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Labour’s poster depicting David Cameron and George Osbourne as the so bad they’re funny X Factor twins John and Edward (”Jedward”) with the tagline “You won’t be laughing if they win” has got a good deal of press coverage, far exceeding the impressions the paid billboards will chalk up. In this sense it’s already a hugely effective piece of viral advertising.

But it’s another story that makes me think.

Jedward have faced huge public hostility, hate campaigns on Facebook, and deafening booing at X Factor performances. But last Saturday it was all cheers. The criticism became so unfairly harsh and personal, and they held up so strong, that they have become popular.

Could Labour do the same? The recent argument over Gordon Brown’s letter suggests it’s possible. If The Sun and others don’t want a Labour victory, they mustn’t victimise Brown.

More jokes harvested from various sources about MP’s expenses.

Labour MP said his claims were “1000% within the rules”; the same amount he claimed on his mortgage.

Politics. From the Latin ‘poli’, meaning many, and ‘tics’, meaning blood sucking parasites.

How many MP’s does it take to change a lightbulb? None, they’ll stick it on expenses.

People say politicians need to be more transparent, that’s rubbish. Politicians are more transparent now than ever, the entire country can see right through them.

Vote Labour. We’ve got what it takes to take what you’ve got.

Speaker Michael Martin has been removed. The last time I saw a speaker removed so fast it was under someone’s arm in Dixons.

A florist goes into a hairdressers for a haircut. Pleased with the result she goes to pay but is turned down. “I’m on community service this week, I’m not charging”. The florist goes away happy and the next morning the hairdresser arrives at work to find a thank you card and a bouquet of 12 roses from the florist. Later a baker has his hair cut and again is told not to pay, and the next morning the hairdresser discovers a thank you card and 12 cakes on the door. Later an MP has his hair cut and again gets it free. Wondering what she will find the next morning, the hairdresser is shocked to find a thank you card and 12 MPs wanting free haircuts.

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.

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.

LabourHome asked: “Who has been the greatest Labour Leader over the last 30 years?”

Just 2 votes behind Tony Blair was Michael Foot, author of the longest suicide note in history. I know they don’t exactly have a good range of options but I mean, really, 26% favour Michael Foot?!

Gordon Brown got 5 votes…himself, Sarah Brown, his two sons, and his housekeeper.

So ’smear-gate’ enters another day and - although the public are slowly getting tired of the story - it shows little sign of slowing down. Round two has begun, the attack - with the mainstream media - on bloggers (see here, here and here for starters). Tim Montgomerie writes a reply here. This follows the green with envy attacks on Dan Hannan, by Michael White in particular.

Labour, caught out smearing the Conservatives, has moved on to bloggers in an attempt to shoot the messenger (how ironic they are smearing blogs when it is their blogging smear plans that got them in trouble - they know all about lying on blogs). They are of course joined by their regular newspaper cheerleaders such as Kevin McGuire (who used his blog to state most people wanted to know what Cameron’s illness was - backing up my fears some believe the smears), and the newly allied media fearful of bloggers.

In The Times Stephen Pollard writes “the difference between quality newspapers and even serious blogs is that your default reaction to a newspaper piece should be that it is true, whereas your default reaction to a blog post should be that it might be true, but it might equally well be a pack of lies.” He must be delusional, whoever trusted what they read in the papers? And who is he to tell us what our default reaction to anything should be?

Dan Hannan believes he was one of McBride and Draper’s targets. I don’t think he was, as we’d have heard about it from the emails, but I do think he was a target for Labour smears and spin. The sheer amount of dirt digging, word twisting and “dark arts” by Labour and their journalistic lackys (see here, here, here, here and here) as well as the “Lima suit lie” were all grossly disproportionate given Hannan is an MEP! Labour seems determined to shoot down every rising star because they don’t have any.

It seems smears are all Labour has left.

There’s something very alarming about Labour’s plan for compulsory community service for all school leavers.

Maybe it’s the vague similarity with conscription which the great Milton Friedman compared to a form of slavery “inconsistent with a free society”, inequitable and arbitrary, preventing young men from being able to shape their lives as they see fit. (The left always refers to Keynes as “the great” but never Friedman, so I will inverse).

Maybe it’s the awful language of New Labour’s vision of Citizenship with “young people being expected to contribute” (50 hours currently, probably rising) and the “do as we say” mindset behind it, the huge central authority directing the “young” so “the contributions of each of us will build a better society for all of us.” (Whatever “better” is defined as.)

Both of these things leave me uncomfortable, and I expect everyone who opposes this will be spun as siding with the hoodies and lay-abouts etc. But this doesn’t change my point. In a free country we are not bound to perform work for anyone but ourselves; and because we are free, when people do act in the interests of others and not themselves - as people often do - that act is all the better because it was heartfelt, voluntary and real. Because it was human and voluntary, not robotic and compulsory.

Today we see the extent of the unfounded and disgusting smears propagated by McBride and emailed to Draper and Tom Watson MP (along with Brown’s previous spin chief Charlie Whelan and Unite union press officer Andrew Dodgshon), as The Sunday Times and its ugly step-sister News Of The World publishes extracts. They really are the work of juvenile schoolboys passing notes around class behind the teacher’s back, and not very bright schoolboys at that!

All of the smears are of course unfounded - some are downright sick, others simply ludicrous, all hurtful and untrue - but I am concerned that some people actually believe them, in part at least. Today’s top search term for people arriving at this blog is “david cameron’s embarrassing illness” followed by the rather telling search of “what is david cameron’s embarrassing illness?” All typed it seems as a matter of fact!

With the public opinion of politicians so low, is there a risk people take the view - as one person I know has despite my attempts to change their view - that it’s “six to one, a half dozen to the other” and “an elaboration but there’s no smoke without fire”? In Harriet Harman’s Court of Public Opinion, everyone is guilty until proven innocent it seems. An apology from Downing Street is vital.