Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Labour on Tuesday issued the writ for the Norwich North by-election, which will take place on 23 July.

When was the last time a Parliamentary contest involved two leading candidates who are so young - a combined age of 55?

The Conservative contender in Norwich North, Chloe Smith, is only 27, while her Labour opponent, Chris Ostrowski, is just 28.

If either of them is elected in the by-election they will replace the Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson as the "baby" of the Commons. Ms Swinson is now 29.

You can watch my first first report from Norwich North on Newsnight on Tuesday 30 June 2009 at 10.30pm.

Further to my story on Friday that the former MP for Norwich North Ian Gibson might stand as in Independent in the forthcoming by-election, he has now come out and endorsed the new Labour candidate Chris Ostrowski, and says he WON'T stand as an indpendent.

Ian Gibson, who stood down as Labour MP for Norwich North last month, has hinted to me that he may stand as an independent in the forthcoming by-election for the seat.

Talking to Newsnight in his first TV interview since he announced his resignation, Dr Gibson refuses to rule out the possibility of standing as an independent. He implies that his decision will partly depend on who Labour pick as their candidate to replace him.

The national Labour Party will tomorrow reduce the current shortlist of around 12-13 contenders down to three names. Members of the Norwich Labour Party are due to meet on Sunday to choose their candidate from these three.

Gibson is a popular figure in Norwich and if he does stand in the by-election, it would probably wreck any chance Labour has of keeping the seat. The Conservatives need a swing of just under six per cent to win Norwich North, an easy target in the current political climate.

An ICM poll in Norwich North commissioned by Norwich University and College Union gives the Tories a four per cent lead over Labour - 34 per cent to 30 per cent. The poll suggests the Lib Dems will simply be fighting Greens to avoid coming fourth, with the Lib Dems on 15 per cent and the Greens on 14 per cent.

A footnight to my report last night on spending cuts:

I understand that senior Treasury officials are already trying to work out which items of expenditure they can delay and stall over the next few months, so that if the Conservatives come to power next spring the Treasury will already have a list of possible items which the new Chancellor George Osborne can then announce he will cancel altogether.

It is very frustrating. I have a rule against political bets, but could have got 40-1 on John Bercow five weeks ago, when I first found that lots of Labour MPs were backing him and had a hunch he might win.

Indeed, I remember querying with Mr Bercow why his name was not even in the betting lists - the 40-1 was for the "others" category.

"If I were you I'd do something about that," I joked to Mr Bercow.

His name appeared in the lists the very next day, at around 6-1.
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A Labour MP was standing in the House of Commons gents and found himself standing next to David Cameron.

"For the first time in my life," admitted the Labour MP, "I voted for a Conservative today".

David Cameron inquired which of the Speaker candidates he meant.

"John Bercow," replied the MP.

"He doesn't count," said Mr Cameron.

This Speakership race looks like boiling down to a battle between two very left-wing Conservatives.

A friend, Tom Fairbrother, has just e-mailed me to say that in 1995, when Sir George Young was first appointed to John Major's Cabinet, the Times leader described him as being as just about as left-wing as you can be without being in the Labour Party.

Sir George Young's family had booked an Indian restaurant for 8pm this evening for the eventuality of "sad dad", but I'm now told now that's been cancelled, not least because the voting looks like going on a lot longer.

For every round of voting in this election, the Commons is having to print a new ballot paper, each with fewer and fewer names, as candidates are either excluded or withdraw.

"Considering how good at redacting they are," suggests a senior Conservative, "why can't they just blank them out!"

Further to last week's item on how Prime Minister Gordon Brown's press adviser John Woodcock is trying to replace John Hutton, who is stepping down as Labour MP for Barrow, I see that the local paper there, the North West Evening Mail, seems to think Mr Woodcock's got the nomination sewn up.

"Meet Labour's Man Set to Replace John Hutton" the front page proclaimed last Thursday.

Mr Woodcock, who used to work as an adviser to Mr Hutton, was in Barrow this weekend knocking on doors, armed, I'm told, with a list of party members.

If so, I can't imagine where he got the list from.

Mr Woodcock therefore has an advantage over his rivals for the Labour nomination, who include Catherine "Cat" Smith, who is even younger than Mr Woodcock.

She doesn't have a membership list or Mr Hutton's backing, but does actually come from Barrow.

Mr Hutton has just told me the North West Evening News item was a "very good article".

So what has happened to the leak inquiry into how details of MPs' expenses ended up in the hands of the Daily Telegraph?

The Commons authorities tried to bring in the police, but the police said they were not interested. So the Commons authorities are left pursuing their own investigation.

I am told they are still pretty confident they know where the leak came from, but haven't got enough evidence yet.

And I am also told that the leak inquiry is itself holding up official publication of expense details for 2008-09.

The authorities fear that if they put in train publication for expenses for the last financial year then, with the leaker still in place, an unredacted version would simply end up in the hands of the Telegraph again.

Some trivia in advance of today's election of a new Commons Speaker.

The two contenders who may well face each other in the final ballot, Margaret Beckett and Sir George Young, also faced each other as leader of the house, and shadow leader, in the period 1998-2000.

Mrs Beckett always insists she is a past Labour Party leader, since she briefly took over from John Smith for a few weeks after his death in 1994, before the party elected Tony Blair.

And leader, she insists she was, not acting leader - though I doubt if it is something she stressed much over the past two weeks.

So when is the last time a former party leader became Speaker? Not since the early 19th Century, I suspect.

Mrs Beckett has been an MP for 31 years, in two spells from 1974-79 and 1983 to date.

Of these 31 years, she spent 15 in government, 13 on the opposition front bench, and three as an ordinary backbencher.

The latter came in four short spells - 1974-75, 1983-84, 2007-08, and the last two weeks!

I've spoken to both Aurelia Young, wife of Sir George Young, and Margaret Beckett's husband Leo in the last few hours, and neither seemed very confident.

On Friday night I reported for Newsnight on how Robert Mann, one of the victims of the convicted fraudster Michael Brown, has referred the Liberal Democrats to the police, alleging possible money-laundering offences over the Β£2.4m donation which the Lib Dems took from Brown before the 2005 election.

It is worth adding a few points which I didn't have time to include then.

First, Mr Mann, a US tax lawyer, is very determined and angry, and unlikely to let matters drop until he has exhausted every option against the Lib Dems - regulatory, civil and criminal.

Second, he has a top-notch firm of City lawyers, Bivonas, behind him. They are experts in fraud offences.

Third, the City of London Police, to whom Mr Mann made his complaint about the Lib Dems, are ideally placed to tell whether the party committed any money-laundering offences under the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act, since they were the force who investigated Brown in the first place.

I'm told we may learn more on Tuesday.

Fourth, questions about Brown's donation will dog Nick Clegg until at least the general election.

He needs to find a much more convincing answer to the "moral" question of why he doesn't give the money back. Otherwise it will be hard for him and his party to claim any superiority over the other parties on the various sleaze issues.

Better still; the Lib Dems need to start thinking hard about how they do give the money back.

Finally, an amusing footnote. When I interviewed Brown for Newsnight last year he claimed that he had originally approached the Scottish Nationalists offering them a donation, but the SNP didn't respond and so he went to the Lib Dems instead.

Good judgement by the SNP, or plain incompetence?

Either way, if Brown is telling the truth (a real doubt, given he's a fraudster), Alex Salmond must be mightily relieved.

I get the impression from talking to MPs on Thursday that the Speakership may be slipping away from the maverick Conservative MP John Bercow.

On Monday I certainly felt he was the frontrunner, simply because he had the backing of so many Labour MPs. Mr Bercow's support within his own party is tiny - just Julian Lewis, Lee Scott and Charles Walker.

Over the last few days it appears that Margaret Beckett has built up a lot of support, especially among Labour MPs.

Mr Bercow has not impressed people at the various hustings meetings, and it worries some MPs that he does not have genuine cross-party backing.

On the other hand, it would be pretty unusual for a candidate to make the transition from government to the Speakership with hardly any gap in between.

Of course, past Speakers have previously held high office - including both George Thomas and Selwyn Lloyd in modern times, but they were both elected Speaker after many years on the backbenches.

If Mrs Beckett is elected it would be just a fortnight after she resigned as housing minister, having failed to persuade Prime Minister Gordon Brown that she should have a place back in Cabinet.

As Mr Bercow's chances seem to have fallen, those of Sir George Young have risen.

After his wife Aurelia informed me yesterday that all four of their children were educated at comprehensive schools, a senior Conservative told me today that in the 1960s Sir George and Lady Young were "real flower-power people".

But it is still hard to see Labour MPs voting for an Old Etonian.

The other consideration for whoever wins on Monday, is the possibility they may not survive long and that MPs elected after the next election might insist on picking a new Speaker.

That means that whether they come from the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat benches, the next Speaker is likely to be much tougher on the current government than Michael Martin was, if only to ensure his or her re-election as Speaker after the election.

Perhaps the biggest curiosity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's reshuffle is how Bob Ainsworth became defence secretary, when he was hardly the most talented minister in the lower ranks of the government.

Last night I heard the most plausible explanation so far.

It is widely thought that the job had originally been earmarked for Shaun Woodward, but at the last moment defence chiefs objected - something to do with Mr Woodward's very vocal support in the past for gay rights not going down very well in the ranks.

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To the Reform Club last night for the launch of Charles Williams' new biography of Harold Macmillan.

Mr Williams, who was once a banker and is one of Labour's industry spokesmen in the Lords, has crafted a new career as a biographer - of de Gaulle, Petain, Sir Don Bradman and now his first British subject.

And I had to buy his book, as I am trying to buy a copy of every biography of every prime minister ever published - about 1,000 volumes in all, I reckon!

Poor Lord Irvine, the former lord chancellor, spent Β£25 on a copy of the book, only to put it aside on a shelf and then find someone had stolen it - in the Reform Club of all places!

So much for crime falling under New Labour.

I was approached at the reception by Aurelia Young, wife of Sir George Young, one of the candidates for Speaker of the Commons (and daughter of the sculptor Oscar Nemon).

She said it was terribly unfair that her husband was being pilloried as an Old Etonian, when he could hardly help what school he went to.

And Lady Young pointed out that she and her husband had sent all four of their children to comprehensive schools, though she did confess that one of them had later gone to a private school.
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After the appointment of Simon Lewis as Prime Minister Gordon Brown's new Director of Communications, in place of Michael Ellam, I hear that another of Mr Brown's spin doctors is about to move on.

John Woodcock, who has been one of Mr Brown's political press advisers since only last autumn, is to get a new, backroom, strategic role in Number 10. But that job may not last long either, since Mr Woodcock is also trying to become Labour MP for Barrow, following the decision of John Hutton, the former Defence Secretary, to step down at the next election.

Mr Woodcock got to know Barrow while working for some years as Mr Hutton's political adviser before he went to Downing Street. I understand it's his first attempt to become a Labour candidate. Although Mr Woodcock is barely 30, and looks younger, he is being seen as the front runner for the nomination, and will have Mr Hutton's backing.

However, being seen as the "leadership candidate" is often a handicap in such contests.

Kitty Ussher's resignation last night is curious. She says she is also stepping down from Parliament at the next election, because of the problems of combining politics with being the mother of two chilldren under five.

If so, why be a minister as well as an MP? She says she discussed her retirement from Parliament with Prime Minister Gordon Brown some time ago. This is strange too. Only last week she gave a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ colleague of mine the strongest impression that she would be contesting the next election.

It must be intensely annoying only nine days after Mr Brown completed his reshuffle. One minister told me: "She was convinced she was going to be sacked in the reshuffle and frankly it would have been better if she had fessed up then, because now there's got to be another bloody change."

So another woman leaves the government - following on from Jacqui Smith, Beverley Hughes, Hazel Blears, Caroline Flint and Jane Kennedy. And another Blairite quits - after Smith, Blears, James Purnell, John Hutton and Caroline Flint.

The government is wading into dangerous territory with a potential punch-up with that most crucial of government employees - ministerial drivers, the men and women who know where many of the political bodies are buried.

Last Friday, Unite, the union which represents more than 60 drivers - the majority - formally received proposals to cut the hours of drivers in order to comply with the EU Working Time Directive.

The plan is that the pool of drivers would be greatly enlarged, so that each minister would have two drivers per day, not one.

The result would be a lot less overtime for each existing driver, and so a lot less pay. One union estimate has it that the average driver could lose about Β£12,000. On the other hand, the plans would mean dozens of extra jobs. So it's very tricky politically, especially for a government that doesn't really believe in the Working Time Directive.

Unite's drivers will meet next Wednesday to consider their response to the proposals, at the start of a period of negotiations. The government hopes to introduce the new regime on 12 October.

My advice to ministers would be to tread very carefully indeed. The stories drivers could tell about their passengers could prove even more damaging than recent revelations about their expenses.

Off-guard comments, political plotting, and secret mistresses - the ministerial drivers have a reputation for knowing it all.

An amusing footnote on Simon Lewis's appointment as the new Downing Street Director of Communications.

Lewis served as Director of Communications for the old SDP from 1986-88, a period when his friend and new colleague Peter Mandelson did the very same job for Labour (more precisely, from 1986 to 1990).

And another colleague of theirs, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward, who plays a big advisory role in Downing Street these days, held the exactly same post for the Conservatives from 1991 to 1992!

Tomorrow is the big day when details of MPs expenses are officially published by the House of Commons authorities.

The big thing most journalists will be examining is how much information has been redacted or blacked out at the request of MPs - details of private addresses and other sensitive information.

But the interesting question isn't just what has been removed - but whether any MPs have withdrawn their requests to have it redacted on the grounds that it has already appeared in the Daily Telegraph and therefore it would be embarrassing to show what they didn't want the world to see.

The appointment of Simon Lewis as the new Downing Street Director of Communications - first broken on this blog last night - is another small triumph for the long-departed Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Mr Lewis was once Communications Director of the SDP. Other former SDPers with big roles in politics these days include Chris Grayling, Lord Andrew Adonis, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne.

But notably not Peter Mandelson. Although several of Mandelson's friends from the early 1980s left Labour for the SDP - such as Roger Liddle and Derek Scott - and many wondered if he would follow them, I've always thought it one of the most important features of his biography that Mandelson stuck with Labour even during the grim years of the early 80s.

I didn't have time to mention last night the government's significant defeat in the Lords on an amendment to the Elections Bill tabled by the Labour peer Dale Campbell-Savours, which would ban donations to political parties from tax exiles.

This was opposed by another of those strange alliances between the Labour and Conservative front benches, but Mr Campbell-Savours managed to drum up enough support from Labour rebels, Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers to get his amendment through quite comfortably.

This raises the prospect of a big Labour revolt and government defeat when the bill returns to the Commons.

A similar amendment was tabled by the backbench Labour MP Gordon Prentice when the bill was previously in the Commons.

It got huge backing from Labour MPs, but the government's timetable motion meant it was never debated or voted upon.

If the amendment remains part of the legislation it might finally flush out whether the Conservative Deputy Chairman Lord Ashcroft pays British tax these days, a question which both he and his colleagues steadfastly refuse to answer.

What I don't fully understand is why the government won't accept the amendment. I can only assume Labour also hopes for some big contributions from tax exiles.

I am told that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is about to appoint a new communications director in Downing Street.

The name mentioned is Simon Lewis, one of the most prominent public relations men in the City.

Mr Lewis was once communications director at Buckingham Palace, before moving on to similar roles at Centrica and then Vodafone.

More amusingly, he's the brother of Will Lewis, editor of the Daily Telegraph, the paper which has done so much to embarrass Gordon Brown's ministers over their expenses.

It would mean "lawyers, lawyers, lawyers" thundered a passionate Prime Minister Gordon Brown this afternoon when explaining why the Iraq inquiry could not be held in public.

One might begin to suspect our PM had a thing about members of the legal profession. A bigger problem than with women, as Former Europe Minister Caroline Flint claimed, perhaps?

And which lawyers have driven him this way? I can think of a couple - and I stress "couple" - whose names begin with "B".

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I had confirmed today the story by Matthew D'Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph eight days ago, that George Osborne forecast to members of the Shadow Cabinet that James Purnell would resign that night.

It seems extraordinary that he should have imparted this news to more than 30 members of the Conservative front bench about 12 hours before the prime minister himself was informed!

And how did Mr Osborne know?

I can't be certain, but he does have a very close friend in the editorial high command of The Times.

I'm interested to see that the distinguished war historian Sir Lawrence Freedman has been appointed to the new inquiry into the Iraq war, announced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown today.

Critics of the war might argue Sir Lawrence was himself one of the causes of the war!

The professor once told me how, back in 1999, he was contacted by Downing Street seeking his thoughts for a speech on humanitarian intervention which the-then Prime Minister Tony Blair was about to make in Chicago.

When was military action justified for, liberal, humanitarian reasons?

Sir Lawrence says he was astonished when he heard and read Mr Blair's famous Chicago speech - perhaps the most important of Blair's premiership - that it was based largely on the memo he had sent to Number 10.

And the rest was history.

Nor will critics of the war be very happy about the appointment of the other historian Sir Martin Gilbert, the official biographer of Winston Churchill.

In 2004, he went so far as to .

Tonight on Newsnight, watch Hazel Blears' childhood appearance in the film A Taste of Honey.

The story, I'm told, is that the director Tony Richardson turned up in Pendelton, part of Salford, spotted a group of street urchins, including Hazel Blears and her brother, and wanted to film them.

Their parents insisted that they get dressed up in their best clothes, so a five-year-old Blears appears wearing a kilt.

I understand she was not paid for her part in one of British cinema's most groundbreaking films.

The new Communities and Local Government Secretary, John Denham, tells me that when he went to see the Queen last night to collect the seals of his new office, he also had to hand in his old seals as the outgoing Secretary of State for Universities, Innovation and Skills.

And having presided over a government department which lasted less than two years, Mr Denham was sorely tempted to ask the Queen if he could keep his old seals on the grounds that he had been the only ever Secretary of State for Universities, Innovation and Skills - a bit like sports teams being allowed to keep a trophy once they have won it several times.

Mr Denham is also curious as to whether there has ever been a government department which has only ever had one secretary of state in its entire life.

Harold Wilson's famous Department of Economic Affairs, largely created to keep George Brown happy, is often cited as an example of a short-lived Whitehall department.

But in fact the old DEA also had two subsequent secretaries of state after George Brown - Michael Stewart and Peter Shore.

A chill must have gone down the spine of this morning. He is the Conservative candidate for Gloucester at the next election, with high hopes of winning.

Labour has a 4,271 majority in the constituency, and it must be ripe for picking next time - one of David Cameron's obvious targets.

Only today, the Labour MP for Gloucester, the former minister .

By convention, when a former Labour MP is the Speaker, he is not opposed by the Conservatives (Labour used to abide by the same convention with former Tory MPs who became Speaker, but dropped the practice years ago.)

So If Mr Dhanda does become Speaker, Mr Graham will be expected to stand down and give the sitting MP a straight, and the Tories will suddenly be deprived of one of their targets (though the Lib Dems would probably still stand).

In fact becoming Speaker is probably Mr Dhanda's best hope of holding onto Gloucester.
Indeed Labour MPs have suggested to me recently that they ought to find someone from amongst their ranks with a marginal seat for this very reason.

But Mr Dhanda is of course an honourable man, and no such thought could possibly explain why he is putting his name forward.

And Mr Dhanda must have some chance of winning, since he seems to be one of only two Labour MPs officially in the running so far - Margaret Beckett declared this afternoon - and, in case you have forgotten, Labour still has a good Commons majority.

Much fun has been had about Peter Mandelson's new title, First Secretary of State, with widespread references to old-style Communist regimes.

To be fair, the title has often been used before in British government.

The two most recent holders were John Prescott (2001-07) and Michael Heseltine (1995-97), though they were also deputy prime minister.

Mr Mandelson is now deputy prime minister in all but name, but could not be given that particular title without Harriet Harman kicking up a big fuss, since she is deputy leader of the Labour Party, and was actually elected to that post.

I point out in my biography of Michael Heseltine (Hamish Hamilton,
1997) that the title First Secretary of State was previously held by several leading ministers in the 1960s: first Rab Butler (1962-63) under Harold Macmillan; and then under Harold Wilson we had George Brown (1964-66), Michael Stewart
(1966-68) and Barbara Castle (1968-70).

Butler also combined it with being deputy prime minister, while Brown was deputy leader of the Labour party

More important, Mr Mandelson has rescued the Gordon Brown government in much the same way Mr Heseltine rescued John Major in 1995, though unlike Mr Heseltine in 1995, Mr Mandelson was not a possible leadership challenger.

You may also have noted that Mr Mandelson was also given a third title last week - Lord President of the Council. And what's the importance of that?

Well ideally, Mandelson would have liked to have become foreign secretary, the post held by his grandfather Herbert Morrison for seven months in 1951.

Lord President is kind of consolation prize, since it's the job Morrison held between 1945 and 1951. Romantic, huh?

This means that the next time Mandelson appears on Newsnight, his caption should read as follows:

Baron Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, Lord President of the Council, First Secretary of State, and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Strictly speaking we ought to add The Right Honourable - though Newsnight ditched that years ago in a concession to modernity, and brevity.

I will do my utmost to try and ensure that all 34 words appear on screen, and I am sure that many viewers will be extremely annoyed if they don't.

I do wish prime ministers would stop messing around with the structure of government departments, and I'm sure many civil servants agree with me.

When Gordon Brown set up the new Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (which must take the all-time silly title for a government department), I remember doorstepping its then new secretary of state John Hutton in Whitehall, and asking him what the difference was between "business" and "enterprise".

He was stumped for an answer.

And on that same day I rather riskily suggested that splitting education between John Denham's then new department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), and Ed Balls new Department of Children, Schools and Families would not last.

I've been proved half right already, as the DIUS has just been merged with DBERR, to become the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. (It won't be long no doubt, before it's shortened to "Dubious").

So, what I still think of the Department of Trade and Industry - or DTI - has assumed yet one more guise. When I get a spare moment I will try and list the changes since 1970.

Still, it keeps the Whitehall sign-writers and removal men happily employed. And who cares about continuity?

Ian Gibson, who was the Labour MP for Norwich North has just announced he's standing down immediately as an MP, following the Labour Party's decision to ditch him as a candidate at the next election over his expense problems.

This means a by-election shortly in Norwich North.

An obvious candidate, in the circumstances, might be Martin Bell, who has strong Norwich connections and, like Gibson, supports Norwich City.

But Mr Bell has just told me he has no intention of standing for the seat.

"I think Ian Gibson's been rather badly treated by the Labour Party, and I've written to tell him so. There have been so many worse cases. And if all the miscreants were excluded from Parliament there would be hardly anybody left."

Still it should be an interesting contest. Labour's majority in Norwich North is 5,459, or 11.6%, which in the current climate should be a pretty easy gain for the Conservatives.

The Alan Johnson campaign is effectively now in place. People round him are all ready to go once, and if, Gordon Brown steps down.

Mr Johnson has quietly been meeting figures expected to play key roles in his operation, though he is keen to stress to every team member that he is certainly not plotting to get rid of Mr Brown, and does not want to be known as a plotter.

Frankly, Mr Johnson would be an idiot not to prepare. But just like Michael Heseltine in 1995, and Michael Howard in 2003, it is all hush hush, getting ready for what might happen.

No big team gatherings. Lots of one to one meetings. Nods, winks and understandings. Working out who would do what.

Nothing so crude as Michael Portillo installing phone lines in 1995. But let me assure you the Johnson campaign is now ready for someone to press the Go button.

Sources at Westminster confirm a key, pivotal figure is the Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe who ran Mr Johnson's campaign for deputy leader two years ago.

Mr Johnson and Mr Sutcliffe desperately want to avoid being seen to topple Mr Brown themselves.

But Sutcliffe is particularly curious as to whether a stalking horse might come forward, such as John McDonnell.

Mind you, Mr Sutcliffe may not be the best man for the job. One of Labour's most.
conspiratorial MPs, who is not a great fan of the PM, told me: "If Gerry Sutcliffe's organising it, Gordon Brown will survive!"