Irreversible
The Education Secretary Alan Johnson is in town for a dinner celebrating the centenary of Labour's first conference in Belfast. He told my colleague Gareth Gordon that it won't be too long before Labour is fielding candidates in elections here. He said the process of the party organising here is irreversible. Alan Johnson has always been much keener on Labour spreading its wings in Northern Ireland than many of his party colleagues, including Peter Hain who is distinctly cool on the idea. Last night Newsnight held an utterly unscientific viewer vote on its debate between Johnson, Hain and the other Deputy Leadership contenders. John Cruddas won, Alan Johnson came third but our Secretary of State brought up the rear in 6th place. Ladbrokes currently have Mr Johnson as favourite on 2/1 and Mr Hain as the outsider on 12/1. Maybe the small core of NI Labour activists have more influence than I had realised.
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Is the Alan Johnson story only worthy of a blog piece and a tiny mention on NI News site?
Not on the politics menu?
He's the favourite to be Deputy Leader of the Labour Party - and he's throwing his weight behind the NI Labour guys>
MARK REPLIES: He gave his interview to Gareth Gordon and it ran on our Radio Ulster News. He was also interviewed about the story on Evening Extra. He was due to be on Newsline 6:30 but got edged out when the 91Èȱ¬ Sports Department learned the identity of the new NI Football manager. That's the nature of news. I shall bring this to the attention of 91Èȱ¬ Online, but I hope you're not implying my blog is peripheral!