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Something incredible is happening. On September 6, 1943, Winston Churchill famously told an audience at Harvard University that “the empires of the future will be empires of mind”. It was interpreted as a signal Britain understood the age of empire was coming to an end; but of all Churchill’s great soundbite quotes this is perhaps the most insightful, and least understood.

The age of empires did indeed draw to a close, but Churchill’s empires of mind have only just begun. These new empires of mind aren’t built by armies, run by colonialists or shaded pink on the map (or any other colour). They have no Head of State, nor State for that matter either. They are ideas and information, and one such idea - free western liberalism and democracy - and the information about it, is conquering new territory every day. Ronald Reagan said that information was the oxygen of the modern age, for it “seeps across the borders topped with barbed wire, wafts across the electrified borders.” The internet has turned that seepage and waft into a tidalwave - and the results are staggering. Unrelated and distant events are all proof.

Why did the public in Pakistan so suddenly turn hostile to a Taleban threat they had been happy to appease? They got a viral email featuring a YouTube clip. No one knows what the poor young girl had done; what they did know is what they saw done to her - held to the ground and whipped - and that they were reviled. Video killed the radio star, YouTube killed the Taleban (or their PR anyway).

What’s letting protestors communicate and the public stay informed in Iran? Twitter and its #hashtags. It’s not so much a case of “They may take our lives but they may never take our freedom” but more “they may rig our election but they may never take our Twitter and Facebooks.”

Why do we know Labour planned to smear its rivals? How can anyone reach a global audience? How can the World, his wife, his kids and the pet parrot all have a say? Blogs.

From video of state wrongdoing - the recent taser incident being newest - to blog journalism, YouTube video to Twitter updates, the ever more rapid and open flow of information is going to be the biggest force for change - and it’s good news for freedom and democracy.

Most of it may be rubbish - YouTube videos of cats yawning, blogs about Ukip, Twitter Tweets about the weather - but that’s its biggest strength. They can block the BBC, but they can’t stop someone outside pasting articles onto an email or blog (and if they find and block that then another will take its place). And they can’t stop people imparting information about other places and lifestyles from even the most mundane of things.

The Internet will change the World, and the revolution won’t just be televised, it’ll be YouTubed.

Sir Alan Sugar is one person who really annoys me. The Apprentice is one of my favourite shows, I’m extremely pro-business and have no qualms with any other businessman in particular – but he drives me mad.

Maybe it’s because I’ve not agreed with a single one of his final choices on the series – James and Miriam in Series 1 then Lucinda and Raeph from S4 were the only ones deserving a six figure salary – or maybe it’s because he is just such an envious, arrogant and obnoxious misery (as Paul Merton discovered when Siralan went on Room 101).

But most of all I think it’s because he promotes himself as one of Britain’s top business gurus. Margaret Thatcher ones said that being powerful was like being a lady, if you had to tell people you were then you probably weren’t. I get that feeling with Siralan.

He sits on his raised chair in a TV studio’s mock-boardroom with its bizarre shortage of seating, presiding over grovelling Apprentice hopefuls who had never heard of him before the series started, telling us all how he’s an acclaimed business expert. But has anyone bought an AMSTRAD lately? No, me neither.

Alan Sugar was extremely successful at producing and selling cut-priced consumer electronics; mass market versions of more expensive products. There is no knocking him for that. But that does not qualify him to be the nation’s business guru, the government’s oddly titled ‘Business Tsar’. He failed to innovate, stifled creativity, built shoddy products, fall out with buyers from chains such as Currys (reportedly being rude, swearing at them etc)…and got left behind.

From its heights to its sale last year, Amstrad had lost 90% of its value.

If the government wanted a real advisor on business, I would recommend Sir James Dyson. Also a self-made man, he exemplifies innovation, quality, and sound business practice. Worth £1.1 billion according to The Times, Dyson is the market leader (by value) of vacuum cleaners in the USA – outselling Hoover in their home Hoover market!

He also knows – as he told the Money Programme recently – that Britain’s future lies in the creative industries, innovation, design, technology. Being the best rather than being the cheapest. The polar opposite of Siralan.

Today Ken ‘Calamity’ Clarke has done what he always does and made a gaffe. ConservativeHome counts two, I see three.

The first is to say that if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, we will not be offered a referendum on it, but that there would be negotiation over certain powers.

The second on my count was to say that he would forgive Brown for misrepresenting Tory spending plans if he [Brown] wasn’t “a clever man”. We shouldn’t be giving him such a credit, the public certainly aren’t!

The third on my count (second on ConservativeHome’s) is to say he returned to the Shadow Cabinet because it isn’t as Eurosceptic as it was. As the country becomes increasingly hostile to the EU, and after Ukip’s success at the Euro elections, this is a particularly stupid thing to say. Even more so as it isn’t true; the Shadow Cabinet is more Eurosceptic than ever, it simply isn’t the top issue it was for Hague and is phrased more maturely.

But the real issue that has got the CH comment thread alive has been the first, the What If The Lisbon Treaty Is Already Ratified Question, which has until now been dodged with the answer “We will not let matters rest there”.

Now there is it seems a lot of confusion over this. Some think that once a Treaty is ratified, all subsequent governments are bound by it. This is not the case. Parliament retains sovereignty and can break Treaties, negotiate new ones, make ammendments etc as it wishes.

Some seem to think however that if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, we could hold a post-ratification referendum and unratify it. This is also not the case. Since the Lisbon Treaty replaces the old Treaties, once it is ratified the Old European Union (as it is now) will in effect cease to exist and have been replaced by the new EU 2.0 system. Unless the rest of the EU also agreed to turn the clocks back it just wouldn’t work.

If the Treaty is in force however matters, errr, do not have to rest there. We could negotiate within the new EU certain opt-outs and arangements to become a semi-detatched member, or put forward a new Treaty to replace Lisbon, at least for those countries not wanting political union. Not so much a two speed Europe, but a two destination Europe.

That final option, a new Treaty for a different kind of Europe, is in my view the best answer. It’s what Eurosceptics should have been putting forward ages ago. Such a Treaty could create a Free Trade Area, enlarge and strengthen NATO, and be full of warm Entente Cordiale words but not create a political union. More a Commonwealth than a Confederation.

But if we are to stop the Lisbon Treaty, and won’t be getting an official referendum, maybe some group should organise their own? It worked for Gibraltar in 2002. It wouldn’t have any legal force, but no referendum ever has, it would however somewhat force the issue and make it hard to ignor.

We’re being told quite firmly that the master of dark arts “Lord” Voldemort Mandelson cannot become Prime Minister. Ephtaim Hardcastle in The Mail writes “you can’t be a peer and an MP. So Mandelson would have to rule from the Lords. The last PM to do so was the Marquess of Salisbury (1895-1902). And would it be acceptable now?” The implication is No.

But I’m not so sure a Madelson Premiership - God forbid! - is such an outlandish idea in terms of probability. I think it’s certainly possible.

Alec Douglas-Home was Prime Minister, renouncing his hereditary peerage under the 1963 Peerage Act in order to contest a by-election as peers are barred from the Commons. I see no reason why Mandelson couldn’t do the same.

Ah, they say, life peers cannot renounce peerages under the ‘63 Act. Indeed they can’t, but I’m fairly certain that anti-discrimination laws would amend that anomaly. If not, Baroness Sarah Ludford is London’s Liberal Democrat MEP and a life peer in the House of Lords - she is simply barred from the Lords whilst a sitting MEP. If that’s accepted for the European Parliament, the precedence is set.

Even if it took time for a court to decide (then perhaps safe seat vacated and by-election won), or even the Peerage Act changed, Alec Douglas-Home was PM for two weeks before being elected MP so that’s another precedence isalready set.

Mandelson could even stay in the Lords. Home believed it would not be practical to serve as PM from the Lords, but i’m sure they’d get around that. When a Leader is away they have deputies at PMQs; they would simply let Cameron battle a Lsbour Deputy in the Commons and Mandelson an ennobled Conservative Deputy in the Lords (as they do with Ministers), or ennoble the Party Leaders as well.

The only thing stopping it is the Salisbury Convention that “it” (a PM not in the Commons) just doesn’t happen. But such a convention isn’t worth the paper it’s written on - because it isn’t! No law has changed on the issue since Lord Salisbury, and just because it was widely believed that Lord Curzon had not been invited to become prime minister in 1923 because of his seat in the Lords, doesn’t mean that will happen again. It is only a tradition that the PM sits in the Commons, and of all things Labour cares for tradition is not one!

The reaction to a Prime Minister sitting in the Lords will be poor, but as they have found such issues fade, especially on complex and dull Constitutional issues.

Mandelson is the master of dark arts. He was Brown’s enemy yet wormed his way back - maybe with the Yachtgate scandal as a gift - and is now keeping Brown in Downing Street with his mystic power over the rebels. He probably has something on everyone. If he want No 10, he’ll get it. My guess is just before the election, Bob Hawke style. What a ghastly thought!

For those of us “pro-rail, pro-privatisation” who have long felt that the Department of Transports’s extreme micro-management of Train Operating Cimpanies - not to mention the Railtrack forced bankruptcy under Stephen Byers - is creeping or quasi-nationalisation, some bad news.

LONDON (Dow Jones)–The U.K. government Monday said it will take into public ownership London & Continental Railways Ltd., or LCR, including its interests in the Channel Tunnel rail link and Eurostar.

In a statement, Minister of State for Transport Sadiq Khan said the transfer of LCR would be made for an unspecified nominal sum.

The deal also includes the transfer of LCR’s finance subsidiaries, which are liable for GBP5.17 billion of debt in the form of bonds and securitized notes. This debt is already supported by a range of government guarantees, Khan said.

LCR owns HS1 Ltd., the company which operates St. Pancras International Station and the high speed line to the Channel Tunnel. It also owns the U.K.’s interest in the Eurostar international joint venture and a range of property development interests, the statement said.

The U.K.’s Rail and Maritime Transport union said it broadly welcomed the move, but called for the Eurostar service, jointly owned with France’s SNCF and Belgium’s SNCB, to be “developed as a cooperative venture with other European state-owned railways.”

The government said it is in talks with international partners on future Eurostar strategy.
Source: Wall Street Journal

Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, said today:

“The commitment to hold London and Continental Railways, which runs the Eurostar, in public ownership is a welcome move which RMT has campaigned strongly for.

“We now want to see the Eurostar service developed as a co-operative venture with other European state-owned railways for the benefit of passengers and staff rather than for the benefit of share-holders and bankers.

“There is now no reason why other sections of the rail network, starting with the troubled National Express franchise on the East Coast route, can’t be returned to public ownership as part of a genuine People’s Railway,” Bob Crow said.

The deal has cost us £5.2 billion to cancel the debt of rail operators that built the high-speed rail track to link London with Paris and Brussels.

The European Commission said it could allow the state subsidy because it was “an important project of common European interest” that would help open up the rail market to competition by 2010.

“Bob is pushing at an open door,” RailwayEye reports. “With the government having received a right royal thrashing from the electorate look for some serious pandering to Labour’s core constituency. It won’t be called renationalisation but there is little doubt that the East Coast Franchise will be back under state control within weeks.”

This is terrible news for taxpayers and the railways. Nationalisation was the death of them in 1947/8.

And did anyone else notice that in Gordon Brown’s reshuffle, Sadiq Khan has been appointed Minister of State for Transport, filling the vacancy caused by the promotion of Lord Adonis to the post of Secretary of State for Transport. Because Adonis is a member of the House of Lords, he cannot speak in the House of Commons, so Khan will speak on behalf of the Government in the Commons. He will also be a privy councillor and will attend Cabinet meetings.

Last night was without doubt the worst night you could realistically imagine for Labour. They already have less councillors than the Lib Dems from Friday’s results, lost top spot in Wales for the first time since 1918 (when Welshman Lloyd George was PM), and scored their lowest GB wide vote share since 1910. Back then Edward VII was King, the Titanic was still safely tucked away as a work in progress at Harland & Wharf’s Shipyard, Winston Churchill was Home Secretary under Prime Minister Herbet Henry Asquith and Liberal MP for Dundee, and the Labour Party was just four years old!

They polled third behind UKIP - with their vote share lower even than that of Stanley Baldwin after his unpopular coalition with the Conservatives - and only escaped the humiliation of 4th because of the Greens heavily eroding the Liberal Democrat vote. (Did anyone else spot Simon Hughes’ Freudian Slip when discussing the rise of the BNP with David Dimbleby he accidently said (not verbatim) “We are totally opposed to the views of the Greens and are very worried about the Greens, I mean BNP.”)

But although Labour very much lost this election, the Conservatives cannot truly claim to have won it either. They may have topped the poll in Wales, but the national vote share was up less than 2% and was still below 30%. In some regions the vote share had even dropped. Last night was a victory for the minor parties more than anyone, and this poses two questions: will these votes return to the main parties at the general election, and will they go blue?

The risk for Cameron is that people have taken a ‘curse on all your houses’ view under the opinion that “you’re all the same” and - having had several Euro elections under PR - become used to voting for other parties. Do some people now even identify themselves as Ukippers or Greens, rather than just voting for them as a one-off, in the same way traditional Labour or Conservative voters proudly view themselves as such?

I still think the odds are in the Conservatives favour, but to form a majority they need the third biggest swing recorded in post-war history and there is still everything to play for.

For Labour to win they would have to be radical - personality wise, rather than with policy. Brown would have to go, as would all of his hated, creepy cohorts. Both of the Millibands, Ed Balls, Harman et al would have to go (if they haven’t already, it’s so hard to keep up). But a fresh face, the fresher the better, and preferably (for them) as surprising as possible. But if Labour did go for electric shock treatment - say Frank Field, Caroline Flint or Diane Abbot - with a cabinet featuring these along with say Kate Hoey, Bob Marshall-Andrews, Tony Benn as a sop to the oldies, Hazel Blears as a sop to the Blairy-bunch… It would be a disaster policy wise (no change there then) but be such a shock it could bounce enough to pull through.

It’s roughly the same as the Conservatives should have done in the 1990s! It’s a case of ‘new broom sweeps clean’; and if you want it to be your party you have to become a new broom.

Even so the Conservatives can win - but they must close their right flank with Ukip by promising a Referendum, and then be free to attack Labour on the issues that move Lab/Con swing voters without fear of losing votes of core voters. Ukip cost them 30-odd seats last time, they can’t be left to cost them the election.

In a few hours time we will know the results of the European Parliament elections, indeed the rumour is that the South East ‘region’ will declare at 21:02 - some 58 minutes before the BBC coverage starts and unfortunately clashing with The Apprentice!

What we do know however is the lunatics are well on their way to taking over the asylum!

BBC North West are reporting that the BNP have likely won a seat.
The Greens are reported to be doing well in Scotland.
The Cornish Nationalists have outpolled Labour in the pasty principality.

Meanwhile far-right lunatics across Europe are reported to be doing well; and a party called ‘The Party of Animals’ may win a seat in the Netherlands.

Reminds me of a Yes Minister quote:
Activist: Humans are animals too!
Minister: Yes I know, I’ve just come back from the House of Commons.

With the election results not due until after 9pm, and everyone at ConservativeHome making their predictions, I have decided instead to set some benchmark predictions against which to judge the party’s respective performances.

The election really is the Conservative’s to lose. There has been no management of expectations, and so anything other than a first place finish and anything less than the 26.7% they achieved in 2004 will be seen as a poor result. I expect the first place finish is in the bag - coming second would be disaster territory - and they’ll probably get 25-30%. Anything over 30% would be a huge achievement.

The battle for second place is really between UKIP, Labour and the Lib Dems in the polls. The odds are on Labour coming 4th in my opinion, with all three parties grouped around 15%, and if Labour are spared this embarassment it is purely because of the Green vote eroding the Lib Dems! Add the Lib Dem and Green votes - which you could fairly certainly do if you had 2nd preference votes -and Labour would certainly be 4th!

UKIP has very much promoted themselves as THE party to beat Labour into third, so if they don’t out perform the failed party of the sociopathic PM then the night will be seen as a big failure. They must also keep their tally of 12 MEPs and in my view poll over 15% to be seen as doing well; any decline in MEPs or a sub 15% vote will be seen as severe failure, but any increase a big success - there really isn’t a static middle option for them.

The Liberal Democrats came 4th last time - behind the Conservatives, Labour and Ukip - and I expect it close today in 3rd/4th due to the Greens eroding the Lib Dem vote. Again like Ukip it will either be a huge success for them if they outpoll Labour and come 3rd, or a humiliation if they don’t and come 4th, especially as this is a vote under their boloved proportional representation and
having outpolled Labour at the council elections held on the same day! Again in terms of vote 15% is the line between failure and success.

For the Greens they must retain their 2 MEPs, and will be very pleased to reach double figures. I’m guessing however 8-10% to be the likely range, and if they fail to reach that they have failed miserably. They will also want to out poll the BNP, who will be judged as a success if they gain an MEP or poll greater than 5%, and a failure if they don’t. If they beat the Greens they will have scored a major coup.

My guess is Conservatives in first, UKIP in second, Labour in third very narrowly ahead of the Lib Dems, with Greens and BNP roughly equal and probably (and very sadly) winning 3 MEPs each.

Given the devastation of today’s political events the Napoleonic comparisons are easy, even more so given the fact discussed on Newsnight yesterday that now is the first time since the Duke of Wellington in 1834 that a Prime Minister has struggled to form a Cabinet. Of course Wellington didn’t have Glenys Kinnock and so had to appoint himself to most of the other ministries…

But Brown is no Wellington, even though in his period as Prime Minister - when he experienced an extremely high degree of personal and political unpopularity - his residence was a target of window-smashers and iron shutters were installed to mitigate the damage earning him the nickname “The Iron Duke”. So Gordon Brown may yet truly be “The Iron PM” as he once falsely claimed to be “The Iron Chancellor” in this way at least!

Gordon Brown is however not the Duke of Wellington - far more Napoleon - and today is most certainly his Waterloo or Trafalgar. the question now is which?

Many believe it’s Waterloo and he will soon be gone. Bookmakers Paddy Power believes Gordon Brown is toast and are already paying out on the Prime Minister leaving his post before the end of August. But to trigger a ballot requires 70 MPs, and with well over 120 bound by collective responsibility, the rest divided between Blairite and Brownite, and fears of infighting worsening the party’s chances, I can’t see it.

Plus who’d want to take over now? If they called a general election to take advantage of any honeymoon poll boost he/she would end up beating George Canning’s title of 119 days as the shortest period in office (and he can be excused…he died!). And it could be worse, with all the infighting and lack of suitable MPs the new leader might be like the Earl of Bath (2 days), who was asked to form a government however was unable to find more than one person who would agree to serve in his cabinet.

But with less than a year to go they’d have no time to really do anything even if they could form a government, but plenty of time to get associated and blamed. Either way they’d go down in history as a disastrous loser, and then be expected to quit as Leader after the election anyway (maybe have to due to infighting).

It’s a suicide leadership suited only for someone wanting nothing more than their photo on the wall by the Downing Street staircase, a Government car, and the ability to bore their grandchildren with the fact they was once the Prime Minister.

I might be wrong, but I think Brown will survive. This is his Trafalgar rather than his Waterloo; it’s over for him ambitions wise, but he will linger on until everything comes into alignment at the general election next year.

People across the UK are casting their votes in elections to the European Parliament. Or rather some people are casting their votes in elections to the European Parliament.

Lots of people don’t seem to have noticed. The news story is currently ranked 6th in the BBC News ‘Most Popular Stories Now’ - rather like where Labour will come - behind ‘Boris Johnson stumbles into river’.

Turnout under 25%?