Much of the media comment today on the first day of the Democratic Convention in Denver is about whether Hilary Clinton’s supporters will get over their personal disappointment and throw their support behind Barack Obama’s bid for the US Presidency. But I was utterly mesmerised by the speech made by Michelle Obama. She spoke clearly and confidently. What she said, and how she said it, was the best possible response to the vicious campaign against her by the Repbulican press which has tried to protray her as un-American and consumed with anger.

She emphasised her role as daughter, sister and wife, but showed herself to be light years away from a subservient spouse. She delivered a strong and coherent political message. She threw down the gauntlet to her critics. Her theme was she, and her husband, embody the American dream. She offered Americans the chance to live that dream by voting for a husband and wife team brought up on the back streets of Chicago.

How the Clintonistas will take this remains to be seen. But surely some of them will realise that a vote for Obama will put a very strong minded woman in the White House, and one who is likely to be a different kind of First Lady than any other in US history.

One of the question marks about Hilary Clinton was to do with how husband Bill would play his role as the first First Gentleman in US history. There were fears that he would have been unable to resist the temptation to be the back street driver, dictating policy in the bedroom.

This election offers Americans a choice between candidates radically different in personality, social and economic background and policies. Barack Obama has continually played down race in his campaign, unsurprisingly since he is actually half white. Michelle’s high profile speech today is a reminder that she is one hundred per cent black. But also one hundred per cent American.

In recent weeks Obama’s lead in the opinion polls has dwindled away to nothing. No-one is quite sure why. Several media commentators have speculated that conscious or un-conscious racism may be a factor. I am not so sure. But I shall be watching carefully to see what the polls show about the reactions of Americans to Michelle’s speech.

The newspapers on both sides of the pond generally gave Barack Obama’s choice of Joe Biden, the 65 year old senator from Delaware, as his vice-presidential running mate, the thumbs up. The London Sunday Times headlined their story:

Barack Obama opts for ‘bare knuckle fighter Joe Biden

But when you read the story you find that it is in fact favourable to Biden. This particular bare knuckle fighter is also the widely respected chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, who has considerable knowledge and experience of the world’s major trouble spots and knows many foreign prime ministers personally.

Obama certainly needs a boost for his campaign. His lead over John McCain in the polls has dwindled away to almost nothing in recent weeks, as McCain has cashed in on American worries about the the threats overseas, particularly the belligerant actions of Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Although he has halted the march of the Russian tanks on the Georgian capital Tibilsi, Russian troops are still on Georgian soil.

And, as the Sunday Times points out, the fight for the President’s job is going to get dirtier and dirtier as the election approaches. According to their reporter, Republican activists are already suggesting ‘Osama bin Biden’ car stickers.

The Mail on Sunday also has a negative headline.

Obama picks senator who ’stole’ Neil Kinnock’s speech as his running mate

This story harks back to 1988 when Biden was forced to abandon his own presidential campaign after it was revealed that his speech highlighting his working class roots was a plagiarism of a speech by Britain’s then Labour leader. But the Mail story goes on to tell readers that Biden and Kinnock are now firm friends. According to the Mail,

Lord Kinnock said last night that the last time they met the senator introduced him to aides by saying: ‘Do you know this guy? He used to be my greatest speechwriter.

The Observer highlights a slip of the tongue by Obama when he introduced Biden to the crowd of 35,000 in Springfield, Illinois yesterday. Obama introduced him as the ‘next President’, before quickly correcting that to ‘the next vice-president of the United States.

The slip, I think, probably does reflect the relationship between the two men. They have become friends since Obama joined the Senate foreign relations committee, but Biden is vastly more experienced. Which suggests that Obama meant what he said when he claimed to want a running mate who would not be a yes person.

The Observer also notes Biden’s impeccable working class credentials and trade union links. Biden is a working class Irish Catholic, still something of a rough diamond, which is a sharp contrast to Obama, whose speeches make it clear that despite his own humble origins he has lived most of his life as a teacher at that most elite of American universities, Harvard. And, now, as in Jack Kennedy’s time, there are still plenty of American voters who distrust ‘eggsheads’.

Most of the papers report that the choice gives some ammunition for McCain, because at the start of this Presidential campaign Biden made a speech in which he characterised Obama as ‘not ready’ to be President and said that a President did not have time for on the job training.

The analysis article in the Washington Post emphasises that Obama’s choice is pragmatic and that it will help Obama get those Hillary Clinton supporters amongst the working classes of the industrial heartlands to the polls. That article also suggests that the choice has a powerful emotional appeal, because both the personal biographries of both men demonstrate that the American dream - that any citizen whatever his or her origins can aspire to become President - is not entirely a myth.

The Guardian splashes this morning with a story that is bad news for those, like me, who would like to see a change in the leadership of the Labour Party sooner rather than later. It is based on the results of the latest Guardian/ICM opinion poll.

The headline, like most newspaper headlines, leaves no room for doubt.

Change of leader would not help Labour beat Cameron

But if you read the story carefully what the poll results signify is not quite that.

The pollsters asked who would made the best Prime Minister between David Cameron and Gordon Brown and between David Cameron and David Miliband. While it is true that currently Miliband has been the most talked up contender for the crown in the last few weeks, ever since he wrote that article in The Guardian without a single mention of Gordon Brown, it is by no means certain that Miliband would win a Labour Party election. Jack Straw, Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman and Jon Cruddas all have their supporters across the supporter. And there is also the possibility that if the Party decides to have an election some other candidate might emerge, whose name has not been trumpeted by the media. There is no shortage of potential leaders who have ample ministerial experience as well as grass roots support.

The results of the Cameron versus Brown, show 42 per cent for Cameron, 21 per cent for Brown and 23 per cent for neither. Those for Cameron versus Miliband show 40 per cent for Cameron 19 per cent for Miliband and 18 per cent for neither.

So The Guardian headline is justified by the fact that Cameron’s lead over both Brown and Miliband is the same at 21 per cent. But what are we to think about the fact that when asked the Cameron/Miliband question 23 per cent said nothing at all, whereas in response to Cameron/Brown question, only 14 per cent said nothing at all?

First, we can say definitely, that when given a choice between Cameron and a new Labour leader, Cameron’s vote falls from 42 per cent to 40 per cent. We can also say definitely, that the Milibandwagon is an invention of the media; his 19 per cent vote suggests that many people have not even heard that he had a band, still less are prepared to march behind it.

This is not so surprising. Although Miliband holds one of the three most important ministries, and is highly regarded by many Labour MPs and his cabinet colleagues, he has not had a high public profile. Even allowing for that, however, the message is unmistakeable. Not many people see him as a potential prime minister.

It is, however, too soon to write off his canditure. In he first blog I wrote about Miliband well over a year ago, I noted that he comes over as very cerebal. Not two brains, but three brains. This combined with his youth - and he looks even younger than he is - makes him seem closer to a very clever schoolboy rather than a leader of men and women.

If he is serious about his leadership bid he needs to get out more. On to the streets talking to the voters. Not easy to find the time, because his day job demands lots of reading of foreign office papers about the situation in Georgia, in Pakistan, in Iran, etc, etc. The Cold War is definitely back, and it will need all the efforts of European leaders like France’s Nicholas Sarcozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel, to stop it developing into a hot war between the still beligerant George W Bush and the new Stalinism of Vladimir Putin.

The Guardian/ICM poll does, however, contain a glimmer of hope for Labour. Cameron’s Conservatives lead Labour by 15 per cent which would mean a Conservative majority of over a hundred MPs in a general election. But compared with he last Guardian/ICM poll, Labour’s vote is one per cent higher at 29 per cent. The Conservative vote is also one per cent higher. But support for the Lib Dems is unchanged at 19 per cent and support for the other parties is down by one per cent.

George W Bush has joined not a few of the world leaders at a sporting event in Beijing. He takes the opportunity to make a fierce attack on China’s human rights record. Which is bad.

But he does it in the week when the world is wondering not about the human rights record of the China of a few years ago.

They have on the news the results of America’s abuse of human rights at Guanatimo Bay. After several years of detention the US has brought their first case, against the man who is guilty of being Osama bin Laden’s chaffeur.

Although the Americans have been using tortures, like water boarding. As if detention itself were not a sufficient incentive to get people to confess in order to get out of their prision.

I am not a fan of China present, or of much of China past. But America has a substantially good human rights record, which has been soiled by George W Bush.

The present threat from China is not violations of human rights, regrettable though they are.

It is the fact that China, in its imitation of American consumer capitalism, is the biggest threat to global warming.

The cheap consumer items which they produce, which are selling so well in Western democracies, are produced by an economy which creating more smog than any other country.

That is what George W Bush should have been saying this week.

But of course he could not take that line. Because his own supporters are also high on the list of those who are moving the planet to global warming. And they don’t want to change their habits.

Because it will affect their profits.

China today is not the China of the Buddhist philiosophers. Or the Marxists like Mao. It is the China who learnt from Richard Nixon that they could become respectable members of the world community if only they started behaving like American consumer capitalists.

Which lesson they have learnt.

……despite what you read, listen to, or see, on the media. He has simply moved his place of work to a beach in East Anglia, which is British, but as British as roast beef. Not New Labour. Definitely not old labour. Definitely Conservative, with a few Lib Dems.

And, instead of refreshing himself, and doing some serious thinking, he is spending his time planning his relaunch. And, even while on holiday, taking lots of new initiatives.

He is trying to get out of the hole he is in. But by digging. So the more he does, the deeper he gots buried in the mud.

If he was on a real holiday, he would be getting away from it all. And finding some healing from the savage wounds he has suffered from the media, the Labour Party, and increasingly his own colleagues.

Because much of what is happening is not his fault. Both the US, New Labour’s favourite ally, and Britain, are facing a nasty recession. Which harms Labour voters, but much more than those Tory voters, who have bumped up their salaries to astronomical levels, under the rule of Blair and Brown.

Brown needs time for reflection. But he is so charged up, that he is not reflecting.

And is his holiday resort he is not moved to do anything else.

Southwold is a pleasant place. But it is not very exciting. And it is not breath-takingly beautiful.

It is the sort of place the comfortably off middle classes used to holiday in the days before EasyJet.

If Brown had gone to Blackpool, he might have been able to lose himself on the Big Digger.

And he might have met a few Labour voters, who would tell him where he has gone wrong.

Yesterday it rained. This morning there is a thick mist so that I cannot see much further than the end of the drive. I wake from a dream in which I am wondering whether I shall be able to stick another ten years teaching journalism at City University. Which takes me back in time about nineteen years.

Depressed about journalism. Does it really ever find out anything? Remember a lack lustre item on BBC Newsnight last night. Gavin Esler was doing an item about who Barack Obama and John McCain would choose for their Vice President.

As the interviews dragged on it became abundantly clear that sleuths of Newsnight had absoluely no idea of the answers. Reminded me of those days on The Times when I have spent the whole day on the telephone and no-one has told me anything at all interesting. But the deadline is approaching and there is an empty space to fill in tomorrow’s paper.

Esler himself seems pretty depressed, so much so that he moves the discussion to whether it matters who the Vice President is, with some clips of former Vice Presidents, some of whom are forgotten, like Gerald Ford, even though he went on to President himself for a few months. And Richard Nixon, who went on to become the most disgraceful US President of my lifetime.

But Esler did ask one interesting question: Why was Obama only neck and neck in the US polls? Following his recent tour he has attracted a huge following in Europe. He answered the question himself, by noting that most recent elections have been close.

True. But not a very convincing answer. Two months ago, when Hillary Clinton  was still fightingObama for Democratic candidature, the polls were indicating a Democratic landslide.

None of the journalist pundits has explained why the Democratic lead has been whittled away to nothing. Most of the Clinton supporters do appear to have shifted to Obama.

Two months ago there was a lot of discussion about whether America was ready to elect a black President or a female President. These are the kind of questions which neither journalists nor opinion pollsters can get reliable answers to.

Far too many people lie in their answers. Even to themselves.

We shall have to wait until the morning of the fifth of November before we know whether the American electorate is ready to elect a black President. But maybe journalists can make a useful contribution by keeping the discussion going.

The sky is still all grey. But the mist has lifted a bit. I can now see the horizon. The traffic is moving on the A35 and the workman have arrived to work on my drive. So something might be achieved today.

This is written on the day the Mail on Sunday splashed with the publication of an ‘astonishing secret memo’ written by Tony Blair to close colleagues. Here are the first few paragraphs.

Tony Blair has delivered a savage attack on Gordon Brown in a secret memo accusing him of playing into David Cameron’s hands by his ‘lamentable’ and ‘vacuous’ performance as Prime Minister.

The former Prime Minister boasts that Mr Cameron was ‘in trouble’ before he resigned a year ago.

And he claims Mr Brown’s incompetence has made the Tories look like the party of the future and on course to win the next Election.

No-one has suggested this memo is a forgery, like some of the sensational scoops the Mail has carried in the past. But you do not have to be a journalist to doubt whether this was really worth making the main story.

When you get to paragraph thirteen you discover that the memo was actually written nearly a year ago, shortly after the Labour Party Conference. And the label ’secret’ is clearly un-justified. It was a private memo written to close colleagues, and, even ex-Prime Ministers are entitled to write to close colleagues without being accused of plotting.

But you don’t discover that before you read this paragraph.

The bombshell disclosure comes as it emerged that Mr Blair has had regular talks with his close friend and political ally, Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who challenged Mr Brown’s leadership last week.

All the press agrees that Miliband challenged Brown’s leadership last week. The Mail slant implies that Miliband only jumped after talks with Blair. Entirely likely that Blair talks to Miliband. But no hard evidence about what they talking about.

The Mail has two accompanying stories.

The screaming headline one is:

Can Gordon win? Only 16 of the 22 Cabinet Ministers say yes

The story starts with saying that six cabinet ministers believe he should go. But hey, wait a minute. What about the sixteen who told the Mail that he should stay?

The second story is headlined:

1 in 3 say Brown is worst PM … and half say he must go now

Just how this poll was conducted is not clear, but it is not out of line with many opinion polls in the last few weeks.

In another story the Daily Mail reports that:

Senior ministers rally around PM as government heads towards meltdown

This story reports that three senior ministers, Alastair Darling, Harriett Harman and John Denham, have declared their support for Gordon Brown. It does not say that this news was announced in an article they did for the News of the World, part of the Murdoch press.

But my first point in this article, is that the Daily Mail is giving its readers real news, at the same time as doing its best to sell newspapers, which it has been doing since 1894, but that it also does, what its first proprietor, Lord Northcliffe started, covering the news in a style and language accessible to newly literate masses.

The Daily Mail still subscribes to the myth of journalism, including the split between ‘fact’ and ‘comment’. But the way it presests ‘fact’ is stongly influenced by its ownership and its long history of supporting ‘middle’ England.

Rupert Murdoch has a similar agenda. This morning his serious Sunday paper had a different slant to today’s news. Here, I was going to quote from their poll of Labour chairman which showed them hugely in favour of Brown.

But it has disappeared from the web page.

Maybe Rupert has been making one of his telephone calls.

Times Online has many articles about the Labour leadership battle. Including one from heavy-weight columnist, Daniel Finkelstein, on why the leaked memo matters. And another story which suggests Brown is summoning his ministers to be back from their hols by September 1st.

The sum total of these articles is that The Times thinks there is a leadership crisis. And for Murdoch watchers like myself, Murdoch has not yet made up his mind what to do. So The Times reminds us that Ed Miliband, David’s brother is allegedly a Brownite.

So we should not trust The Times stable, nor the Mail stable.

So how about The Guardian. They were the newspaper which published the article by David Miliband last week, which created the media splurge today. They are owned by a trust but, since real life is never simple, they are managed by a highly successful commercial management. Today, they had a heavy weight article by Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer, which left this reader in no doubt that he thinks Brown is for the high jump. Whereas Michael White, one of The Guardian’s most respected political correspondents, was on the broadcast media, warning against the Labour Party pursuing a probably suicidal leadership battle.

This is just a sample of the press comment, and I have not included the broadcast media, but what they have reported fits in with the following analysis.

Nearly all the journalists reporting for the diversely owned media today treated this story seriously. Although we are in the ’silly season’ of August, when the papers are supposedly full of stories about cats stuck in the roofs of churches, this story is not just about filling the gaps between the adverts.n

There is a crisis in the Labour leadership. And this needs reporting on, although most of the principal characters in the drama have gone on holiday. (But they are still reading their emails, reading the newspapers, watching the tele and talking to their colleagues.)

All of the journalists have to make a story out of what is happening. So much of what has been reported today is skewed to the journalistic convention of finding plots and fitting what is happening now, into the ’story’ of the Blair/Brown rift, which has run throughout Labour’s rule since 1997.

Two points.

Miliband’s article for The Guardian last week, was not an orchestrated plot. Neither was Thatcher’s emergence as Labour Party leader, although some of her friends were right-wing plotters, wanting to vanish Edward Heath.

Second point. The split between the Blairites and Brownites, is yesterday’s story. Today new alliances are forming to meet today’s circumstances.

Milband is mostly characterised as a Blairite. Athough he is the son of a Marxist theorist, unlike Blair, who was the son of a Conservative. He is roughly the same generation as Blair, and like Blair went to Oxford. But he is totally different in personality. His political views are far closer to those espoused by Brown before he assumed power.

He is still a long way from proving that he can do better than Brown in reaching the hearts of the voters, be they Labour Party activists or Daily Mail middle England.

But because he has raised his head above the ramparts, while still holding his position as Foreign Secretary, he has made a difference. Brown should sack him. But I don’t think he will, because Miliband is voicing the thoughts of many Labour Party supporters.

And, my own view, is that he is doing so, because he is trustworthy politician. He may be ambitious, but I don’t think, that his current stance is all about personal ambition.

And, to return to the theme of this article, I don’t think Milband, and most of the other Labour Party politicians, are more, or less trustworthy, than the journalists, be they employed by The Guardian, the Mail or Rupert Murdoch.

The heavy-weight journalists and the politicians have similar skills, and the fact that some of them became journalists and some of them became politicians is an accident of their own personal biographies. At this point in my blog I was about to use William Rees Mogg, the editor of The Times for whom I worked in the the sixties and the seventies.

Mogg, because he is an honest journalist, has been outspoken about his own personal motivations. He has written about how he wanted to be a politician, but after failing to win a seat, realised that it becoming a journalist was a more realistic way of earning a living. I thought I had better check what he had to say about the Labour Party leadership before I wrote anything.

His latest article, in The Times of 28 July, had this headline.

Labour should choose Hillary, not Obama

If Gordon Brown goes, Harriet Harman should take over. Only a woman can change the climate of political debate

The headline makes Mogg seem like an out-of-touch idiot. As if he had not heard by 28th July that Hillary is now ancient history. If you follow the link and read his article, you will see that it is a reasoned argument for Labour to have the courage to support a female leader, namely Harriet Harman.

Although Mogg has been on the Murdoch payroll since shortly after he stepped down as Times editor after Lord Thomson sold The Times to Rupert Murdoch, this is clearly not an article written at the dictation of Rupert Murdoch.

It is vintage Mogg. Blending his powers of analysis with his private passions. And revealing his own personal voyage through life. His mother sent him to Charterhouse to be with the boys, and so learn to be a man. But William, when he was Times editor was prepared to go out on a limb and support women in public life (and rock stars like Mick Jagger).

So this article ends in a way I did not expect.

I asked the wrong question in my title. Perhaps because I am almost as old as Rees Mogg.

My thinking is steeped in the conflicts of the media as in Baldwin’s phrase, ‘power without responsibility’.

But the important question is where does the power lie with today’s media?

Is it with the newspaper groups who employ most of the world’s journalists, who actually write the stuff? And who earn their profits from old-fashioned print.

Or is it with the new media lot, like Google and WordPress?

Today, the old media is pouring shit on both Brown and Miliband. But both of them, as it happens, have been spending time and money trying to get their message over via the new meda.

Their efforts look amateurish. Unsurprsingly because the old media pay the mortgages of most of the experienced journalists.

But the old media is floundering. How long can the reputation of The Times survive, when Times Online puts up the kind of headlines they used today on Rees-Mogg’s effort?

The political landscape can change in twenty-four hours. So it has been today.

Yesterday the Tory press was talking about devious plots by Labour contenders to get rid of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. That was yesterday.

Today, one of the people who was supposed to be plotting, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, declared that he was unhappy with Labour’s recent record and that the leadership needed to have a new platform if it was going to avoid a devastating defeat in the next election.

Miliband did this, not by a devious plot, but by writing an article in The Guardian, which is the only serious left of centre national newspaper in Britain. This is not a plot. It is a statement to the electorate.

And that statement is that one of the three top people in the present government is not happy with the present direction of the government of which he is a part. In the British tradition foreign secrectaries usually resign before they make statements of this kind.

Most of the media comment this morning focusses on the delight of the Conservatives that Labour is ripping itself apart. But a full reading of the article Miliband wrote in The Guardian shows that Miliband is only saying what most Labour ministers, MPs and activists believe.

The crux of the article is this sentence.

Every member of the Labour party carries with them a simple guiding mission on the membership card: to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few.

Miliband’s message has been privately welcomed by many. And despite what many of the pundits are saying there is no reason why Labour should not conduct an orderly election in the autumn. Miliband may, or may not, win it. There will be other challengers, probably including Jack Straw and Harriet Harman.

That will be good for the party and good for democracy. My picture is from the Daily Mail. Not the most flattering portrait of the challenger. But not a surprising choice. The Mail would prefer a much less left wing prime minister.

It is the greyest of grey dawns. Black cloud hangs over Stoneborrow Hill. Chesil Beach and Portland Bill are invisible. Two blackish birds are pecking on the terrace. Nothing on the bird table but they are pecking hopefully. Probably magpies. At least they are not crows or albatrosses or other birds of ill omen.

The weather mirrors my mood. My nephew Jim and his two sons have managed to find a patch of reasonably level ground in the back garden for their tent, but it is flapping in the wind and I fear it will blow down before they wake up. And the storm, forecast for Thursday, could easily begin in a few minutes.

Although I currently have no work obligations I have totally failed to maintain my intention of a blog a day. I have still not published that review of the moving diary of the manic depressive young woman or the new David Lodge novel. The Durham Miners’ Gala remains un-reported as does my impressions of the first UK WordCamp.

The only blog I have managed in the last few days was a rant about Gordon Brown. I am not alone in thinking he is making a mess of running the country but who am I to say so, when I cannot even write a blog a day. Worse than that I am not even sure I know anything worth writing about and I don’t even know what I believe.

Yesterday, Kate and James came over from Totnes to show us their new baby. The women were taking turns to cradle it. I insisted in demonstrating that a mere man was capable of learning this skill. She was asleep. She looked Chinese. Inscrutable. And looking as if she knew already far more than I did.

Meanwhile Lucas, who is not quite two, showed none of the murderous tendencies the great Sigmund led us to expect. He entained us all with a rattling good story, triggered by the digger he had seen in our drive as he came in. He told us in vivid detail how he drove his digger, what he picked up in the shovel, and where he put it. He held his audience and carried them on and on. He is already a better story teller than me. When I last saw him a month or so ago he said only two or three words. He seems to have learnt the whole language in a few weeks. And boys are supposed to learn to communicate much more slowly than boys.

No scientist that I have read has come anywhere near explaining just how that happens. And just why learning the first language is so different from learning a second langage. Maybe Darwin and Richard Dawkins have got it wrong and that we could all speak in many tongues if only we had faith.

But so far the only children we have found brought up by wolves had only learnt to howl.

The Sunday newspapers are full of stories about plots, including cabinet ministers, to get rid of Prime Minister Gordon Brown following Friday’s poll result at Glasgow East. Although Labour had an excellent and popular candidate, voters of all parties united to deliver a 22 per cent swing against the government. The winner was the Scottish Nationalist Party, the only party with any hope of toppling Labour in what was in 2005 their 25th safest seat.

Alex Salmand, the SNP leader, led a high profile campaign to get his own supperters to the polling booths. But the trendy new young leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties played it softly softly. In consequence most of their supporters either stayed at home or delivered a tactical anti-Labour vote.

Of course this would not happen in a General Election. And of course Scotland is different from the rest of the country. But this result coming on top of Labour’s defeat at Crewe shows unmistakedly that Labour has lost the confidence of its industrial heartlands. And the saddest fact Brown has to face as he goes off for his annual holiday in Conservative territory in Southwold in Suffolk is that this final blow has been delivered by his fellow Scots.

The reality of the situation in the Labour Party could not be further away from plotting by fiercely ambitious men or women eager to knife their leader in the back. Because, of course, any potential contender knows that the chances of Labour winning another term of office in 2210, when it will have been in office for thirteen years, are very slight indeed.

Neither is the party plagued by the huge gulf in ideology and policies that plagued the Labour Party in 1950s and 1960s, when the Party leaders included Hugh Gaitskill and Roy Jenkins on the right and Nye Bevan and Tony Benn on the left. The differences between Brownites and the Blairites are minute by comparison, both in domestic policies and on foreign affairs.

New Labour is currently failing because of the economic cycle. New Labour came to power on an economic upturn. So that Blair and Brown won back the support of the professional leftish classes, who torpedoed Labour when they deserted to form the Social Democratic Party, now merged with the old Liberal Party.

In fact, New Labour has been in everything except name, a social democratic party, whose policies are broadly similar to those of the social democratic parties in Europe and to the Democratic Party in the US.

Although Gordon Brown, unlike Tony Blair, has been committed Labour throughout his life, he has totally lost touch with his roots. His worst mistake was the abolition of the 10 per cent tax rate, which hit those who could least afford to be hit when the economy is going into the most serious recession in the lives of any first time voters.

Almost everyone in the party sees that, except Gordon Brown himself. But as he walks around the Suffolk marshes during his summer break he may well come to see the impossility of rebuilding the Labour Party in a swamp.

He can still rescue his dignity, and perhaps his place in history, by iniatating a leadership election in the autumn. That is the best way of avoiding plots and back stabbing.

And that is what democracy is all about. Let the party and the people decide in an open contest.

Meanwhile it is business as usual. And Brown had no trouble in putting on a big smile when he met with Barack Obama in the garden behind his Downing Street office. Maybe he was hoping that some of the Obamania, which was raging through Europe all last week, would stick to him. (The photo is from Getty.)