After three by-election defeats (Henley, Crewe and Glasgow East) and the London Mayoral elections disaster, the key question on the lips of most people is: “Does this spell the end of Gordon Brown as leader?” At the time of writing, no leadership challenge has been issued, so presumably the result wasn’t quite bad enough to warrant an immediate backstabbing, but it does leave Brown in a precarious position. If one believes the papers, senior ministers are being urged to get rid of Brown, giving him two months to “shape up or go“.

However, fortunately for Brown, he has the rest of the summer in which to boost his support within the Party, as many MPs will be returning to their constituencies or going on holiday during the recess, so the focus on his leadership skills will be diminished for a month or so. He also has the advantage of there being no obvious successors in the way he was clearly meant to follow Blair—though various names have been touted in the press. Furthermore, replacing the leader so soon before a general election is a risky strategy, and Labour may well prefer to keep their existing man—“better the devil you know” and all that. On the other hand, they could simply accept that their time is up—most parties do not win more than three consecutive general elections—and that people are willing to give the Conservatives another chance to run the country.

My personal verdict is that Brown will survive until Labour Party Conference, which will be the tipping point. If a leadership challenge is going to be issued, that is where it will happen, with all the press and public attention focused on the conference. If nothing solid happens at conference (grumblings and mutterings aside), then Brown is safe until the next election—at which point the public will decide whether his party deserves to hold office. A defeat there will definitely spell the end of his term as Labour Leader.

Further reading

• Times Online
• BBC News (with video of results being announced)
• Guardian Unlimited

Working for an MP is a useful way to make the connections required to get into politics, so if you’re thinking of a career along those lines—as I have in the past—then w4mp is well worth a look.

This proposal is ridiculous for several reasons. First of all, it will seriously damage opportunities for people who want to take a different course in order to change careers, either because they want to or because circumstances require them to (e.g. someone who did a degree in physical education and then has an accident which prevents them from using the skills they obtained). It also creates a financial barrier to people looking to return to education, but then we know already that Labour isn’t shy of erecting such barriers—after all they introduced tuition and top-up fees. Finally, the proposal will disproportionately damage institutions such as the Open University, which expects to lose approximately £30m of its teaching budget as a result.

Thankfully, the Conservatives have got some sense for once and are putting forward a motion to try and stop this stupid proposal, and there will be a half-day debate in the Commons today about the issue. Hopefully common sense will prevail and the Government will be forced to rethink the proposal as a result (or abandon it altogether, which I would prefer).

Personally, I really couldn’t care less who gets elected as Mayor of London, as I don’t live in the city and only visit it about once a month on average. However, given that London’s mayor actually has a significant budget and a say in matters such as public transport, it’s an important decision for Londoners to make. Also, given the radically different personalities of Livingstone and Johnson, I suspect this will be an interesting race to watch over the next few weeks.

Further reading

• Lib Dem councillor defects to Tories in Manchester

Let’s get another thing straight: playing with tanks and plastic soldiers does not turn your child into a gun-toting homicidal maniac. When I was younger, my favourite toys were my huge army of plastic soldiers (including tanks, barricades and hundreds of troops) and my favourite board games were Escape from Colditz (in which I always played the Germans) and Risk. Have I grown up into an aggressive and harmful person as a result? Of course not. I might occasionally display signs of being a control freak or a megalomaniac, and I still enjoy the board games which I was introduced to as a child, but I am in no way a danger to the general public or those around me.

As for the unions being up in arms about boys being aggressive, I can only assume that they’ve never seen girls at play. Whilst boys might push each other about, girls can be much more cruel to their classmates. Do we hear the NUT calling for dolls and wendy houses to be banned because of what girls get up to when they play amongst themselves? Actually, perhaps we’d better not give them any ideas…

For what is possibly the first time since coming into office, this Government is actually saying something sensible about education, and the unions immediately criticise it. I dread to think what would happen if these people ever actually started to run the country—we’d all be locked indoors and wrapped in cotton wool before you could say ‘nanny state’. Thank goodness the unions have less of a say in politics than they used to, we’d be up a certain creek without a paddle if they still had the power to influence government decisions.

Further reading

• Confident, capable and creative: supporting boys’ achievements

There’s a new party called Animals Count about to launch into the UK political arena. It’s linked to a Dutch party which won two seats in the last elections in Holland and it’s policies appear to be about protecting animals but without the violence used by some anti-cruelty groups.

Personally I think Animals Count are a bunch of loonies and I doubt they’ll get very far in UK politics. Having an existing party with a policy on preventing cruelty to animals is all well and good, but starting a political party which states its mission as “To establish a voice for the animals through a dedicated political party” is taking things a bit far. I can’t see how any group of people who want to give cows voting rights in Parliament can be taken seriously by the general public. They may have won a couple of seats in Holland, but that’s probably one of the most liberal countries in the world and I don’t think that they’ll repeat that success over here, especially when minority parties such as the Greens can’t even manage to win a seat in Westminster.