" since he was "implementing Labour's manifesto". Just to make this absolutely clear, he asked himself the question, "do I need to call an election?" before answering that "no" he didn't.

So, that's that then. Well no, not quite it isn't.

Team Brown have made clear that the PM will not call an election this week. Now, I'm told, he certainly will not call one for October 25th - which makes it unlikely he'd go to see the Queen next week. Beyond that, though, the official line is that no decision has been taken.

Before making up his mind Gordon Brown wants to be able to see how both his conference and David Cameron's have gone - and how the polls react to them. Anything like showing an 8% lead will increase the pressure on him to go whilst he can be sure of winning.

The Sun are, indirectly, also responsible for pressure on him for an altogether different reason. Today they give over their front page and the next six pages to formerly known as "the constitution". Gordon Brown is insistent that parliament will make this decision and not the people.

That parliamentary debate will reach its conclusion next Spring - in the lead-up to the next likely election date. Calling an election at a time when you're being accused of denying the people their say by some of the most powerful newspapers in the land is not a cheerful prospect. What's more, faced by an election, the House of Lords could simply refuse to put the treaty into law.

If Gordon Brown is swayed by these arguments he would go to see the Queen soon after making his Commons statement on Iraq on 8th October and Lord Darzi unveils his NHS review on the 9th. Polling day could then be on November 1st.

But...

Ever since the first mention of an early election I have suspected that this was largely spin designed to ensure that Labour maintained its discipline and to unsettle the Tories and force them to reveal their campaign strategy. In recent days it's become clear that many senior figures have started to think seriously that Gordon should go for it.

It remains my instinct that he won't.

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What did he mean by that? Is he preparing the way for an early election, simply keeping his options open or merely winding up his opponents - and, incidentally, the media?

Gordon Brown did nothing at all to damp down talk of an election (which you can watch here) - despite repeated opportunities to do so. What's more, he didn't merely repeat the formula that he was "getting on with the job" and that his "focus is on the work ahead". He went on to spell out what the choice at any election would be.

Thus, he has ensured that his first party conference as PM will be seen as a build up to the announcement of polling day. Thus, he has ensured that he will pay a political price if he chooses not to go for it. Thus, however, we still don't know what he'll do!

Here are the two likely scenarios and the reasons for them:

1. Election called next week:
• Labour has a good week, banks don't crash, animal diseases don't spread.
• Brown overshadows the start of the Tory party conference with a fever pitch of 'will he or won't he' speculation, before announcing on October 2nd that the country will vote on the 25th.
• His rationale is that the polls may never be better, David Cameron may never be weaker, the Tories will be denied the time they crave to spend millions in marginal seats. And Brown can say that the opposition parties, the polls and parts of the media demanded that he get his own mandate.

2. Election not called next week:
• Brown decides that he doesn't wish to risk becoming a Trivial Pursuit question - "Who was the shortest serving prime minister who did not die in office?" Answer - Gordon Brown with just 120 days in office (if he lost an election on October 25th). George Canning served only 119 having taken office in 1827, caught pneumonia and died.
• Ever the strategic player, Brown wants his spending review, Iraq troop announcement and health review in place before going to the polls and he fears that the polls might not survive the dark nights, a tricky EU summit on October 18th and more financial uncertainty.
• Brown still overshadows start of the Tory conference with a fever pitch of "will he or won't he" speculation, thus damaging his rivals' best opportunity for a re-launch.
• When no election is called the Labour party points out that Brown always said that he was "getting on with the job" and that his "focus is on the work ahead". They point also to the following comments last week by Alastair Darling on GMTV: "I think people know there is a new Government, they have got a new prime minister, but they want the Government to get on with the job we were elected to do. I do not get any sense that people inside Government or outside Government are anxious for a dash to the polls."
• Labour encourages people to write that Brown could have won but decided not to go to the polls in the national interest.

So, which will it be? Well, you may recall that I described talk of an early election as "tosh" some weeks back - a judgement which I don't regret. However, it isn't "tosh" any more and I'm getting nervous. As one of those close to the PM put it me, "I lie awake at night worrying that if we don't go now we'll miss our best chance". Gordon Brown has one helluva decision to make.

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Ever since they picked Sir Menzies Campbell to be their leader, Liberal Democrats have worried about whether they made the right choice. Today he reminded his party that they picked him not despite his age, but because of his experience and judgement.

Some worried too about whether he was capable of muscling his way into a political contest often characterised simply as a fight between Mr Brown and Mr Cameron. In response, Sir Ming spoke today of his energy and determination, of his anger, and his unwillingness to be silenced. His party responded.

For those who criticised him, finally, for the party's lack of a sense of direction, he spelt out detailed policies on the environment and taxation, and his commitment to protect civil liberties. Interestingly though, there was no mention of this week's most contentious proposal - an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

There was no plot this week to unseat Sir Menzies Campbell, but there were mutterings. This speech should stop them - for now.

PS: It's worth mentioning that you can watch the speech by clicking here, or if you prefer, the interview I did yesterday with the Lib Dem leader by clicking here.

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"The system has worked". No really, it has. Or so says the chief executive of the . In four words he inadvertently captured the gap between the regulators and the public.

You might think that the sight of people queuing through the night to get their money out of the bank was a sign that the system had not worked. Or, indeed, you might point to the dramatic policy U-turn which produced a guarantee that every penny in every account in every single solvent bank would be underwritten by the government.

The regulator would reply that Northern Rock stayed open, no saver lost money and the integrity of the banking system was preserved. Sure, shareholders may have lost cash (though rather less if they sold today than yesterday). And, perhaps most worryingly the North East of England stands to lose not just jobs but a source of regional identity, pride and charitable funding if Northern Rock is lost as an independent institution. Ah, the regulator might reply, it is not our job to worry about share prices, job prospects or regional economies. Quite so.

However, if this was not policy failure it clearly wasn't a triumphant success. In the past few days Whitehall insiders have described the scenes of the past few days as illogical and irrational and called it a psychological or social problem. They have been baffled by the public's unwillingness to accept the Bank of England's guarantee that all would be well. Policy will clearly have to change.

What though will be the political fall out? My hunch is that it will be more like the fuel strikes of 2000 than Black Wednesday. In other words, a short term knock to confidence in the government's economic confidence. The thing that could change that is if voters associate falling real incomes and falls in the value of their house with the sight of queues outside the bank.

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Economic stability is the rock on which New Labour's election victories have been built. No wonder then that their opponents - in both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats - could not hold back their excitement at the possibility that that reputation might be destroyed by the sight of people queuing up to take their cash out of the bank.

And yet in the speech David Cameron has just delivered, he pulled back from repeating - let alone escalating - the suggestion he made yesterday that ministers were somehow to blame for the Northern Rock crisis. Just to remind you, the Conservative leader that, "though the current crisis may have had its trigger in the US, over the past decade, the gun has been loaded at home."

Today, though he repeats his criticism of economic growth "built on a mountain of debt", there is not the slightest hint of a direct connection between the government's economic policies and Northern Rock's problems. No wonder. There is a lively debate about whether the regulatory regime set up by Gordon Brown - which, remember, includes the Treasury as well as the Bank of England and the Financial Services Agency - have got their response right (see my colleague Robert Peston's latest blog for an admirably clear summary of the case for and against).

There is another lively debate about whether Britain and Britons are too heavily indebted and, if so, what to do about it.

I struggle to find anyone who believes, however, that Northern Rock's troubles result from government action or inaction. Indeed, Willum Bowter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member and professor of European political economy at the London School of Economics has just told The World at One that that the suggestion is "ludicrous".

Of course, if Northern Rock's problems spread to other institutions, if they are seen to be the beginning of economically turbulent times, few voters will study the economic arguments. Alastair Darling himself recognised this in an interview this morning when he was asked if his reputation was on the line. He replied: "it is, I'm afraid, yes".

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Who would have believed it? I have just seen Margaret Thatcher walk back through the door of No 10. This - her first visit in seven years - was revealed with great glee by Team Brown.

Team Thatcher say that she is happy to receive praise from where she can get it. When I asked if that applies to praise from David Cameron the arch reply came "Perhaps we missed it".

When I suggest to Team Brown that they are without any shame they reply that "psychological warfare" is critical in any election.

Lest I over analyse the political game playing - perish the thought I hear you say - it's worth pointing out that this is a courtesy visit arranged by a man who - though a bitter political opponent of Thatcherism - remembers her invitation to him as a young backbencher in 1983 to meet her when she was PM.

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Consider, if you will, a Glasgow granny. She poses a tricky problem for the idea which David Cameron is about to embrace - charging VAT on domestic flights.

Today's Tory argues that:

• The growth of aviation needs to be curbed.
• Most short haul journeys could be undertaken just as quickly by train.
• Many of them are taken by relatively wealthy businessmen including regular commuters thus, if you could use taxes to give people an incentive to let the train take the strain you would cut greenhouse gas emissions and prevent the need to expand airports without hurting poorer people who need to get around the UK.

µþ³Ü³Ù…

• Glasgow is not well served by trains.
• The journey's much slower than it is by air.
• Granny isn't a businessman and there are lots of grannies in Glasgow [or Aberdeen or Inverness grannies] with relatives down south. And, of course, vice versa. What if granny can't travel but is sick and needs to be visited regularly.

When I put this to the report's author Zac Goldsmith yesterday, he suggested that you could treat Glasgow flights differently from those to, say, Manchester.

µþ³Ü³Ù…

Imagine trying to levy VAT only on certain domestic flights and not others. What if the flight starts not in London but Exeter or Southampton or Newcastle? Would the tax depend on distance travelled or speed of alternative rail travel? And what about Paris which will now be as quick for many Londoners to get to by train as Manchester or York?

The party's answer appears to be - I am still checking this out - to keep it simple ie to charge VAT on all domestic flights. Er, except those to Northern Ireland and the Highlands and Islands.

Now, of course, I realise there are losers to any tax change and that can't stop politicians suggesting them.

µþ³Ü³Ù…

Stand by for granny to protest…

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Worried faces around Whitehall tonight as they await the results of the scientific tests on the latest foot and mouth outbreak. One insider tells me that there are two possibilities - both of which are pretty alarming.

If this turns out to be the same strain as the outbreak last month then it may mean that ministers have to tear up the rulebook which they've been following. This stated that the disease could not have survived and spread more than a fortnight after it was declared eradicated. Also, it will suggest that Whitehall's much praised plan for controlling the outbreak did not, after all, work.

If, on the other hand, it's a different strain then the whole exercise of identifying the source and worrying about how to limit its spread will begin again.

Hillary Benn's now had to deal with floods, foot and mouth and then foot and mouth again. Plague of frogs anyone?

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Defra are about to announce that a new suspected case of foot and mouth has been found. Cattle on the farm in question - 30 miles from the original outbreak - have been slaughtered, although tests to confirm that they have the disease have not yet been carried out.

Gordon Brown will chair a COBRA meeting this afternoon .

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• - What's this?

So, are we heading for a Winter of Discontent? The posties’ union - the CWU - are threatening more national strikes today. The TUC looks set to back a motion calling for "coordinated industrial action". And last week local government workers in Unison rejected an improved pay offer.

There is, it's clear, real discontent in the unions. There's anger at what they see as, at best, a centrally imposed public sector pay freeze and, at worst, real pay cuts. There's fury at Gordon Brown's to that arch critic of the unions, Digby Jones. And there's brewing annoyance at his efforts to curb their power to debate and vote on topical or so-called contemporary motions at Labour Conference.

But - and it's an important but - the appetite for a confrontation with the government is limited to a couple of unions - the civil servants' union, the PCS and the prison officers’ union, the POA. Unison negotiated an improved pay offer for health service workers in England which looks set to be backed in a ballot - first results should trickle out this evening. The union's leadership were proud to have secured a better package for those working in town halls and are likely to do all they can to get a marginal improvement that allows them to avoid going on strike.

Ministers believe that its strikes there - in hospitals or town halls - which the public would notice, would care about and which would raise echoes of the Winter of Discontent. They are reasonably content to sit out trouble in the prisons, job centres and benefit offices and the post office.

What one ally of the prime minister told me yesterday is that the unions were simply staging precisely the fight which Gordon Brown wanted - proving to the public his willingness to stand up to the unions in order to defend economic stability.

So, will there be a Winter of Discontent? The same question's been asked pretty much every winter since the first - and only proper - one in 1979. The answer now is the same as it's always been - almost certainly not.

That, of course, doesn’t stop journalists using the phrase. I remember in one of my first jobs in TV in the mid-80s being asked to research a piece about a new Winter of Discontent. I managed to kill it when I pointed out that the programme I was working on had - only six months earlier - made a film predicting the death of the unions. Both couldn't be true then and they aren't true now.

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TUC Conference, Brighton

Gordon Brown is about to deliver a speech to the TUC pledging to deliver . This a day after the home secretary to force immigrants to speak English. These moves are described in a number of papers as part of the new PM's determination to occupy the centre ground.

Ponder for a second how exactly the same policies or phrases would have been written up had David Cameron delivered them. A "lurch to the right" anyone? Or, even, "language normally associated with the far right BNP"?

Few things better illustrate the strategic confidence of Gordon Brown. He spots the territory - immmigration, Britishness... etc - which the Tories are nervous of occupying and plants his flag there. This increases pressure on Cameron from the Tory press and right-wingers to move onto this territory. If he does so, he's accused of, you're there already, "lurching to the right".

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The assignation took place in a yacht off the Italian coast. One of Britain's richest men had invited a senior government minister, who was holidaying nearby, to join him for lunch.

Johan Eliasch had a proposal to make to Jack Straw. He wanted to offer his advice to the government on climate change. His interest in the subject came as no surprise. After all, he had bought 400,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest to protect it from destruction and to combat climate change. He was also the founder of Cool Earth - a charity which encourages others to do the same, half an acre at a time (yours for just £35). The surprise came because Mr Eliasch had also lent over two and a half of his many millions to the Conservative Party and was their deputy treasurer.

It's clear, though, that for some time he'd wondered whether he was in with the right crowd. Mr Eliasch had got to know Labour ministers since launching his initiative to save the rainforest. He'd met Mr Straw at various functions and, after the two bumped into each other at a conference in Aspen, offered him a lift on his private jet.

He began to grumble out loud to Tory and non-Tory friends that David Cameron had not stuck to the course of occupying the centre ground on which he'd first set himself. I suspect that "lurch to the right" is a phrase he's never used nor would since he was a backer of Messrs Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard.

Friends and foes alike say that Mr Eliasch had hoped for a peerage although no-one suggests that he actually asked for one. Indeed David Cameron told me in an interview last week that no approach had been made to him about a peerage.

It's clear too that a man who was used to mixing with the rich and powerful came to the realisation that oppositions can only talk whilst governments can do. Hence, his proposal to Jack Straw on that yacht in the Med that he should advise the government on climate change.

It was, I'm told, Mr Eliasch's idea that he should let his membership of the Tory Party lapse when it expires next month. He has always expected his loan to the Conservatives to be re-paid although he is not demanding that it be repaid straight away and has set no timetable for it. He will not join the Labour Party nor give or loan it money.

Mr Eliasch would like this to be seen as a decision about the planet and not about politics. Not so, unsurprisingly, Team Brown who would like it to be seen as an indictment of David Cameron.

What this episode proves to me is how a prime minister who has unparalleled patronage can use it not just to get good advice but to undermine his political opponents. It proves too that David Cameron has a long way to go before he convinces the entire Conservative family - let alone many others - that he will soon be in No 10 with jobs to hand out. Perhaps it will teach him that anyone he treats a little carelessly may find that Gordon Brown is happy to offer a welcome hand.

The Tories claim that Labour has approached many other Conservative donors and MPs to switch sides. Team Brown deny that emphatically - pointing out that, if they had, one of those who snubbed them would have gone public by now. They do, however, say with a knowing smile that Mr Eliasch may not be the last.

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• - What's this?

Johan Eliasch, the man who lent more than £2.5m to the Conservatives, is set to resign from the party to become an adviser to Gordon Brown.

Gordon Brown has done it again, using the patronage only a prime minister can wield to prise away another supporter of his opponents to give him advice.

When Johan Eliasch resigned as the Tory deputy treasurer last week, the Conservatives insisted he still remained a backer of the party. Not any longer.

Mr Eliasch, who has committed even more of his millions to preserving the Amazon rainforest, is set to accept a personal offer from the prime minister. He will become Gordon Brown's special representative tasked with carrying out a review into deforestation and into clean energy.

He won't renew his membership of the Tory Party when it lapses next month and expects his £2.6m loan to be repaid. It is not known on what timescale. In itself, this will cause David Cameron quite a headache. That money of course may be found elsewhere.

Perhaps even more damaging will be Mr Eliasch's complaint to his friends that the Tory leader has abandoned his commitment to occupy the centre ground of British politics and his new belief that Gordon Brown is doing just that.

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Last night Team Cameron were toasting the end of the Brown bounce. This morning they were shouting at the radio as we reported the news of a former party chairman and deputy leader generating about division.

It's often said that it's a clear vision that binds parties together. The truth is less uplifting. The glue that binds them is sometimes anger at their opponents but more often is simply the prospect of power - or, to be more precise, the prospect of future patronage. This is particularly the case with David Cameron who, like Tony Blair, constantly berated his own party about the need to change.

The way politicians assess the prospect of power is by reading the polls. Thus, when David Cameron was riding high in the polls his party stayed loyal. Once he slipped, that loyalty fractured. Those divisions are damaging to, you guessed it, his poll ratings. And so it goes on - the vicious circle of opposition politics.

Political leaders can, of course, aid this process. Gordon Brown has ruthlessly used his patronage to tempt Tories to break ranks. The Tory Deputy Treasurer Johan Eliasch was offered a role advising on his passion - deforestation. It was all the more tempting senior Tories mutter since he was disappointed not to have been given a peerage.

Patrick Mercer, sacked by Cameron, was hired by Brown.

David Cameron may have made things worse by appearing to change strategy - to, in Labour's words, have "lurched to the right". He denies it but many in his own ranks believe it and welcome it. So, they think - no doubt Michael Ancram thought this - one more push and he'll harden the policy on tax (or Europe or selection or immigration). This creates division, which damages the polls, which... You've get the point.

The irony (Tories may use rather more colourful language) is that this comes on the day the Brown bounce seemed to have been squashed. Team Brown won't be too worried by that. They can cheer themselves up by simply watching their opponents.

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"September usually sees the resumption of Westminster politics. But while party politics resumes its normal routines, it cannot - and should not - be business as usual". So said the prime minister in a speech this morning and I wouldn't dare to disagree.

Perhaps, though, I may be permitted to point out that he made this statement just as politics as usual resumed not just its normal routines but a frantic pre-election pace. That pace will not slow until Gordon Brown does what he on the radio this morning by killing speculation about a snap election.

The speech included a promise of what may turn out to be important innovations - the promise of citizens' juries to help formulate government policies, standing commissions to tackle long-term issues starting with the role of carers and a Speaker's conference involving all the political parties to look for solutions to the public's disengagement from politics.

I use the word may since, so far, Downing Street cannot answer even the most basic questions about who will sit on citizens' juries, how they'll be picked, whether they'll be paid, whether their evidence will be made public... and so on.

Without that detail what stands out from the speech is an attempt, once again, to wrong-foot the Tories in the name of creating a new sort of politics.

Today the PM extended a welcome hand once again to any Conservative willing to shake it. This morning he announced that Patrick Mercer, the for making allegedly racist remarks, would now be giving the government advice on security matters.

Only six months ago a Labour Party press release attacked Mr Mercer's comments on black soldiers as "shocking and unacceptable" and claimed that they revealed "the true face of the Conservative Party".

Having failed to persuade John Bercow MP to defect, Mr Brown's invited him to give advice on how the government can help children with learning difficulties.

Also in the frame for a job on a review - if he decides to take it - is Johan Eliasch, the man who's just resigned as deputy Tory treasurer in protest, his friends claim, at David Cameron's "swing to the right". He's been sounded out about advising on his passion - how to save the rainforests.

Over the past few weeks the Tories have proved remarkably willing to be wrong-footed. You can't blame Gordon Brown for carrying on trying. Calling it "the new politics" may be taking things a little far though.

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