Charlie whelan

A poll in today’s Daily Mail might have the Tories down to 29 percent (in part due to a very large number of undecideds) but it is Charlie Whelan’s interview blaming Peter Mandelson for Labour’s election debacle that is getting all the attention. In a fit of campaign nostalgia, CCHQ has tweeted out a bunch of lines from it. But I suspect it is the last Whelan quote in the piece that has them smacking their lips.  Whelan says, ‘Labour has not fallen out of love with Gordon. Quite the reverse. If he tips up at the Conference – which I think he will – he’ll go on stage and

Oh joy, Labour are at war again.  The animosities which have largely been kept in check since the election are now piercing through to the surface again – and it’s all thanks to Peter Mandelson’s memoirs.  After the ennobled one’s insights about Gordon and Tony in the Times yesterday, Charlie Whelan is shooting back from the pages of the Sunday Telegraph.  And, elsewhere, Brown is said to have told friends that “this is going to be a very difficult time for me.”  Yep, it’s just like the glory days of last summer. Amid all this, there’s a sense that Mandelson and David Miliband have coordinated their efforts to trash Brown

At last! There’s a bit of British spunk about the Labour leadership contest. Andy Burnham has accused his rivals of smearing him. The finger of suspicion points at Ed Balls – given past form and his natural proclivities. Burnham and Balls are fighting for a similar constituency – both are running broadly ‘traditional’ tickets. Both are struggling. Balls has 5 Constituency Labour Party nominations to Burnham’s 8: the Milibands have 80 between them. Balls’ team, staffed by the saintly Tom Watson and Charlie Whelan, probably is briefing against Burnham; and it was probably Balls who introduced the rumour that the Milibands were smearing one another. But equally, Burnham could be

The sole current political certainty is that Nick Clegg will not prop-up Gordon Brown. Clegg holds Brown personally responsible for 13 years of failure and not even political marriages can be built on enmity.  Labour’s choice is clear: remove Brown to accommodate Clegg. The Sunday Times reports plots are afoot to kill Gordon ‘with dignity’. But euthanasia is messy. Two options are being discussed. First, Brown would be given a year to make a final indelible mark on Britain before shipping himself off to Westminster’s version of Dignitas. I think we can all see the problem with that cunning scheme, and Nick Clegg certainly will.  The second option is to

One thing’s for certain: the Lib Dems are coming in for greater scrutiny and attention from the media.  The covers of the Telegraph, Sun, Mail, Express and, yes, The Spectator are testament to that – even if some are less substantial than others.  But the question is: will this derail the Clegg bandwagon?  And, like Iain Dale, I’m not so sure. Iain’s point is that some of the coverage is so spiteful that it will “serve to increase his popularity and position in the polls”.  He adds that this would be a “sure sign that the power of the press to influence an election is on the wane”.  He’s right,

The Charlie Whelan problem is intensifying for Labour, with more revelations in the Mail on Sunday today taking on from our cover story in this week’s magazine. Whelan’s behaviour may be no worse than that of Ed Balls and Gordon Brown – but he is more careless. Like McBride, he was actually caught: and his tactics documented in a formal seven-page report. Not the sort of document you want surfacing during a campaign. So it’s little wonder why Whelan used Carter-Ruck to try and deter The Spectator from any further investigation in the bullying case: it threatens to expose Gordon Brown’s entire modus operandi and the methods which he uses

Last summer, The Spectator received a letter from Charlie Whelan’s solicitors complaining about this post – where we mention their client’s spot of bother with his colleagues at Unite. Carter-Ruck were instructed on one of the no-win-no-fee deals: it cost Whelan nothing to sue, but could cost us £thousands to defend. So the lawyer’s letter is, by itself, an effective form of intimidation. A magazine with a small budget obviously faces huge pressure to do what he wanted: apologise, pay up and (suspiciously) undertake not to pursue the story any further. Under the circumstances, The Spectator could do only one thing. Our full investigation into Charlie Whelan is the cover story of tomorrow’s magazine

Well, now we know. Charlie Whelan enjoys the liberty of Westminster at the invitation of the parliamentary Labour party. Guido points out that it’s highly unlikely Whelan isn’t officially connected to Labour’s campaign. Labour tried to keep all this quiet, attempting to avert an ‘affluence for influence’ story that might undermine Brown’s attempt to turn the election into a referendum on Lord Ashcroft. However, though this should prove bad news for Labour, these stories have little impact outside Westminster. Neither the Ashcroft scandal nor previous Whelan sagas moved the polls.      

James Macintyre asked yesterday, in response to a speech Davis made at the Bristol Chambers of Commerce. The question should enter John Rentoul’s entertaining list of questions to which the answer is No. Macintyre takes Davis’ comments out of context: ‘First, he [Davis] praises the post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who is credited with creating the NHS and the Welfare State, and effectively compares him to Margaret Thatcher: “Attlee created the modern Welfare State at a time when the country was bankrupt after the war. Mrs Thatcher transformed the country after 1979 when it was at its lowest ebb.”’ What Davis actually said was: “When times are tough, that

Last week, Nick Clegg was singing the blues.  But, this week, it’s clear that he’s doing as much as possible to distinguish his party from the others.  Indeed, his performance in PMQs yesterday was a case in point: he went out of his way to attack both Brown and Cameron, and positioned his side as the non-Unite, non-Ashcroft choice.  Given the Lib Dem’s recent history with dodgy donors, that’s a move which – at the very least – is going to ruffle a few red and blue feathers. So it’s striking, today, that the Lib Dems are probably going even heavier on the Ashcroft story than Labour.  While Peter Mandelson

He did it. We saw him. It actually happened.  History was made at PMQs today as Gordon Brown finally gave a direct answer to a direct question. Not only that, he admitted he’d been wrong about something. Tony Baldry (Con, Banbury) informed the PM that his assertion before the Chilcot Inquiry that defence spending has risen, in real terms, every year has been contradicted by figures released to the Commons library. Up got Brown, looking like a wounded old teddy-bear, and offered this epoch-making concession. ‘I accept that in one or two years real terms spending did not rise.’   What a union of opposites. Brown and the truth. It

Whisper it quietly, but there is a sense that the Tory campaign is getting back on track. The Tories have had three good days in a row, have Labour on the back foot over Unite and the polls appear to be moving in their favour. Certainly, Tory morale is better than at any point since the start of the year. One thing raising Tory spirits is Cameron’s own performance. As Iain Martin points out, on Sunday Brown met the voters and was incapable of finding the right tone. Cameron, by contrast, is at his best among ‘real’ people as Monday’s event demonstrated. Another thing bolstering Tory morale is their campaign