According to  the Telegraph’s Andy Porter (a close friend of Damian McBride) “Hazel Blears’ resignation as Communities Secretary was partly triggered by the discovery that she had allegedly avoided paying capital gains tax on the sale of another property.” This is Downing Street back up to its old tricks, getting dirt on enemies, putting the dirt into the public domain via friendly Lobby hacks.  Guido has been told by a source that the same “Cabinet Office compliance unit” that found out about Blears’ other property has more expenses dirt on Alastair Darling.  That is being used to menace Darling, just in case he gets any Geoffrey Howe type ideas.

Nick Brown is the “shit-kicker in chief” according to a well connected Blairite, Watson is still unofficially doing his old enforcer job, even the semi-detached Douglas Alexander is back on the bunker team.  Blairites emphasise to Guido that they are going to keep silent until the close of the polls tomorrow at 10pm.  That leaves the Brownies a free run to have the mother of all factional fights to save their fuhrer.

Stanley Kalms is the Dixons tycoon and former Tory treasurer, it is the case that he has never had much time for the Cameroons and has not given any money to the Tories in years. Nevertheless, UKIP will be chuffed at another Tory taking the Tebbit line…

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Unconfirmed rumour swirling around in Labour circles…

Well that post this morning was prophetic faster than Guido expected. More and more interesting. 

This is looking more like a deliberate effort to unseat Gordon…

A lesson Guido learnt the hard way in his younger days was “never antagonise a redhead”.   Could Gordon be about to learn the same lesson?

It has been bothering Guido that he couldn’t see the logic for anyone leaking Jacqui’s exit plans. Certainly doesn’t make sense for Brown central to leak it (contrary to LabourList’s claim).  Guido was putting the leak in the cock-up rather than the conspiracy category.  However the Blears theory makes some sense – Blears feels aggrieved that she got roughed up by Brown over expenses in a way that Darling (until yesterday) Hoon and Purnell did not.   She also feels imperilled by the reshuffle and of course she isn’t really a fan of Gordon.  By destabilising Gordon and revealing ahead of the re-shuffle that a woman is already leaving cabinet she shores up her own position.  She also scores some brownie points for the future by laying some useful ground-work for Alan Johnson…

There comes a point when party interest and national interest conflict.  Inside Tory HQ there are many praying that Gordon Brown survives next week and that Alan Johnson does not find the courage to oust Brown.  They know that at the General Election the scale of the Tory victory will be greater if they face Gordon Brown, a discredited Prime Minister, than if they faced a new Prime Minister enjoying a honeymoon.   That is putting their party interest before the national interest.

Around the cabinet table sit the only people who can rid the country of a Prime Minister completely incapable of getting us out of the economic mess we are in.  Brown’s solution to a debt crisis is more government debt, his dividing lines are about politics, not economic imperatives in the national interest.  The expenses crisis has obscured headlines about the dire state of the national finances, but Britain is in a really perilous state.  The members of the cabinet who prefer to cling onto their party’s grip on government (and their perks) for another year by keeping Gordon Brown in place and delaying the inevitable, need to examine their consciences.  Put the national interest before party interest, the country is crying out for change.

Polls show that Labour Party activists and voters have no confidence in Gordon Brown, dispatching him sooner rather than later might actually improve the standing of the Labour Party.  There would of course need to be a General Election after Gordon went.  That is what the public want, that would be in the national interest, it might even be in the best interests of the Labour Party…

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