“My ambition is to remain his loyal and supportive deputy.”

Reflecting on Harriet Harman’s protestations yesterday that she wasn’t about to challenge Gordon Brown, and was certain that he was the right man to lead the Labour Party and the country (I have paraphrased what she said, but the gist is there: see the BBC’s video clip) two thoughts came to mind,

the first is that if she really thinks that, she has anyway ruled herself out of contention, were he to go, on the basis of poor judgement; and

the second is that the information that the Daily Telegraph received (and that allowed it to splash the story on its front page) could only have come from the ‘She must be stopped at all costs’ faction withing the PLP, knowing that the revelation would force her to declare her undying loyalty to Brown.

. . . and in the real world

A long and closely argued post by Willem Buiter, The G20: expect nothing, hope for the best and prepare for the worst. In it Buiter sets out the agenda he would like to see on 2 April,

(1) A true commitment to maintain an open global trading environment.

(2) A true commitment to tackle the fiscal stimulus and macro-prudential financial regulation issues as part of an integrated package.

(3) A true commitment to increase the resources of the IMF at least 10-fold and to change its governance to reflect the current distribution of economic power in the world.

You need to read the whole post, and hope Gordon Brown and the Chancellor do.

And, finally, a measured take on bonuses,

Moral indignation is no substitute for thought. Structuring incentives to promote the long-term interests of all the stake holders in listed companies is both important and complicated.

The House of Comedy

That the holder of one of the great offices of state is reduced to sending her husband out to the garden gate, to meet the press and take the rap for ordering “Additional Features” on the Pay-to-View package that we, the tax payers, paid for, shows just how far this government has sunk.

What should now worry Labour politicians most is not the contempt in which the government is now held – politicians after all have very thick skins – but that it is now simply the punchline of a smutty joke.

James Forsyth in his Coffee House post, Governments can recover from rage but not ridicule says it all,

These revelations [that Jacqui Smith’s husband’s pay per view porn films were charged to the taxpayer and that Nigel Griffiths MP took dozen of photographs and uploaded them to his computer of a Commons sex romp that he first denied and then claimed not to remember] are so damaging because they will lead to the voters just laughing at the government. When the electorate rages at a government, its members can at least console themselves they are being taken seriously. But when they are being mocked, there is no such consolation.

The cat’s away

Poor old Jacqui Smith. I am not sure which is worse: that she claimed for the TV package, her denial that she hadn’t watched the films in question (“livid and shocked” ~ sounds as if she actually had seen them), or that her husband resorted to adult films while she was dossing down in her sister’s back bedroom.

Mind you, if I was married to Jacqui Smith I would probably have resorted to adult films long before now.

Bishops say silly things (No surprise there)

You can always rely on a Bishop to say something stupid: it must be part of the training. So yesterday evening, up pops Michael Scott-Joynt, Bishop of Winchester, on the Six O’Clock News, to comment on Evan Harris’ Private Members Bill to amend the Act of Settlement. And in case you missed it, listen on BBC iPlayer: it’s roughly 14 minutes into the News.

Described in the introduction as a “senior Anglican leader”, my lord bishop launched straight into it,

It’s wretched to say so today, but Roman Catholics were regarded [in the Eighteenth Century] as like Al Qaeda or the Taleban are today.

There you have it: an obligatory hand-wringing preface, a reference to the bogey men of the Modern Age to point up how frightfully misguided our forefathers must have been, and wrong history. And all for a sound bite.

Instead the Act was another demonstration of Parliamentary power.

. . . a further Provision to be made for the Succession of the Crown in the Protestant Line for the Happiness of the Nation and the Security of our Religion. And it being absolutely necessary for the Safety Peace and Quiet of this Realm to obviate all Doubts and Contentions in the same by reason of any pretended Titles to the Crown and to maintain a Certainty in the Succession thereof to which your Subjects may safely have recourse for their Protection

The need was for certainty in the succession: Queen Anne’s only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester had died in 1700 and Parliament, dominated by the Tory/Country Party interest, went for the Protestant Hanoverian line, and excluded the 57 or so Roman Catholic heirs.