Story here. Paul Waugh says:
In the last few hours, the rumours have been swirling around again that a Cabinet minister could quit in protest at Gordon’s leadership. The plotters have certainly asked a sympathetic minister to do so – but whether he will do so is another matter.
UPDATE : Told by a weary Labour loyalist, that it is “probably bollocks, who knows…”.
The BBC have replied to Prezza over his demand to the BBC that
the TaxPayers’ Alliance’s [sic] should now be referred to on air as “a group with close links to the Conservative Party” or some similar on-air clarification.
The BBC’s Helen Boaden has now written back to reject Prezza’s demand:
I do not think it would be accurate or fair to describe it on air, as you suggest, as ‘a group with close links to the Conservative Party.’
Prezza is Twittering that this means “we’ve had some real success”. How?
Gordon’s ongoing quest for a sprinkling of stardust from Obama has hit yet another obstacle. Firstly he was forced live on Marr to admit that he hadn’t spoken directly to Obama about the Christmas Day bombing attempt and now it seems Simon Lewis, Brown’s error-strewn official spokesman has sparked a serious falling out and public admonishment from the White House.
“A White House source” used an interesting choice of words to describe “a mistake” by Lewis to suggest that a file on the knicker-bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been passed to the US sometime “in 2008“. However Lewis has just had to retract his words and stated there was no suggestion that this had ever happened. Alan Johnson has been forced to schedule an emergency statement at 15.30. Sky News’s Joey Jones said he took no pleasure in describing it as “an awful briefing“. Another serious blunder by Brown’s slapdash spokesman, the Lobby have completely lost respect for Brown’s mouthpiece. A lobby hack who would prefer to anonymous say “it was an utter fucking car-crash”.
By the by, the Telegraph broke the story this morning. Edited by Simon’s brother, Will Lewis…
There is lots of speculation around that in this election blogs and even Twitter will be decisive, Toby Helm had a hyperbolic piece in the Observer this weekend How the 2010 Election Will Be Won by Blogs and Tweets. Guido is not so sure.
Nowadays blogs help set the mainstream media’s tone, not just because the most avid readers of blogs are mainstream journalists, but because increasingly we are mainstream.
In the last 24-hour news cycle Guido has seen Iain Dale and Jag Singh going head-to-head on Sky New’s evening show, on the BBC at the same time Shane Greer and Will Straw were spinning their lines. Guido woke up this morning to hear on the Today programme Tim Montgomerie defending the Tories. Bloggers are clearly sexier pundits for broadcasters than old stalwarts like Michael White and Polly Toynbee…
Peter Mandelson, asked by a child why he backed Gordon, said…
“That’s the only toy I have to play with…”
Vince Cable famously remarked on the transformation of Gordon from Stalin into Mr Bean. In Spain Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is also caricatured as a Mr Bean look-a-like. Spain has this year assumed the presidency of the EU and set up as website, www.eu2010.es promoting itself. Yesterday an unidentified hacker replaced Zapatero’s picture with a picture of Mr Bean. No doubt Gordon will cite this as proof that once again he is “leading the world”…
