Brown is trying to stitch up the leadership before the electoral hurricane of 3 May

A silencer may have been fitted on the starting gun, but no one in Westminster can doubt that the Gordon Brown leadership campaign is now fully up and running. Ministers are being telephoned and asked when their names can be released as supporters of the Chancellor. Geoff Hoon, still smarting from his demotion to Europe Minister, has found himself promoted to the Chancellor’s ‘campaign committee’. Jack Straw has been announced as its manager, with no idea whom he is supposed to fight.

It matters little; for now, these men are ornaments. The real Brown machine has been 13 years in the making, and remains focused on its single purpose: the elimination of any rival candidate. ‘They will have a grid,’ says one Whitehall source. ‘They’d have planned the Budget as a triumph, which would end all talk of a challenge to Gordon. But that hasn’t happened, so they’ve brought the grid forward.’