An interesting poll to be published in the Guardian later today reveals that in a contest between Cameron, Blair, and Campbell, the Conservatives would come out with 42% of the vote to Labour’s 29% (and the Lib Dems 17%). They then go on to say how this is the Conservatives best rating since just after they won the 1993 General Election, and Tory bloggers like Iain Dale get quite excited about this – and understandably so.

Except, it’s not quite true. That is, it isn’t really a genuine poll rating in the strictest sense, because it’s asking about a hypothetical situation using a completely different question to the standard ICM polling question, which makes comparison somewhat nonsensical. Admittedly, the Conservatives have gained on the state of play garnered via the same question last month, but I’m not a great believer in the question in the first place. It’s asking people to compare two relatively established leaders with one that’s sort of in a No-Man’s-Land – of course the established visionary will come out on top over somebody who’s not really had a great chance to state his case fully in front of the nation. And spin as required.

Iain Dale reckons a couple more polls like this will get Labour MPs ‘twitchy’ about Mr Brown’s potential performance. I tend to disagree. I think Mr Brown needs a good crack of the whip before he’ll improve poll ratings, and if the only realistic alternative is John Reid… well, I think the country’s better off with Brown.

Looking at the more interesting data – the standard three-party comparison – the Tories are still doing well. They’re on 40%, to Labour’s 31%. But, of course, that’s still a slightly sticky comparison, as the current situation doesn’t reflect that at the next General Election. Essentially, what I’m saying is that polls taken right now don’t mean an awful lot, and probably shouldn’t be leading national newspapers.

That said, general trends are always of interest, and the Conservatives have been in the lead for almost a year now. That’s significant. The trends are showing that the Conservatives are taking a real hold of support, and their grip is gradually tightening. Of course, our slightly perverse electoral system means that they’ll need to keep that grip rather vice-like to actual turn it into a Parliamentary majority come election time, but perhaps that’s possible.

I would say that this poll should certainly stop Mr Cameron from crying in his cornflakes tomorrow morning, but it really shouldn’t be a champagne breakfast. He appears to be doing well – though it’s difficult to tell quite how well – but there’s an awful long way to go yet. Let’s hope he keeps fighting.

As you’ll no doubt have registered by now, David Miliband appeared to make a huge ‘blunder’ whilst appearing on Question Time this week by claiming that when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, people would be aching for Blair to return:

[flashvideo ratio=”16:9″ filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/qt.flv” title=”Question Time (BBC One)” /]

Perhaps I’m too generous, but I can’t bring myself to believe that even David Miliband could be so incredibly stupid as to say this if he didn’t mean it. But why say it?

Is he such a loyal Blairite that can’t see any other way forward? Does he want to leave politics, and stick by Blair when he resigns? Surely not. He’s the very definition of a career politician, with a proclivity for power-seeking. And, perhaps, this is what makes this move so odd – he’s distancing himself from the incoming power.

Does he actually believe that James won’t take over from Anthony, and so is continuing to align himself with the Blairites over the Brownites in an attempt to cling onto his own power?

Is he purposely distancing himself from Brown, so that he might take over as Party Leader once Brown is ‘removed’, as he almost certainly will end up being, as an unsuccessful Leader. Does he think that the Party will yearn for the Blairite glory days, and he’ll be able to ride in on a white horse as the newly shining knight of Blair’s order, and steal the Party crown?

None of these options make perfect sense. That means one of two things: He’s a great political mind who has everything plotted out, but no-one can work out quite where he’s going. Or he’s a terrible political mind, who can’t think his way through a simple question on a TV show. I have my suspicions, but I’m not yet sure which.

Rumours abound that Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff, is to be interviewed for a third time – and under caution for the second time. Charges are said to be near… though I’d take that with a pinch of salt.

Guido and Iain Dale tell us that, later today, the Conservatives will launch a big public campaign against the government’s ID Cards scheme. This is excellent news (see my rationale from almost three years ago – it’s still scarily relevant), and it actually seems that they’re serious.

For a politician that has urged politicians to take more action with less talk, David Cameron has done very little other than talk. But now, it appears he’s carved out some kind of official role for the opposition. David Davis is writing to all of the major parties in the ID Cards scheme explaining that the Conservatives will be withdrawing the scheme should they form the next Government.

It would actually seem that the opposition are living up to their promise – They’re actually taking action, preparing to form a government rather than simply talking. Now, of course, they could have done this at any point, but to be seen to be preparing in this way is a departure from the way the Conservatives have seemed to act for some years now. They finally appear to be building in confidence, and believing they can win. And if they believe they can win, then maybe they can convince other people too.

As I’ve said many times, I don’t really care which party is in power, provided no-one has a large majority. Big majorities remove the need for compromise, and compromise generally brings refinement and improvement of law. Small majorities are preferable, as they force parties to co-operate to forge better legislation acceptable to all – not just those who voted for the party in power. And that ideal is facilitated by having an effective, confident, power-hungry opposition who can really split the vote. We might just be getting one.

Undoubtedly, the most accurate comment about Mr Blair’s interview on the Today programme this morning came from the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Menzies Campbell: “There is resignation in his voice”.

It was an extraordinary interview, unlike any we’ve heard from Mr Blair before. Listening back, Mr Blair sounds distinctly like he knows the game is up. He no longer seems to be a Prime Minister fighting for survival, but rather a Prime Minister who’s being kept in an undignified position until the Cash for Honours investigation ends, so that he, rather than his successor, can take the flak for it. It’s important to note that the interview was recorded before the news of his second questioning came out.

The first particularly interesting segment of the interview comes right at the very beginning.

[audio:cantgoon.mp3]

JH: Good morning, Prime Minister.

TB: Good morning, and welcome to West Cornforth.

JH: Thank you. Er… We can’t go on like this, can we?

TB: We can’t go on in what sense?

JH: With this inquiry. It’s doing damage, isn’t it?

TB: Well, I think it’s got to run its course over the next few weeks. I hope it’ll be wound up and let’s see where we are then. And in the meantime, despite what people may think, I get on with the job.

JH: You may get on with the job, but it’s doing damage isn’t it, that’s the point.

TB: Well, I think the most sensible thing is actually to wait and see what the inquiry comes up with. We won’t have a great deal longer to wait.

The extraordinary thing about the start of this interview is the emotion shown by the PM. Listen to the whispered ‘well’ of his first proper answer, and the clearing of throat, as if he’s a little choked up. That’s not the mood of a leader striving to continue for another six months to try and achieve a true legacy. It’s the mood of someone who’s throwing in the towel, and just waiting until the inquiry reports – apparently soon – and he’s forced to resign.

Later in the interview, Humphrys returns to the subject of the inquiry:

[audio:conclusions.mp3]

TB: And, in the end, I totally understand why this obviously is very obsessive and somewhat distracting for media, it’s bound to be, but it isn’t for me.

JH: But it’s not just for the media, is it? And it’s not just distracting. If you hear what Lord Kinnock said yesterday, and you’ve seen it, he said the damage to reputation, to trust, will take years and a great deal of action to try and repair. And your own Party Chairman, Hazel Blears, talks about the corrosive effect. We heard Shahid Malik saying there’s enormous damage being done to trust and confidence in our democracy. That’s what I mean when I say it can’t go on.

TB: Yeah, I entirely understand what you say, but it’s not going to go on, because it’s going to come to a conclusion, and the sensible thing is to wait for the conclusion before we reach our own conclusions.

JH: But it has been going on for a very long time, hasn’t it?

TB: Yes, it certainly has.

JH: And do you know that it will come to a conclusion soon?

TB: No. I mean it’s entirely up to the police as to when they conclude their inquiry. But, I mean, let us hope at any rate that it does come to a conclusion shortly and then, incidentally, I’ll be perfectly happy to answer questions about it and what went on and so forth, and all I say to members of the public is that I wouldn’t believe everything that’s ricocheting round the media in terms of what’s supposed to have happened.

JH: What should we not believe?

TB: Well, I’m not going to go into all the detail of it. But what I will do, incidentally, very clearly indeed is when it is over I’m perfectly happy to answer questions on it.

Again, I can’t shake the feeling that ‘when it is over’ means ‘when I’ve resigned over it’. And, of course, it turned out that what we couldn’t believe is that the Prime Minister hadn’t been interviewed again.

Later, Humphrys turns specifically to the issue of resignation.

[audio:putupwithme.mp3]

TB: There is a huge debate about policy that is there but it doesn’t seem to me at any rate often to get the coverage that we should have for these issues which is why I think actually that what you’ve done this week is both sensible and responsible.

JH: But that is partly because of so much attention being on you personally, and that’s the point of this, isn’t it, it’s been focused on you, Tony Blair, and you say we have to wait for it to come to an end. You, actually, could bring it to an end. You could say, ‘Look, I’m going. I’m leaving Number 10 within a few months anyway’, we all know that, we don’t know precisely when, but we do know you’re going. You could say ‘I’m going next week or tomorrow, I’m going to put an end to it. You can have somebody else, then, in Number 10 to kick around if you like, but I’m going to put and end to it’. You could do that and then it wouldn’t be about Tony Blair the Prime Minister, would it? That’s the point.

TB: Yeah, well I hear what you’re saying, but…

JH: It would be a service to the country, to your party, not only the country, but it would service your party if they believed that your presence there is doing enormous damage.

TB: It’s not a very democratic way to decide who the Prime Minister is or not.

JH: But you’ve already decided that: You’ve decided you’re going.

TB: Yeah, well I’ve said that I will stand down this Parliament but I’ve also said that I want to conclude certain things and finish certain things. And if, for example, the Health Service reforms that we’re engaged in at the moment I believe in very very strongly…

JH: But I’m going to come to that if I may. I’ll stop you there if I may because I do want to come to the Health Service in a moment in some detail. But surely Gordon Brown could do those things? I mean, that’s… you’ve said time after time you’ve total confidence in him, we expect he’ll be the next Prime Minister, I know you’re not going to confirm that, but the fact is that he could do those things that you want to do.

TB: Absolutely, I’m sure he could and there are…

JH: So why not stand down? Why not put an end to it all?

TB: Because I don’t think that’s the right way to do it and I think it would be particularly wrong to do it before the inquiry has even run its course and come to any conclusions. So you’ll have to put up with me for a bit longer.

He says here that he won’t stand down until the results of the inquiry are published… surely that suggests that he thinks he will be standing down when they are published?

Later, Mr Humphrys confronts Mr Blair with one of his own soundbites.

[audio:prettystraight.mp3]

JH: Ten years ago, we spoke after the first scandal if that’s what it was, the Formula One affair, did a television interview and you said to me, and the quote has been used many, many, many times since then, you’ll know where I’m going, “People think I’m a pretty straight kind of guy”. They don’t think that now, do they?

TB: Well I thought you might ask me that, and I thought about how I should answer it, and actually I got the same thing put to me during the course of the last election when I… people were calling me a liar, a war criminal, and so on. Maybe this is how I’ve changed over the years as well, and I said then during the election campaign, and I would say now, I’m not going to beg for my character in front of anyone. People can make up their mind about me according to what they think about me, but I know what type of person I am, and I’m not going to get into a situation where I’m sort of pleading for my integrity, not even actually in front of the public, even though I obviously have a deep respect for the British people and it’s been an honour and privelege to lead them. I try and do my best, I have tried to do my best over the last ten years. I don’t say I’ve always got everything right, of course I haven’t, and there’ve been mistakes and things that have gone wrong along the way. But actually, when I look back on my ten years I do beleive that there’s been a lot that’s been good for the country as well so I’m not really going to comment on my character like that, and other people can comment on it as much as they like.

JH: No, I wasn’t really asking you to comment on your character, I was asking whether you could say today, as you said to me ten years ago, that people think – that’s the point, it’s what people think of you.

TB: I know, but I…

JH: Because that’s damaging to the nation, not just to you.

TB: Of course, but ten years on I answer that in a different way. I answer in a different way because, perhaps, I’m a different sort of person too.

Not only is Mr Blair admitting that he’s not a ‘pretty straight’ sort of person any more, but look at the content before that. He even corrects himself: ‘I try and do my best’ becomes ‘I have tried to do my best’ – he’s looking back on a career that’s over, not looking forward to the things he claims it is important to him to finish off in the next few months. He knows, realistically, that he doesn’t have another few months, he’ll be forced out long before then.

And that’s the most noticeable thing from this interview. Perhaps I’m being obsessed with people rather than policies, as Blair claims, but that’s because it’s clear that the person at the centre of the government knows he isn’t going to be there much longer. He knows that this inquiry will draw blood, and he will have to resign. He’s going to go soon, and has no motivation to go on. There is, indeed, resignation in his voice.

It’s a retrospective interview, and may well be one of Blair’s last ever big political interviews. And so it’s well worth listening to the full thing on the Today programme website.

Just a quick note to say that word has reached me on the road that Mr Blair will make a rare appearance on the 8.10 interview on the Today programme tomorrow. It will be worth tuning in.

A brilliant derision of NHS direct can be found over on Pathologists Anonymous. Highly recommended (especially to those in charge of NHS policy…).

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/blaircameron.flv” title=”Time Trumpet (BBC Two)” /]

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In the UK, the government is in crisis. And yet Blair insists on hanging on, and has indicated he still hopes to be Prime Minister at the end of June. Why, oh why, won’t he just do the honourable thing and go now?

The Home Office is in a terrible state. It’s lost control of immigration, asylum, prisons, and is interfering in judicial sentencing. A catalogue of blunders recently have shown us that they haven’t tracked criminals who have committed crimes abroad, they’ve lost contact with 322 convicted sex offenders who they’re supposed to be monitoring in this country, they’re illegally locking up asylum seekers who’ve done nothing wrong, they haven’t enforced travel bans where they should have, prisons are bursting at the seams, the head of the Youth Justice board has resigned in disgust, they’ve lost terror suspects, and now John Reid is sending letters to judges – interfering in their ability to judge properly – telling them to send only the ‘most serious’ offenders to prison – then saying that this means exactly the same as saying that people who post ‘any risk’ to the public should be locked up. Apparently ‘most serious’ and ‘serious’ and synonymous in the lexis of our Home Secretary. Oh, and this disaster of a department still wants us all to trust it with ID cards, which will run on current systems. Which have been oh-so-successful.

On top of that, the NHS is in a terrible state, with more doctors going to be out of work any time soon thanks to MMC meaning there aren’t enough jobs to go round, and a Health Secretary who believes we have too many doctors and that last year was the ‘best ever’ for the NHS. Patricia Hewitt announced she’d get NHS debt under control, and it doubled to half a billion pounds – yet this was seen as good progress, despite being twice as much debt as her target amount. The staff of the NHS have lost confidence in her and want her to resign, but Mr Blair continues to back her to the hilt. Oh, and she wants to criminalise any staff who are still there, and she thinks GPs are overpaid – despite it being her who decided how much they were paid.

Let’s not forget that inflation is at 3% – the highest rate for 11 years, we’re still fighting a war in Iraq which was all about weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, and the Ministry of Defence can’t even look after soliders properly. The Prime Minister himself is at the centre of a criminal investigation, with his closest advisers arrested and the net closing in on the PM himself.

Despite all this, Mr Blair thinks he can continue. He’s ‘not finished yet’. He genuinely beleives he’s the right person to lead a party into elections.

Surely Mr Blair can see that his administration is a disaster. Surely he can see that a new administration is needed to even have a hope of clearing up the mess created by this one. So please, Mr Blair, go soon, and let us get on with repairing the damage caused under your arrogant and destructive leadership.

An absolutely classic front page greets readers of The Sun today, with the fantastic headline ‘John Reid’s brain is missing’.

They claim that a nationwide search is underway for John Reid’s ‘walnut’ sized brain, as they are unhappy with the way the Home Secretary has dealt with the full jails fiasco – which can, of course, be added to a long list of Home Office fiascos from the last few weeks alone.

Can John Reid ride out the storm, or will he soon become the next casualty of the cursed position of Home Secretary? I suspect the former…

It’s also been particularly fun watching the news programmes reviewing the front pages with this one… Tim Wilcox on BBC News 24 certainly seemed amused by it – but then, for a newsreader, it must be pretty satisfying to get to read a headline like that…