Tony Blair faces the prospect of a celebrity anti-war candidate seeking to unseat him in his constituency stronghold of Sedgfield at the coming general election if a suitably wholesome figure can be found to follow Martin Bell’s 1997 example.

In response to this

Labour dismissed the idea as “a silly stunt”

This is certainly not something I’d say if I were particularly interested in getting people involved in the democratic process. Surely giving the electorate a choice is the whole point of an election, not just a “silly stunt”.

Perhaps this betrays a far more deeply held attitude in the Labour party: This is just a silly stunt in an silly election. They’re so sure that they’re going to win that they don’t really care about the other candidates and what they have to say, they’d rather just overlook the democratic process because they’re sure they will win and just be re-elected. It’s a foregone conclusion for them.

Yet another reason why Labour shouldn’t be elected.

Profoundly undemocratic; a nonsense; an outrage; a disgrace.

This Times leader clearly has strong opinions on the methods Labour used to force through its anti-terror legislation.

I’ve covered my opinions on the legislation itself, but I’ve yet to register my disgust about the fact that the government have forced through some of the most significant legislation of our time with just six hours of debate. That can’t be a good thing, and certainly can’t be in the best interests of the public.

And this from a man who says he’s not arrogant. To feel that you can force this kind of thing through with such a pathetic debate is arrogant. Mr Blair should learn that he doesn’t always know best, and the best way for him to learn this would be to suffer a battering at the next election.

This bill got through with a Labour majority of just fourteen. This shows why a party having a huge majority is generally bad for the country: A huge proportion of Labour MPs can be against something, as well as both of the main opposition parties, and it can still be passed. If the parties had roughly equal numbers, then the bill would have to be a compromise, healthily debated, and so would simply emerge as a better, crucially safer, bill.

Tony Blair and his government, despite their protestations, are clearly arrogant: If anybody’s “Out of order and control”, it’s them. And I hope that you, the electorate, will send that message to them by voting for someone else.

It is exactly this sort of thing that makes me uncomfortable with the idea of the proposed new terror legislation. The security services could detect that they were planning to ‘attack’ the foreign office, but clearly would not have the necessary proof of this being a destructive attack. Without the burden of proof being upon them, the police could have then placed these men under house arrest, without trial, and not even telling them why this measure has been taken. This would have a huge psycholigcal impact on the individual and their family, and would, now we know the full facts, have been completely unjust.

And this news is too conveniently timed for most people. They tend to think that Mr Blair has annoucned this because there’s an election round the corner. Which is either a reflection of the cynicism people feel towards the Blair government due to their extensive spinning in the past, or just a true reflection of a dishonest and deceitful government. Either way, they shouldn’t be elected again this time round.

Richard Ingrams:

I pointed out last week how Mr Blair had been publicly humiliated when he appeared on Channel 5 to answer questions from members of the public. One young man asked him how, in view of all the disastrous consequences of the Iraqi invasion, including thousands of deaths, he was able to sleep at night.

My colleague Andrew Rawnsley, however, saw it in a different light. Was it not possible, he asked, that Blair’s humiliation was something that had been deliberately encouraged by Alastair Campbell and his fellow spin doctors? The idea would be that the public, when seeing the Prime Minister under fire from all quarters, would feel sympathy welling up and thus be more likely to vote Labour come the general election than they were before.

An interesting theory, but I doubt this is the case. People want a strong leader who can stand the heat, not someone who looks, as Kirsty pointed out, like he’s being tortured. Still, I’m no political strategist, and who can say what Campbell and Co are up too?

Tony Blair risks becoming an electoral liability, according to government ministers as the Prime Minister faces fresh accusations that his ‘presidential style’ is starting to affect Labour’s support.

If it’s taken them this long to work it out, I rather suggest that Mr Blair should get some new aides.

Another Blairite minister admitted he had been taken aback by the hostility to the leader on the doorsteps: ‘There are people shouting “if you get rid of Blair we’ll vote Labour”, although I think a lot of that is bluff.’

They were surprised at this? Have they no idea whatsoever about what’s going on in this country? Tony Blair is deeply unpopular with many, many people.

‘Is Tony less popular than he was eight years ago? … yes. Does that mean he’s no longer an asset? No, he remains a huge asset.’

This ‘senior strategist’ has completely lost his or her marbles if they think that Mr Blair is an assest through his popularity. There are precious few people who like Mr Blair (though I admit there are still some). But he is, by no means, a ‘huge asset’ to his party. If Gordon Brown were currently at the helm, as I’ve said before, the Labour party would win the next election with a huge majority. But it’s a bit late, now.

This is the kind of area in which Labour shine. If only they had Gordon Brown at the helm, they could easily storm the next general election, where the latest FT Poll put them at a two-figure majority – very good in most circumstances, but a big drop for Mr Blair. The Conservatives are doing some serious catch-up work – only a two point difference now – which is obviously good for my wish of a close-run thing, with no party having a very large majority.

This would appear to be good news, though it’s noticeable that the North-East still has a much higher rate than the rest of the country:

These rates are clearly still high, but at least they’re moving in the right direction. Clearly, someone’s forgotten to point that out to the Daily Mail, who are reporting that

The number of teenage girls getting pregnant has risen, new statistics show.

The difference is that the Times take the logical approach of reporting the pregnancy rate, whereas The Daily Mail choose to report using the raw figures, which it is clearly absurd to compare year-on-year. But they have done. So either they’re bottom of the maths class, or they just want to scaremonger. You decide.

More controversial is the bit tagged on to the Times article:

Abortions are at an all-time high, reaching 18.6 per 1,000 women in March last year. The number aged 30-34 having abortions doubled between 1976 and 2003, to 14,600. The total number of all ages having abortions in 2003 was 190,700.

I don’t have a problem with this, but I’m fairly sure someone will have. And to think, the Daily Mail wouldn’t have needed to fiddle the figures if it had just gotten its knickers in a twist about this.

Transcripts of evidence given in private by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, to an official inquiry suggest that the crucial advice on the legality of war, presented to parliament in his name, was written for him by two of Tony Blair’s closest allies.

The document, seen by the Guardian, reveals the attorney general’s private exchanges with Lord Butler during the course of his inquiry into the use of intelligence in the run-up to war against Iraq.
In them, the attorney general suggests his parliamentary statement giving legal backing to Britain’s participation in the invasion was “set out” by Charles Falconer, then Home Office minister, and Baroness Morgan, the prime minister’s director of political-government relations.

In apparent contradiction to his Butler evidence, the attorney general yesterday sought to deny that 10 Downing Street had any influence over his decisive statement.

“It is nonsense to suggest that No 10 wrote the statement,” he said.

So was he lying under oath or to the public? And doesn’t either mean that he should resign?

Shouldn’t Blair apologise for interfering where no politican should? And do we really want to re-elect somebody who encourages and partakes in this sort of behaviour?

The attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, warned less than two weeks before the invasion of Iraq that military action could be ruled illegal.

The government was so concerned that it might be prosecuted it set up a team of lawyers to prepare for legal action in an international court.

And a parliamentary answer issued days before the war in the name of Lord Goldsmith – but presented by ministers as his official opinion before the crucial Commons vote – was drawn up in Downing Street, not in the attorney general’s chambers.

This shouldn’t play well for Mr Blair, but it probably won’t make much difference in the long run. Nobody trusts what he has to say over Iraq, and facts like these shouldn’t make much difference to the general election result.

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said the government’s position had been seriously undermined. “The substance of the attorney general’s advice, and the process by which it was partially published, simply do not stand up to scrutiny,” he said.

Sir Menzies added: “The issue is all the more serious since the government motion passed by the House of Commons on March 18 2003, endorsing military action against Iraq, was expressly based on that advice.”

He continued: “The public interest, which the government claims justifies non-publication of the whole of the advice, can only be served now by the fullest disclosure.”

I don’t really see how publishing the advice would serve the public interest, but I think that hiding it is against the public interest. So, in that sense, I think Mr Blair should come clean and publish the full advice. But he almost certainly won’t.

It’s almost at the stage where we can say ‘another day, another poll, but at least this one contains some good news: The gap is closing between the Conservatives and Labour, and hence Labour’s potential majority is beginning to slide. Why Michael Howard is getting such good ratings when his policies are so abhorrent is beyond me, but since it’s working in my favour right now I’m not going to complain. Once the campaign starts and the Lib Dems get a bit of a boost, we could easily see a rough three-way split in the popular vote, which I personally think would make the kind of Parliament which is needed right now.

This election certainly seems to be getting interesting as time goes by now, after that brief period where it seemed that nothing was happening and that Labour were going to walk this election with a huge majority and not much of a challenge.

Interesting, too, to see that floating voters (I do dislike that term) greatly prefer Gordon Brown. There’s no way Mr Blair could survive anything near a full third term if he’s seen as doing great damage by leading the party into a less than hugely successful general election, so we might well see him resigning sooner rather than later – though he’ll doubtless put it down to his health.

It will be fascinating to see how this all plays out over the coming weeks.