News about Brown

The Tory attempt to embarrass Gordon Brown over his “pension theft” (a charge of debatable merit) seems to have failed. In fact, Brown had a far better day politically than on his Budget.

The Tories made two tactical blunders: (1) if you’re trying to paint someone as sneaky and stealthy, don’t give him a big public platform from which to make his case; (2) if you’re trying to damn someone for a policy decision, have something prepared other than empty wriggling when asked whether you’d reverse it.

Anyway. At the same time, David Miliband seems to be backing off from the possibility of standing against Brown for the leadership. I like Miliband, and I do think there’d be benefits to a contest both for Labour and for Brown, but I’m unconvinced that he’s PM material yet.

He has a lot of virtues, but the most salient one appears to be that the music happens to be stopping while he’s holding the small, battered ‘anti-Gordon candidate’ parcel – it having been passed round Blunkett, Milburn, Clarke, Reid, Johnson, Hutton and others.

Also yesterday: the biggest economic crisis of the Brown decade: inflation at 3.1%. Really puts two recessions and 3 million unemployed into perspective, eh?