CentreRight

Candidates for speaker aren't supposed to campaign are they? It's all hushed encounters in dark bars and quiet corners, soundings being taken on behalf of others, significant glances and unspoken words. There aren't really supposed to to be candidates even, in the sense that we understand "candidate" with people making a positive case for themselves. Somebody emerges after a vote and is dragged ever so reluctantly to the Chair (although Michael Martin didn't look that reluctant on the footage). This might explain why David Davis, Vince Cable and others are being so robustly reluctant, at this stage anyway.

But that's all seriously old politics now. Very closed-source. The Speaker had to go, because he didn't have the authority to restore public trust in the House of Commons. The next Speaker must have genuine credibility with the public as well as amongst MPs. That's not going to happen if candidates and MPs simply allow the process to be conducted internally amongst themselves. Candidates have the opportunity over the next month to do it all very differently: to engage with the public; to set out the principles they would apply and the reforms they would make; to be open to scrutiny and question; to seek open support from the public and from fellow MPs; to be, in a meaningful and transparent sense, candidates.

It is therefore shocking to see the Daily Mirror declare already that Labour MPs are likely to vote en masse for John Bercow. This is before we know who the contenders might be, let alone anything about what they might think. There is no positive case for him, at the moment. If the report is true, it shows that the parliamentary Labour Party still doesn't understand what open politics is all about, or how recent events have changed the way the Commons must operate. The new Speaker needs to have genuine cross-party support; this smacks of partisanship, even whipping. They know full well that John Bercow will have to work very hard indeed to persuade many of his Conservative colleagues that he would be suitable. John Bercow would be well-advised to distance himself from this, and all the party leaders and chief whips should publicly affirm that they will leave this contest to individual MPs.

Douglas Carswell, obviously. He has rightly emerged with great credit as somebody who cares deeply that we have an effective House of Commons. He understood the problem earlier than anyone else and so we should listen carefully to his analysis about how to put it right. Beware of attempts to dismiss him as a "maverick".

And also those who spoke out in the House of Commons on Monday.

However, the list of those who put their names to the no confidence motion makes interesting reading. 23 members signed it: 11 Conservatives; 8 Liberal Democrats; 4 Labour. None from the Nationalist parties. The UKIP Independent* MP, Bob Spink, was still praising the Speaker even after he had gone. Let's keep that in mind when the minor parties try to parade as "anti-politics".

A disproportionate number of signatories came from the 2005 intake: 12 altogether. 7 of them Conservative (Carswell, Hollobone, Main, Davies P, Davies DTC, Stuart, Walker) and 5 Liberal Democrat (Hemming, Featherstone, Swinton, Williams, Mulholland). None from Labour. Indeed the 4 Labour signatories were all old hands - the most recent entrant was Ian Gibson in 1997.

Conservatives Against Trident that is. And there’s an acronym we wouldn’t have expected  to see these many years past. But I don’t think it’s unfair. Yes we need to conduct a strategic defence review when we get into government. But any decision about Trident should be put in the context of our defence needs for a generation (by which I mean 25-30 years) not a parliament or two. And who’s to say what the world will look like in 2034? It’s still less than 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down (9 November this year is the anniversary for those who want to party hard). Energy and food shortages seem likely to create more threats not fewer.

It is deeply disquieting to see decisions about Trident being discussed in the context of political positioning, the gist of the “analysis” being that to sell spending cuts Conservatives need to be prepared to consider everything even our own “sacred cows”. National security isn’t a sacred cow. It’s national security. Meanwhile Health and International Development are said to be sacrosanct – new sacred cows perhaps?

Bloomberg's report on anger management inside the Downing Street bunker (which sounds increasingly  like Downfall, the main difference being it cost us considerably less to defeat Hitler and fight the Second World War than it did to have Gordon Brown as Chancellor and Prime Minister):

I'm intrigued: how do they find anything good to talk to him about, let alone two pieces of good news for every piece of bad news?

Where’s Mandy, asks Iain Dale? Easy. He’s shut away in Downing Street working on the most challenging, demanding important task he has ever had to do. Teaching Gordon to say the S-word. The Obama disc may or may not have been ordered, who cares? The point is that Gordon needs to do it.

It’s not difficult to imagine. Every parent has had to teach their child how to say sorry and why it’s important. We’re used to all the excuses, evasions and dissembling - Wasn’t me! He did it! She did it! Don’t know who did it, it just wasn’t me! – the running away and hiding, the volcanic tantrums, the toy-throwing, anything rather face up to what they have done and say sorry. We’ve all explained slowly and patiently how it’s really important to take responsibility for what you’ve done and accept the consequences, how it makes people even crosser with you if you won’t admit it than they were about what you did in the first place, how if you can say sorry straightaway and mean it people will respect that, how you’ll feel better when you’ve done it. And then when they force out a muttered, eyes-averted “sorry”, making sure they identify precisely what it is they are sorry for, to make sure they mean it, rather than simply saying sorry to get you off their back. And reminding them that a genuine sorry needs to be marked by a change of behaviour not carrying on regardless.

We’ve been there Peter. It’s a necessary life-skill to impart. It's part of becoming a grown-up. And some people find it very, very hard. But as you’re finding out, rearing our children right is the hardest and most important thing we’ll ever have to do.

Gordon is beginning to remind me in some respects of Otto in A Fish Called Wanda. Otto thought he was a world-beater, hated being called stupid, blamed other people for everything, and was awed by his own intellect. But he lost the money, lost the girl, and ended up getting steam-rollered.

There’s a wonderful scene when Wanda tells him why he needs to say sorry. Sadly it’s not all on YouTube, but for some weekend light relief, there’s a clip at the end of this post of what happens immediately beforehand. If anyone can load up the whole scene and let me know, I’ll embed it. If (which it might be) imagining Kevin Kline as Gordon and Jamie-Lee Curtis as "Manda" isn’t too much of a stretch, the scene, with a few minor adjustments, might go like this:

Gordon: Don't call me stupid.

Manda: Oh, right! To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?

Gordon: Apes don't read economics.

Manda: Yes, they do, Gordon. They just don't understand it. Now let me correct you on a couple of things, OK? Milton Keynes is not an economic advisory council. You didn’t abolish Boom and Bust. If you can’t pay your debts you don’t borrow more. Those are all mistakes, Gordon. I looked up your polling. Now... you have just destroyed the one thing that could keep you in power, that made the country rich. So what are you gonna do about it, huh? What would an intellectual do? What would Obama do?

Gordon: Apol...

Manda: Pardon me?

Gordon: Apolo...

Manda: What?

Gordon: Apologise!

Manda: Right!

Gordon: I'm sorry.

Manda: No. Not to me, to the voters. And make it good, or we're dead.

Gordon: Oh, I'm so very, very, very, very s... I'm s... I'm very, very s... I'm so very s... Very, very, very s... Very, very...

There's been a rash of recent examples of Christians facing the sack for expressing their faith, of a type that we never see in relation to any other faith. But this story of a school receptionist and her 5-year old daughter is bizarre and shocking in equal measure, on all sorts of levels.

If I were a governor at the school it would be the Head under investigation, not the receptionist. If I were a parent I would be looking for a new school.

Jeremy Clarkson has apologised for remarks about Gordon Brown that he made on Australian TV. The BBC reports his remarks, and the context as follows:

The controversial presenter compared Mr Brown to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, shortly after Mr Rudd had addressed the country on the severity of the global financial crisis. Clarkson said: "He [Rudd] genuinely looked terrified. The poor man, he's actually seen the books. "[In the UK] we've got this one-eyed Scottish idiot. "He keeps telling us everything's fine and he's saved the world and we know he's lying, but he's smooth at telling us."

Interestingly the protests were aimed at the facts (that Brown has one eye and is Scottish) not the opinion. The RNIB didn't like the suggestion that disability should be equated with incompetence (have they ever read Guido I wonder?). Somebody called Iain Gray, who apparently leads the Scottish Labour Party, didn't like the reference to Gordon Brown being Scottish. Neither of them, nor anybody else, appears to have objected to the idea that Brown is a liar nor that he is an idiot. Clarkson certainly hasn't apologised for that, only for a remark about the Prime Minister's "personal appearance" - but you cannot tell from that whether he is one-eyed or Scottish. Although he is looking increasingly pale and puffy.

Matthew Parris was in bracing form today:

"This recession is not a failure of market economics. It is a reassertion of market economics after a decade in which we paid ourselves more than we were producing, and funded it precariously and temporarily by complicated credit instruments that it took a while for the market to rumble. Now a prosperity that always baffled ordinary citizens has collapsed. The collapse of confidence is not irrational; it's the correction to a long run of irrational confidence. All that stuff about the emerging Asian giants wasn't just phrasemaking for party conference speeches. It was true. We're falling behind. We face a mountain of debt: the difference between the life we are able to sustain and the life we were enjoying."

He's right. This wasn't a free market failure; it was the failure of a highly-regulated market. We are where we are because of inadequate bank governance, badly-designed regulation and profligate government, aided and abetted by all of us who have been over-stretching ourselves. Only some of that is "global". We need to keep saying this loudly and clearly, because Gordon Brown continues to claim otherwise.

Matthew Parris warns us to watch out for Labour hokum about the way out of the recession; beware of government attempts to "generate new models of high-added value industrial hi-tech innovation" for example - the market will drive any of that that will be successful, not our government. I disagree with his conclusion, that Britain is destined for "the world's second-league", but that's due to stubborness as much as anything else. He's right that we need to tighten our belts and adjust our expectations. All he leaves out is what that means for public spending.

"He did not come across as the foreign minister of a friendly nation."

This is what was said in India, by government spokesmen, about our Foreign Secretary. Miliband didn't just make a massively ill-judged speech about terror in Mumbai and lecture them on Kashmir (an issue in India which needs enormously careful handling by foreign diplomats) he was ineptly rude as well, to the extent that official complaints have been made about him by his hosts. And if Guido's right, Uncle Peter's had to hot-foot out there to clear up after him, with only limited success. Will Miliband Major ever be allowed out by himself again?

I'm really surprised that more hasn't been made in the media about this - although both governments are now dampening it down as much as they can. India is a key strategic and trading ally. This sort of stunningly non-diplomatic performance is worthy of Inspector Clouseau. Last summer Miliband saw himself as the next Prime Mimister. On this form he's lucky to be any sort of minister at all.

Obama's inauguration yesterday was a terrific example of democracy in action. Former ambassador Charles Crawford (do visit his blog, if you haven't already) puts it really well:

"For now as a non US citizen I express my humble and hearty gratitude to the USA for showing the world once again how to deal with powerful leaders. Compare what happened yesterday in Washington with the political wreckage in Zimbabwe, Cuba, N Korea, China, most of the Arab world, Russia and so on.

A leader with huge power gracefully accepted that the end of his rule had come and in a solemn yet light-touch ceremony handed over power to a new man, duly elected to replace him. He now in turn has at most some 416 weeks to lead the United States before he steps down.

This is Civilisation. Playing by the rules, and not making sneaky selfish manoeuvres to change them. A fresh start. Which creates the conditions for some positive Change to complement all that Hope."

One great thing about this presidency is that it blows the cover of those in the West who, truth be told, really don't like America very much at all, but have spent the last 8 years pretending that it's just President Bush that they loathe beyond all reason. He's gone now, and that excuse with him. As a pro-American I am delighted that the USA has a leader that anti-Americans find themselves having to like.

Fraser Nelson has already made the point that successful reform does not just require a radical and coherent set of ideas and policies: it needs really tenacious energetic visionary and knowledgeable personalities to champion and drive it through at every level,  especially the ministerial. Getting the people right matters very much indeed. Particularly in so complex and technical an area as welfare reform. Policy is one thing; making sure it is implemented is quite another. Hence the concerns already surfacing about the decision to replace Chris Grayling with Teresa May.

But the questions go a little further. Welfare reform doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a vital component of the Party's whole agenda to mend the broken bits of our society. The central insight of IDS and the Centre for Social Justice is that this can only be done through a large raft of carefully focussed and mutually supporting reforms across a whole swathe of policy including education, family, and prison & penal, as well as tax and benefits. Reformers are needed in all those portfolios. Take Nick Herbert's speech at the 2008 party conference for example:

"I want to tell you about a policy which we launched just a few months ago. It’s called Prisons with a Purpose, and it’s one of the most radical policies which this Party is promoting. And what we’re saying is that it really does matter to us that prisons can perform a role, not just as places of incarceration, but where we can turn the lives of offenders around.

We’re going to create prisons as independent Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts. We’re going to charge them with a mission to reduce re-offending.  We’re going to devolve power to prison governors and give them the authority to contract with outside services run by the private sector, the voluntary sector – organisations like Rob’s which turn the lives of offenders around. So that prisoners can go straight, [receiving] drugs services in and out of prison, teaching prisoners skills to read and write, making sure that prisoners are mentored when they’re released, giving them a chance to get into work.  So they’ll be enrolled on one of Chris Grayling’s Welfare to Work schemes the moment they are released from prison."

"I know that the majority are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration underway and the people who matter in (Ireland) are currently thinking about it."

Alright, I know he said "Britain" not Ireland, but the parallel is exact.

Today's news on The World at One that there will be a second referendum by October 2009 (after a period of the EU's inimitable combination of charm, threats, bribery and fear-stoking "consideration") shows precisely the regard that Barroso, Brian Cowen the Irish Prime Minister and others have for democracy. Agree with us or we run and re-run the vote until you do. No is not an option.

In a thoughtful post today on assisted suicide Iain Dale says this:

"We all know that doctors and family members are making decisions in our hospitals every day about whether to switch off life support machines or to continue to administer life continuing drugs. These decisions may not be wholly comparable with assisted suicide, but they lead to the same result. The decisions effecctively put individuals out of their misery in the same way in which assisted suicide does."

There are many myths and misunderstandings about end of life care and decision-making, and Iain has identified one of them, in this case that withdrawal or refusal of treatment is similar to assisted suicide.

But, ethically, withdrawing or withholding treatment at the end of life are not in the slightest bit comparable to assisted suicide. People dying as a result of a life-threatening condition, be it MND, cancer, heart disease or anything else, die as a result of their condition. When they enter the dying phase, their body starts to shut down. Good care means that decisions need to be taken about, for example, whether to discontinue their drips and to focus solely on comfort care. The burden to the dying person of continuing treatment may outweigh any benefit it could bring. Artificial nutrition and hydration may cause a brain tumour to swell, increasing discomfort. Or somebody may decide not to take antiobiotics for their next chest infection, and ask simply to be made comfortable. But those people are dying naturally as a result of their underlying condition.

There is a real difference between that and intervening to (self-)administer a lethal dose to bring about death weeks or months later than would otherwise have occurred.

...the defence of the machine apparatchik down the ages. The first instinct: self-preservation. The second, self-satisfaction. Complacency mistaken for competence and command, and authoritarianism for authority.

Personified today by the Home Secretary, on Marr. Marr did a decent interview, but didn't ask the obvious question (unless the clip's been edited): "Home Secretary, are you not astonished that the police told the Speaker, they told the Mayor, they told the Leader of the Opposition, but they didn't tell you?"

But at least she made an appearance. Macavity Brown said he wasn't there and then went to ground.

The government is drowning on this. Campbell and Mandelson are either away or are losing their touch. There's no grip, no recognition of the widespread alarm and anger in and outside Westminster about Damian Green's arrest and the searches of his home and offices; both that it happened at all and the over-bearing manner in which it was done. In her interview Jacqui Smith admitted that Damian Green's activities in holding the government to account are wholly legitimate. So he did nothing wrong, and she  still won't apologise. She could have tried to reassure; to acknowledge that this is an unprecedented situation; that she understands how genuinely and deeply concerned many people are about this; that she will act. She chose bluster and self-defence.

Listening to what she said, I think Dominic Grieve is right: she knew more than she's letting on. There was a studied ambivalence in some of her answers.

"Nothing to do with me Guv, I'm just the Home Secretary" She is not up to her office. May she be gone soon.

This is the Chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, dancing with somebody that the Met doesn't seem to think is terribly important. Mr. Vaz has so far said nothing about Damian Green's arrest.

This will surely change. Mr. Vaz is not known for his media shyness. And he and his Select Committee will want to find out exactly what went on here. After all, Mr. Vaz is no stooge when it comes to the government's anti-terror laws.

6.00 pm Update. Thanks to Marcel: Mr Vaz has now broken silence. His comments demonstrate that he is as intent on holding the Executive to account as ever he has been.

Walter Wolfgang, Iceland's banks, and Damian Green don't have much in common. But Labour's anti-terror apparatus has been deployed against each of them.

Who next?

"The decision to make today's arrest was taken solely by the MPS without any ministerial knowledge or approval" - so says the Metroplitan Police Service

But the Met told the Speaker that they were about to arrest Damian Green, and they told the Mayor of London, and they told the Leader of the Opposition. If they told all of them, why on earth wouldn't they tell ministers as well?

Assuming as we must that the Met briefing is accurate, the only possible answer is that Home Office ministers are incompetent, disregarded and irrelevent. However you cut it: "not fit for purpose."

It was inevitable that special interest groups would soon start circling: "If the government can find £400 billion to bail-out bankers, what about saving the great crested goldfish...building more counselling suites & wind farms...employing more outreach & engagement workers...whatever?"

As somebody who works full time in the charity sector, I am just really disappointed that the Chief Executive of ACEVO (the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations) has led the charge. Steven Bubb's call for a £500m emergency fund be set up "to help charities working with victims of the recession" is just special pleading. It's not the leadership the voluntary sector needs.

Certainly charities are likely to have a huge amount to do in this financial mess, and many will do it brilliantly. And like everyone else including their donors, they are feeling the squeeze. But whilst getting hands on half a billion quid of taxpayers' funds may feel like chicken-feed on a day like today (laughably unambitious some might say!), this (so far as I can tell quite uncosted) plea for an enormous bung for the voluntary sector does not make us look resourceful, effective or independent, but greedy and insensitive.

Gordon Brown had, in theory at least, the opportunity to relaunch himself and his government with this reshuffle, to set out a new direction for Britain, and to show that he is the right man to lead us through the present crisis.

He blew it. All he has done is confirm what we already knew about him and his government:

1. Desperate: Mandelson's return (and Campbell's and Whelan's involvement in election planning) is born of weakness not strength. Gordon needs Peter more than Peter needs Gordon. Peter, being Peter, won't allow Gordon or anyone else to forget it.
2. Backward-looking: Beckett,  Mandelson and Nick Brown.
3. He prefers cronies to ideas or talent: Losing or moving talented junior ministers, whilst promoting curry house conspirators and Quentin Davies. Reshuffle winners include Sion Simon and Chris Bryant; losers include Tom Harris,  Andrew Adonis and Malcolm Wicks (although the latter has become yet another "special representative").
4. Anti-reform: How else can Adonis's transportation from the Academies programme be interpreted?
5. Gimmicky: The National Economic Council - ludicrously billed as a "war cabinet", but far too cumbersome to be anything more than a very regular talking-shop endlessly debating "whatever it takes". Brown has form for this; throughout his career he has hidden behind reviews and advice from business leaders, rather than set out any vision of his own. Wanless is as good an example as any.
6. Brutal: The return of Nick Brown as Chief Whip, backed up by other Brown "provisionals" as fellow-enforcers. But they'll only pick on the lower ranks, like Ivan Lewis. Miliband Major is clearly regarded as too big a beast to risk retribution (itself a telling state of affairs).
7. Incompetent: He'll probably find a way to get Baroness Ashton in as European Commissioner, but he'll have to bend the rules.
8. Confused: As Rachel Sylvester points out today, Mandelson, Miliband Minor, Douglas Alexander, Harman, Whelan, Campbell, Balls & Baroness Vadera all think they have a role in election planning and communication. Lots of others probably do too.That's not a team or a structure; it's a free-for-all free-fall.

It was a chance to show national leadership. But in the end it was all about his own survival and party management. The more Brown and Darling bleat "whatever it takes" the clearer it is that they have no idea what it takes. Britain still has a leadership crisis.

I have posted before about the growing threat of dementia and the importance of facing up to its impact on  health and social care. So it was really impressive to see the Party dedicate an entire hour to this (often unfashionable) condition on the main conference platform on Monday afternoon.

Terry Pratchett spoke with power and courage; you could see him several times battling to focus on the words before him as he described the impact that his Alzheimer's is having on him and his determination to publicise the ravages it inflicts. We also heard from Marianne Talbot, who cared for her mother, about the human costs of caring: "the sleepless nights, the despair, the guilt, the tears and the pain as well as the love, laughter and joy" as she puts it on her blog.

Twenty years ago we didn't talk much about cancer as a society. Now it's rightly a high-profile priority. We need to do the same with Dementia. Stephen O'Brien, on the shadow Health frontbench, has said that dementia care will be a top priority for the Conservative Party, and we have pledged to increase the research budget. When I congratulated Stephen on getting dementia onto the agenda he said that this had been supported at the very top of the Party. Stephen and the Party deserve great praise for this. I work for a charity that does a fair amount of work in this area; I have never heard my colleagues in other health and ageing related voluntary sector organisations as enthusiastic at a Party conference as they were about our decision to make dementia a mainstream issue.

I know that in times of national and global crisis it's right to rally round our leaders and support them. But that assumes that we have some leadership in the first place. Did you see Gordon Brown on the news last night? He was like a stalled automaton, rigid-jawed, endlessly repeating the same reply, whatever the question: "The governor of the bank of England, the Chancellor and I will do whatever it takes to maintain stability...." - it was so bad that I thought the BBC were simply replaying the loop endlessly - that the needle was stuck. There is no trace of a vision for how we get out of this - no plan - it's purely reactive.

And in America, the bailout plan has failed. By the time we get to next week that may not seem so bad - it wasn't a good plan. We shouldn't swiftly dismiss the legitimate concerns of those who felt this was a blank cheque too far. There must be a limit to the number of banks that taxpayers can be asked to bailout - in this country as well as America. At the moment it feels like another week another bank, with no sense of how that might be stopped.

So we need some leadership. David Cameron spoke just now and set some markers down. In particular, he said that we mustn't get angry (and we mustn't panic); we must be clear-headed. He was absolutely right to do so. But, whilst we need to support our national "leadership", however inadequate it is, because now is not the time for an election, we mustn't be afraid of setting out our own vision for how we get out of this mess. At the moment Gordon Brown doesn't have one. It's a fatal vacuum. Our response to this crisis cannot be shaped in reactive response to a void. David Cameron will be using his speech tomorrow to address this; I am looking forward to what he has to say. Last year's speech was important for the Party. Tomorrow's is important for our country. No pressure there then!

Did my ears deceive me, or did Gordon Brown have the extraordinary front just now to lecture us all about the need for "transparency not opacity" and the "end of irresponsibility"? This from the man who made double and treble accounting, smoke & mirrors, and PFI-off-balance sheet finance the hallmarks of our national accounts.

It's time to go in and go in hard. Enough of this gland-aching nonsense that you need an experienced hand at the tiller in rocky waters. We have had Brown at the helm for the last 11 years and his legacy is an economy built on debt. SS Great Britain has its own cargo of Brown toxic waste. In political terms, nothing matters more than ensuring that the only responses voters have to "trust him, he has the experience" are either raucous laughter or, better, cold fury.

PS. Does anyone have a clip of Brown saying "no more boom and bust"? It's not on YouTube, yet, so far as I can tell. Please, someone, put that right. Click here for some statistics on how often Mr. Experience claimed to have invented the internet abolished the business cycle.

This week's Spectator has much, much more on this:

"Add up all the money pledged through PFI, and the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that you will quickly reach the sum of £110 billion. The institute’s findings suggest that, were this PFI lump-sum added to officially acknowledged government debt, the total figure would represent 45 per cent of gross domestic product — making a mockery of Mr Brown’s ‘sustainable investment’ rule, by which government debt is not meant to exceed 40 per cent of GDP. If this seems no more than a statistical abstraction, think of it this way: the overall national debt works out as £26,100 for every British household. This amounts to a second mortgage which all of us, including our children, must eventually pay off. And this is before the consequences of the Northern Rock crash or the £1 trillion of unfunded public sector pension liabilities are factored in."

A few quick thoughts:

1)  The Conservative Party needs to be the party of economic reconstruction and transparency. George Osborne's decision to review our spending policy is therefore essential.

Good to see Gordon condemning "off balance sheet activity" as being the sort of irresponsible accumulation of unquantified but enormous long-term debt that has led to the current excitements in the markets.

So presumably he will now insist that the Chancellor reviews the way in which PFI liabilities have been kept out of the UK accounts. If he's so keen on "cleaning up" the damage caused by the regulatory regime that he himself created, surely he will also wish to lead by example and ensure that the public accounts are similarly cleansed.

Labour MPs and ministers have been banging on for over 11 years now about their pride in taking "tough decisions" for Britain. But now there's a decision that they, and only they, can make about a really serious problem - the inadequacy of the current Prime Minister - they are bottling it. They need help.

In particular they - and we - need a deadline. On the economy and security we are beset by turmoil and hazard.  In the national interest, we cannot allow the current failure of leadership to continue. If Labour politicians cannot steel themselves to name a date, other people must do it for them.

This is a job for all opposition parties, not just the Conservatives. David Cameron should try to enlist the support of all the other opposition party leaders this week, in advance of the Labour Conference. Together they should announce that, unless Labour has by then put a leadership challenge in motion, they will use the first opposition day after the recess to force this to a vote.

The key tactical questions are the vote and the timing. A vote of no confidence in the government would be the obvious. But even those Labour politicans who have made it clear that they have no confidence in Brown may still protest that they have confidence in the Labour Party. So perhaps make the vote about his leadership and that only. Do as the Liberal Democrats did to Hague, and put down a motion that the Prime Minister's pay should be cut by £1 to reflect his lack of performance. That should create space for Labour dissidents to vote against their leader, but not their party, if they need it. How, in conscience or credibility, can those who have broken cover now vote for him?

On timing, there's a fair argument that acting before the Labour conference will serve only to to unite Labour together. That might hold true if this was a Conservative-only initiative. But this is about Britain's national interest which is why it needs to be as cross-party as possible. Announcing now gives them fair warning as they meet together that they need to put the house in order.

The tone in which this is done is vital. In sorrow, focus on the national interest and trust in politicans. Labour went into the last election promising that Tony Blair would serve a full term. They have broken that promise, and his mandate-lacking successor now commands no confidence. This is not Labour's leadership crisis, it is Britain's leadership crisis.

And if other opposition leaders refuse to support this, what would that say about them? Are they for Brown or against him?

Calling a confidence vote should not be done lightly. But these extraordinary circumstances justify it, if it is done in the right way.