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Geoff Hoon made it pretty clear in his interview with Jeremy last night that he's very interested in becoming a European Commissioner when Peter Mandelson steps down next year. It seems extraordinary that the Chief Whip could even contemplate causing a by-election in Ashfield, of all places, where Labour suffered a terrible by-election defeat in 1977 during the Jim Callaghan government. Mr Hoon's majority is 10,213, so Labour could easily lose Ashfield in the current climate.

And there's a long history of voters punishing parties when MPs resign from the Commons to take better-paid jobs elsewhere. Labour should remember what happened when Bruce Millan resigned to become a European Commissioner back in 1988, and Labour lost his Glasgow Govan seat, in a famous triumph for the SNP.

Thirty nine academics from the Political Studies Association placed the Labour leaders as follows:

1. Clement Attlee, 1935-55
2. Tony Blair, 1994-2007
3. Harold Wilson, 1963-76
4. Hugh Gaitskell, 1955-63
5. Neil Kinnock, 1983-92
6. John Smith, 1992-94
7. Jim Callaghan, 1976-80
8. Gordon Brown, 2007-08
9. Michael Foot, 1980-83

So bad news for Gordon Brown, in eighth place, and a surprising showing for Hugh Gaitskell, who never served as PM or even won an election.

In our poll of well over 100 activists, Attlee again came top, and Foot was again bottom, but Gordon Brown did a lot better.

These rankings were:

1. Clement Attlee, 1935-55
2. Tony Blair, 1994-2007
3. Gordon Brown, 2007-08
4. Harold Wilson, 1963-76
5. John Smith, 1992-94
6. Neil Kinnock, 1983-92
7. Hugh Gaitskell, 1955-63
8. Jim Callaghan, 1976-80
9. Michael Foot, 1980-83

News reaches me from numerous sources of a great row at the Guardian's women's dinner on Sunday night.

These occasions are strictly women-only, I'm told, which meant that not even Jacqui Smith's two male detectives were allowed into the room, and so had to sit patiently outside whilst the seven Guardian women and their 15 Labour Party guests wined, dined and talked.

At one point Polly Toynbee raised her favourite topic, asking whether Labour should increase taxes for richer people, as she argues passionately.

Jacqui Smith said she thought this was a terrible idea, a great betrayal of everything Labour had promised and stood for since 1997.

She was backed by Ruth Kelly, and I'm told, Tessa Jowell, who warned that if the rich had to pay more tax they would all flee to New York.

Several backbenchers made the case for higher tax, and interestingly they were joined by at least two rising stars form the junior ministerial ranks - the Solicitor General Vera Baird, and Harriet Harman's deputy Helen Goodman.

They both said Labour should pay a lot more attention to its grassroots supporters.

It all got very animated, exposing huge divisions within the government, on what's a big issue at the moment.

Eventually, having led the anti-tax forces at length, Jacqui Smith got up and announced she had to go.

Then, as she was walking out of the room, she turned and pointedly said to Vera Baird, "I hope you don't think I'm leaving because I'm in a strop, because I'm not!"

Update

Another source has since told me she reckons that Jacqui Smith walked out in anger at what her ministerial colleagues were saying.

When Labour held its big gala dinner recently, the union Unite booked several tables, and the union provided a list of names with their "dietary" requirements.

Union big-wigs are not great vegetarians, not even these days, and so the word "none" was written in name after name.

Until the list got to Unite's co-leader Derek Simpson, where someone wrote "fish and chips".

Gordon Brown faces two big bests today.

His conference speech, of course, but also another challenge behind the scenes.

It's a tradition at these conferences, in the run-up to a general election, for parties to organise photo sessions where any of their Parliamentary candidates can be pictured shaking hands with grinning party big-wigs.

So Labour had an hour long session with David Miliband on Sunday, where I'm told there was a "very long" queue - about 60-70 people.

Yesterday it was Ed Balls' turn to be photographed with budding MPs, but he, I'm afraid, only attracted about 30 admirers.

The big photo-opp with Gordon Brown was due to take place at 5.15 yesterday, but was then postponed until today.

It will be interesting too see whether the leader manages to attract as many people as the heir apparent.

My source has promised to let me know.

Update

In the end Gordon Brown came out easily on top when his photo pool took place after his speech.

There were more than 120 candidates in the queue which all rather reflected the week in Manchester - early promise by David Milliband but Gordon Brown came out on top.

A German TV crew was interviewing the left-wing MP Dennis Skinner here this lunchtime.

Gradually Skinner gathered a small, appreciative audience, and launched into full flow, with an attack on the Conservatives and Old Etonians.

Whereupon the cameraman, totally unbeknown to Skinner, quietly stopped filming.

The cameraman was Dan Goodhart, son of the late Conservative MP Philip Goodhart, and an Old Etonian.

A story is doing the rounds about Siobhan McDonagh, the MP who led the calls for a leadership contest.

Yesterday, I am told, she was sitting among the conference exhibition stands and suddenly approached by the Brownite minister Tom Watson, one of the ring-leaders of the 2006 coup which unseated Tony Blair.

Watson is reported to have put his arm round McDonagh and asked if she was OK.

McDonagh was a little puzzled, and asked why Watson was enquiring.

"It's just that I know exactly how you feel. Two years ago I went through exactly what you're going through now."

Sadly, Siobhan McDonagh denies that it happened.

I was fascinated to see that Malcolm Turnbull was this week elected leader of the Liberal Party in Australia, i.e. the Australian Conservatives, and therefore leader of the Australian Opposition.

Turnbull first made his name - in Britain as much as in Australia - back in 1987. As a young barrister, he humiliated the then British Cabinet Secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, who had flown to Sydney to try to stop the publication of the book Spycatcher by the former MI5 officer Peter Wright. Turnbull won the case and, with tough cross-examination, forced Armstrong to admit his infamous phrase "economical with the truth".

I knew Turnbull quite well at Oxford in the late 1970s, when he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a brash, abrasive speaker in the Union. On one infamous occasion he almost came to fisticuffs at one of my debates with the then Liberal MP Clement Freud (for reasons I now forget).

Since then he's become the richest man in Australian politics, and I don't think I've ever known anyone who's enjoyed such success in so many fields - four by my reckoning.

- Journalism where he worked as a TV reporter whilst still a student in Sydney, and then as a reporter on Harry Evans's Sunday Times whilst he was supposedly studying at Oxford.

- The law, as explained above.

- In business, where he and the son of the former Australian PM Gough Whitlam founded a highly successful investment bank Whitlam Turnbull. His bank was eventually taken over by Goldman Sachs, and Turnbull became Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Australia. He also made a fortune from co-founding, and then selling the Australian internet service provider OzEmail.

- And finally in politics, where he led the Republican Movement which forced the 1999 referendum - ultimately unsuccessful - on whether Australia should ditch the monarchy.

And now, after only four years as an MP, and a brief stint in John Howard's now fallen government, he's become Leader of the Australian Opposition.

Yet, strangely, Turnbull's maternal great-uncle was the 1930s left-wing British Labour Party leader George Lansbury.

Malcolm may not like me saying so publicly, but I've always felt Australia's a bit small for a man of his talents and huge ambition.

The Newsnight high command didn't provide me with enough time last night to give you the full results of our survey of the best post-war leader of the Liberal Democrats, and its two forerunner parties, the Liberals and the Social Democrats (SDP). So here is the detail...

Read the rest of this entry

With so many other important developments around at the moment - financial and political - Nick Clegg might just get away with his horrendous gaffe when he said the basic single state pension is about Β£30 pounds when it is in fact Β£90.70, three times as much.

In normal times, it would be an error which Clegg would find hard to lie down. It badly undermines attempts to portray him as being in touch with ordinary people. Pensioners are a huge and growing constituency, and they're more inclined to vote in elections than any other age group.

But I suspect Gordon Brown would have been in a lot more trouble had he made the same error. Or David Cameron, as it would have added to his image of coming from a wealthy background.

Have you noticed, by the way, that Nick Clegg seems to have a thing about the figure 30 when embarrassed by a reporter's question? Thirty, of course - or up to 30 - was the number of lovers he claimed to have had.

This afternoon's discussion at the Lib Dem conference on tax cuts was one of the best debates I have heard at a party conference in many a year. In fact, not since Labour's big nuclear disarmament debate of the 1980s have I heard exchanges so passionate and genuine.

The Lib Dems managed to organise it so that both sides were properly represented without trying to stage manage things in the way that other parties are occasionally suspected of doing. And I even got the impression that one or two people may have cast their votes on the basis of the arguments they had heard - it's pretty rare that happens in politics these days.

But the best little feature - amidst a long series of five minutes speeches - was a ten minutes gap where ten delegates were given just 60 seconds to make their point. And it was remarkable how people spoke better in 60 seconds than they would probably have done in 5 or 10 minutes.

When I come to power I will pass a new law making it obligatory for all debates at party conferences to limit speeches from the floor to just 60 seconds.

(Mind you, critics say that if I were ever to come to power there probably wouldn't be political parties anymore anyway.)

Despite the frosty response to Charles Clarke's intervention this week, 'What do we do about Gordon?' has often exercised the minds of many Labour MPs over the last 12 months.

The options for the future of the Brown government broadly break down into four categories: Brown muddles on, Brown radically changes his style of government; Brown is successfully challenged, Brown resigns of his own accord.

Until recently, I thought the fourth option - resignation - was very unlikely. Prime Ministers are not like ordinary mortals.

If you or I found that large numbers of people were publicly saying we were doing a bad job, then many of us would get the message and step down, or move onto something easier.

But the kind of people who become PM, who have spent their lives seeking power, are not the sort to let go very easily. They hold on amidst the stormiest conditions, and it's very difficult to dislodge them.

But a few days ago someone who's been advising David Miliband convinced me that it's not wholly implausible that Gordon Brown might be an exception to this rule, and suggested circumstances in which Brown might just call it a day.

The theory stemmed from Gordon Brown's famous Macavity tendency - the way in which in the past, whenever there was trouble, he would often disappear from the public eye.

If Labour was heading for a disastrous result in the next election, would Brown be able to face the possibility of a humiliating campaign? Instead, my source suggested, might not Brown step down just before the election, avoid the ridicule and misery, and allow someone else perhaps to carry out a damage limitation exercise. Put that way, it did seem a possibility.

Another scenario would be for Brown to step down because of illness. Indeed three other Prime Ministers since the war - Churchill, Eden and Macmillan - have resigned on the grounds of ill health, though they all lived for many years afterwards.

Gordon Brown, however, appears to be in pretty good condition, especially since losing a lot of weight over the summer. Unlike Tony Blair, who had slight heart difficulties, Brown is not known to have any health problems, and it's hard to believe that in the modern world he could get away with feigning illness without it being discovered.

Over the next few weeks I'll explore the other three options.

It's interesting to see that some Labour people are being pretty cheerful at the moment.

"The Tories flagship economic policy is to share the proceeds of growth," a government insider has just remarked to one of my colleagues. "Well," he added, "we've shot that fox!"