So how many saw the Piers Morgan “I want to be friendly” interview with our dear leader on Sunday evening? Apparently 4 million of us did. I have to admit, I was one of them, however I did have a glass of wine to help me through it.

I actually tried to view the programme without taking any prejudices into it and to be perfectly honest, I felt that 5-10 minutes into it Brown was actually doing quite well. He was smiling, responding to questions well and looked genuinely relaxed. But as is so often the case with Brown he can’t keep the facade up for long and once we got past the first advert break he slipped back into his usual dull tones with long winded answers and a face that looks like it’s been slapped by an army of blind beings.

When we got to the part that had been trailed the most – the questions about how he dealt with and how he felt at the time of his first daughter’s death I though the dealt with it well. It was obviously very hard for him to talk about it as you might expect, but he spoke slowly and calmly in measured tones that came across well. Now, as a pre-record interview it is clear that they’ve had several takes and I would suspect that lying in the ITV dungeons offices is a tape of all the attempts that for whatever reason were not aired. I would not be surprised if Gordon did actually break down and then he refused to allow it to be shown as even he would consider that PR gone too far.

Clearly the object of the exercise was a PR stunt otherwise his advisers would not have agreed to him doing the interview. Piers Morgan’s questioning was hardly tricky to deal with, particularly because it didn’t deal with government policy, it focused solely on Gordon the man. So, will it help when it comes to the ballot box? I doubt it. Yes, the programme shows that he does have a personality and I don’t doubt that, but what I and many others have always said is that he doesn’t have the right personality to be a leader in the limelight such as the Prime Minister is.

I know from people who have worked closely with Brown that he is not necessarily the man the media make him out to be. Yes, by his own admittance he is not always the best at explaining things and that is very evident when he tries to sell his policies. Yes he doesn’t come across well on the TV and that is why he was better placed at the Treasury where he was by and large out of the view of the cameras.

I don’t often write in favour of Tony Blair, but thank goodness he got the leadership when he did, otherwise Labour would be in a much worse position than they already are. Oh, actually, maybe that would have meant the Tories would have been in government by now and the economy wouldn’t have been completely wrecked. Just a thought.

So, the figures are out. Britain is out of recession. Statistically that is, however we all know that the effects of a recession go on long after the economic slump has ended. Today’s figures showing a 0.1% growth in the final quarter of 2009 was the first period of growth for 18 months. But, that doesn’t tell the real story. Of course, the headlines Downing Street wants pumped out is “Britain out of Recession”. The government will claim that our coming out of recession is mainly due to the measures they put in to protect the economy.

The problem is of course, that’s not the truth. If you walk into clothes retailers on the high street, they will tell you that business is slow. If you go to hotels they will tell you it’s quiet. The simple fact is that the final quarter of 2009 included Christmas and thus it’s no surprise that there was slight economic growth due to people buying presents.

0.1% is an incredibly small growth and there is nothing to suggest that the economy will continue to grow in the 1st quarter of 2010. The labour government inherited a strong economy. We know this because they committed to Tory spending plans for the first three years of government. After that time, the economy started to slide and there’s only been one party in power during this time. Brown claimed we were best prepared to weather the storm, yet we were the first G20 nation into recession and we’re the last out of it.  Meanwhile, each newly born baby is saddled with £17,000 of debt and this is what Gordon and his moronic crew believe to be ‘best placed’!

Whatever the next few months holds for our economy doesn’t particularly matter when it comes to the election. many people are very much of the mind that it is Labour who has caused this mess. They’ve had their chance to make the country better and they’ve spectacularly failed. The British electorate will not forgive them for that and now the time is up. Despite the left still claiming there’s a chance Labour will win the next election, a poll out for Channel 4 last night by ICM shows that people will not reward Brown for ending the recession. Some 46% feel worse of now than they did 12 months ago. That’s a staggering increase and shows just how many people this Labour recession has had a large negative impact on.

The last chance Brown had was if today’s figures showed reasonable growth. But they haven’t and the growth is only just growth. Things are much much worse than we may have thought a few months ago. That emergency budget from Osborne is looking more and more needed as the weeks go by.

First it was British Leyland, then it was Tottenham Hotspur after that came Andy Murray and so the list goes on. Gordon’s endorsement seems to carry a jinx with it. Following the Primementalist’s backing the company/club/bank/person fails.

It seems to have happened again – this time our dear previous leader Anthony has felt the wrath of the poisonous tongue. A few days ago Gordon gave his official backing to Blair for EU Presidency, now it seems he is unlikely to get the position because of growing uncertainty among EU countries that he is the right man for the job.

Is this a jinx or have the bunker brigade finally cottoned on to what is happening and used Gordon’s skill to outmanoeuvre Blair? I somehow cannot believe that they’ve put aside their old differences so much that Gordon will back Blair, but then again I can’t believe that a venomous endorsement has really been planned.

Personally I think Blair should be the EU President as it will only make the British people even more Euro sceptic than they already are. The position is clearly quite a powerful one or else Blair wouldn’t be going for it, but then we keep being told that individual countries will still make their own minds up it’s just the EU President will have the job or getting countries to agree with each other.

The whole situation is a joke. We need Europe for trade purposes but we don’t need all this nonsense with parliaments and councils and envoys and special representatives and so on. All we need is a simple trade treaty. The problem is that as history tells us when you start having economic integration there are pushes for political integration. This is exactly what is happening in this case. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if Britain got a reasonable deal out of it, but we don’t and so I am confused as to why our government insists on supporting an institution that just rapes our national wallet and we don’t get anything back. It’s bad business. How many companies do you find that are willing to invest if they don’t think there’s a pretty good chance of not only getting their money back, but also making some profit?

It’s nice that some people think we’re some kind of benevolent charity fund to the world, but the world just takes our cash and runs away with it. It’s a disgrace to say the least and it wants stopping.

Better off out anyone?

Brown has announced an extra 500 troops are to go to Athganistan. A welcome announbcement by many including the former head of the British Army, Gen. Sir Richard Dannet who has been calling for more troops for over a year now.

However, perhaps one of the most interesting parts of Brown’s statement to the Commons this afternoon was when he said that the extra troops will not be deployed until they are properly equipped. Perhaps this is a quiet admittance that troops currently serving have not been equipped properly whether that be with guns that work in the dusty condidtions, or helicopters which can move troops quickly. We know that Brown halved the helicopter budget during his time as chancellor and we know that guns have been jamming upo with the dust so  maybe the government has finally realised that it’s propably not best to send troops into combat without the correct gear.

The overarching problem here is that I, like many others are unconvinced what the actual aims are in Afghanistan, just what does the government hope to achieve and what is the overall strategy? These and other serious questions need answers and fast. I’ve spoken to serving members of the armed forces and they are less than clear as to what the strategy is. If they don’t know (and these are brigadiers, not just foot soldiers) then how on earth are they meant to know how to fight the war?

Yes, we have this theme of ridding the world of terrorism, but merely shooting at some Taliban forces in Helmand will not root that out. The problem stretches much further and deeper than that. Indeed, a growing problem is that of Pakistan. Sooner or later military intervention of some form is going to become a necessity in Pakistan. They are consistently proving that they are incapable of running their country and more importantly clamping down on Islamic extremists – maybe it’s time to take some direct action.

We always knew it was going to take something bigger than big to make Gordon Brown’s speech change the course of the political tide, but how upset must the bunker be feeling now. After pulling what they thought, and to their credit was not a bad speech out the bag, the Sun then rains on their parade by declaring their support for the Conservatives.

Yesterday I was of the mind that the speech started quite well with the great list of achievements, but now having had time to think it through a bit more my opinion has changed. The trick he was playing was by reeling off the list of achievements, he would trick us into thinking that that justifies why he and Labour should get a fourth term in office. However, the public unfortunately do not care so much about what you have done, it’s more about what you haven’t done and what you will do.

So, we had a list of policy announcements. I say announcements, most of them had previously been announced. the scrapping of compulsory ID cards is not only a dramatic climbdown and u-turn, it has already been announced by the Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who incidentally was centre in the Blair project of ID cards. Secondly we had a commitment to a referendum on Westminster electoral reform and a commitment to an elected second chamber. Again, both were manifesto commitments back in 1997. To be honest, if they haven’t delivered such basic things after 12 years are people really going to trust that it will be delivered in the next five years? And whilst we’re on trust, we were promised a referendum on Lisbon, they failed to fulfil that commitment so why should we believe them on electoral reform?

Next came the most obvious and brutal form of social engineering seen in this country – the so called ‘gulags for slags’. The idea to provide help to teenage mothers is good in principle, but to say that they will be pretty much locked up in a system not too dissimilar from the workhouses is nothing short of a disgrace and infringement of our basic liberties as free citizens of this country. I don’t think there has ever been a stronger argument for using contraception with the threat of the Prime Mentalist taking control of your life should you get pregnant. This policy is a nonsense because as with so many Nu Labour ideas, they look at the consequences rather than the causes. It’s no good spending forever picking up the pieces because it is not actually dealing with the problem, in this case teenage pregnancies which in this country are among the highest in Europe.

The other problem Brown had in his speech was that he kept fluffing lines and using the wrong tones in the wrong places. A speech of this kilter should have a rousing climax, this just had random words about fight, change and believe but it didn’t resonate with the rest of the speech and thus the desired effect was largely lost.

Labour is completely sunk now. We’ve had the Lib Dems farce of a conference, we had this gathering of bored lefties in Brighton. Next comes the Tories. The atmosphere in Manchester will certainly be much more positive than the libbies and socialists, but it’s Cameron’s election to win or lose now and he needs to be careful that absolutely no slip ups are made between now and the election.

I’m unable to go to the Conservative COnference as I’m still recovering from my hip surgery, but I will be blogging on it throughout the week.

The storm erupting over the apparent snubbing of Gordon Brown by Obama is threatening to rumble on into the Labour conference. It now appears that a desperate Numbeer 10 asked the White House for a meeting between the two leaders on five separate occasions. The requests were turned down, despite Number 10 claims that no such requests were submitted.

Some have suggested that Obama’s team know that Brown is not going to be around for a while and so it’s not worth while meeting him. However, it goes much further than that. The White House it not stupid and they clearly saw straight through the game Number 10 were playing. If Gordon Brown could have a meeting with Obama then potentially it would give him some good headlines. This operation had nothing to do with serious talks about serious matters, it was more about a photo op, a press release and hopefully some less than career ending headlines on the evening news.

Putting Number 10′s aims to one side, it is quite clear as to why the White House have ignored London – Megrahi. We knew when the Lockerbie bomber was released that Obama was less than satisfied with the decision and remember that he also has to reflect the views of his own electorate, an electorate which is not completely on his side at the moment. Whatever the legal situation in the UK is which lead to Scotland making a decision with foreign policy consequences it is a decision which have outraged many across the pond.

The Americans do not care whether London had no right to intervene. For them, devolution is our problem. Their problem is the decision. It was said at the time that letting the Scottish Justice secretary make a decision by himself was silly at best. London should have seen further than the actual decision and intervened. I acknowledge that justice is a devolved matter, but this decision has foreign policy implications which is not a devolved matter. If we are going to let politicians decide the fate of dying prisoners we need to ensure that the right people make the decision. The release was not just going to affect relations between London and Edinburgh, but also Libya and the US.

I said at the time of the release that this decision proved that devolution, or at least the extent of it that we have is bad for politics and I have just been proved right. New Labour created devolution because they thought it would be good for Scotland and it would silence calls for independence. In reality, the Scottish Parliament now wants more powers and with the Lockerbie decision, the disaster of devolution is now biting Labour back.

Of course the only man who is laughing now is Tony Blair – the man who did most of the constitutional demage to this country managed to jump ship just before the country went completely tits up.

Back to the US. This term the ‘special relationship’ has been used over the last decade or so to describe the relationship between the US and the UK. Clearly, it’s not so special now, but as Lord Heseltine said on Question Time last night, the US has never seen it as a special relationship. They have a special relationship with Israel, but not the UK. It is my opinion that Bush saw an opportunity to influence Tony Blair and Blair used it to try and show that he had some sort of direct line to the US President. It worked for both parties because Bush got what he wanted and Blair made himself look very important.

I don’t know what the future is of relations between the US and UK, but I think a change at Number 10 will have an impact. The US has a new regime after 8 years of no change and we will probably get a new regime after over a decade of no change. Clearly the US is using it’s first opportunity to protest about the Lockerbie decision to make a point, but at the end of the day it is Labour who is to blame for this latest chapter.

They have yet again proved their complete inability to run the country. What the masses thought was fantastic in 1997 has now been shown up for what it is and the damage that Labour have down to the country is now very obvious. Once again it falls to the Tories to fix the country.

The term ‘swings and roundabouts’ comes to mind.

1. Tim Montgomerie asks why the TUC chose such tall microsphones (it’s the comments section you want to look at
2. Fraser Nelson becomes the first ‘MSM’ journalist to write about Brown’s apparent mental condition
3. Tom Harris opposes electoral reform
4. Tory Rascal isn’t impressed with Gordon’s TUC speech
5. Cranmer is less than convinced by the Total Politics blog ranking system

In light of the release of the Lockerbie bomber, there has been many calls for Gordon Brown to make some sort of statement about the matter. Apparently, his keeping quiet proves his uselessness as Prime Minister. No. Why in this 24hr media age do we need constant quotes from our leaders. Why do they need an opinion on absolutely everything from the shape of bananas to whether or not a prisoner should have been released?

If any statement is required, I’m sure the Foreign Secretary will oblige. Or maybe not. As of today, he has refused to comment on the matter which only heightens the belief that the decision made was one more of politics than of justice or indeed compassion.

Putting that aside, the PM is on holiday. yes, he needs a break just like the rest of us. It is only fair that we leave him alone for a few weeks so that he can get some rest and spend some time with his family. In the meantime, there is a government minister on duty and matters such as the Lockerbie bomber should be dealt with by the relevant leader.

The problem of insisting a quote from the leader all the time is that it presidentialises our political system. It places too much attention on one man which is not how a parliamentary democracy is meant to be run.

I don’t often come to Brown’s defence because he is a pretty useless PM to be blunt, but come on, give the man a break and allow him to have a holiday. How would we like it if all we wanted was a couple of weeks peace and quiet and our family members (who knew we were on holiday) kept ringing us for up to the minute details of the family’s condition?

I think what is quite clear here is that Brown is using his holiday as a means to keeping quiet on the Lockerbie matter. Clearly there is three way politics at play here and the more they tell us politics and trade deals did not come into it, the more it looks like a cover up.

Put simply, we released a prisoner so that we could keep a lucrative oil deal worth in over £500m per anum. Oil runs the world and money talks. Oil makes money and money makes power. Keeping Megrahi in jail would make a political football of him and potentially jeopardise the trade arrangements and that would be too risky a strategy. Better to annoy America than Lybia seems to be the line taken by the UK/ Scottish Governments.

I’ve just watched PMQs from yesterday and it would appear Gordy has resorted to crying in Parliament. He was clearly upset by the attack from Cameron as he replied with anger, but he got visibly irritated when even Nick Cleggyweg beat him.

When Clegg asked him when he was going to admit he was wrong, the PM simply responded “Mr Speaker I am not wrong”.

It’s one thing to get beaten by the opposition (just ask Robert Muagabe), it’s another thing to get beaten by a collection of sandle wearing men who generally don’t know much.

Take a swtach at this week’s PMQs and judge for yourself, but I feel Gordy now feels he is being bullied by the other party leaders. Any minute now he’ll just start crying.

At 6pm this evening, the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) meets in Westminster to discuss the leadership of the Party.

Gordon has made it clear he intends to continue, but how much of a say does he have? We know there has been emails doing the rounds asking Labour backbenchers to unite to call for a leadership election.

This evening could be a defining point in British politics. Labour took just 15.4% of the European vote. However, somehow I think Brown might just limp on. The last few weeks have seen unprecedented events taking place culminating in the election results over the last few days.

One of three things will happen this evening:

1. Brown survives and limps on
2. Brown is ousted and a leadership election is triggered
3. Brown resigns

Whatever the outcome it won’t be a particularly savory event. It is clear that the party has more infighting than is imaginable and the longer it goes on the more it will damage their election prospects.

UPDATE: So, unsupprisingly Gordy survives to live another day. Charles Clarke, Tom Harris, etc. spoke out and called on the PM to resign, however the rest of the PLP chickened out and refused to cluck by not supporting. I don’t know exactly what Gordon said, but the best tool he had at his disposal was to call the PLP’s bluf by taking the nuclear option and so perhaps he said, “launch a leadership challenge and I’ll call a general election”. He knows that he won’t call an election, but the PLP also knows that if an election were to be called now more of them would lose their seats than if it were called in a quieter season, perhaps in the Autumn.

The result of the meeting is good news for the Tories whose best weapon is Gordy staying on and continuing to make a complete mess of Labour. It would seem that there is significant disquiet and unrest with Gordy within the Labour Party, but they seem to be so disorganised that they can’t even organise a coup.

Forget the election results – caroline Flint has now resigned from the government. This is now the 6th resignation toaday alone.

In a press conference currently taking place, the PM keeps repeating the phrase, “I’m not arrogant”, has someone told him he is arrogant or something?

This is getting out of control now, he has not got any people left in his party so he is bringing people in from outside. Alan Sugar as a enterprise Tsar! I mean this is just rediculous now. 

there ha snow been three resignations during this press conference alone and seven during today. This is extradordinary and we still have Sunday’s European election results to come!

Let us now prepare for a July election.

I’m out this evening but as of 17:30, we still have three coucils to declare and the Conservatives have won all but four of them. This is quite a result for the Conservatives and we hope that this pattern continues in the Euro election results on Sunday.

James Purneell has resigned this evening sending Gordy the strongest message yet by not only resigning, but also calling on the PM to resign.

Labour will finish at least 3rd in the local elections and by the look of things across the country, they may even finish fourth in the Euro elections.  Turnout has been disgraceful, by 12 noon many regions were struggling to beat 15% turnouts which is a joke. This are the dying days of the Brown regime. Jack Straw or Alan Johnson will take over and a general election will become a necessity. This means we may see an election as early as July, but I still expect it to be no earlier than October this year. There are certain prodcedures to go through meaning that it will be inpracticle to have a ‘summer holiday’ election.

I have been busy all day working on the elections. The results for the Euro elections aren’t out until Sunday, but I can safely say that in my part of London the COnservatives have taken at least 50% of the vote. There was no real presense by any other party on the polling stations and constituents say that the Tories are the only party who have delivered literature to them. The tables are turning, it is indeed a good time to be a COnservative, anyway I must go to bed as I need to be up early as despite the elections being over, there is still much work to be done.

Join me here tomorrow for rolling coverage of the local election results as they come in. I’lll be regularly updating throughout the day.

Today is the final day of campaigming before tomorrow’s local and European elections. All the parties will be out on thd streets today garnering every last piece of support before the polls open at 7amtomorrow.
The tories have high hopes of sweeping the board in the local elections, whilst UKIP are still strong favorites to do well in the euro poll.
I’ll be out on thr streets delivering pledge letters to our known supporters telling why it is vital they vote Conservative tomorrow. I was very encouraged yesterday evening when a road that four years ago did not have many pledges now has considerably more. This of course has to do with the efforts of the local party, but attitudes havd clearly changed. We are on the brink of something incredible here, Labour may well finish in 3rd place in the local elections and perhaps even 4th place in the Euro elections. If that does happen then serious questions will be asked about Brown’s and Labour’s future.

As the country is bathed in a heatwave it seems that we are all melting away and our dear leader is not exempt from it. Today must have been the worst day of his political career with three more Labour Mps saying they will step down at the next election, four Labour MPs being told they cannnot stand again, one of the PM’s closest advisors Tom Watson regigning and then to top it all off, the cabinet is in utter dissaray as they jostle for jobs in the reshuffle expected on Friday in an effort to present an alternative news story to what will be awful results for Labour in the Local Government elections being held on Thursday. Jaqqi Smith has announced she is to resign from the cabinet, Alistar Darling looks set to be sacked as Chancellor and moved to Home secretary to be replaced by Ed Balls the Children’s Secretary. Meanwhile it appears that David Milliband is anxious he is losing his job as Foriegn secretary by stating that he wants four more years in the role. The evening standard suggested that the Business Secetary, Lord Mandelson is to get that job, presumably so that (a) Milliband’s leadership intentions are shot to pieces and, (b) so that Mandy is kept out of the country as much as possible and thus harms way. What we have going on is a mini dictatorship. Gordon Brown was described by many commentators as Stalanistic before he took up office and all this only proves them right.

Next Wednesday there is an opposition day debate with a vote to disolve Parliament immediately thus triggering a General Election. If that vote goes through Brown will be sunk and he’ll have to call an election. If he does it will probably be on 16th July. Remember, if there is a summer election it means there will not be a need for a potentially damaging by election in Glasgow North East which the PM will undoubtedly want to avoid. I still hold out that the election will be the first Thursday of May 2010, but I may well be wrong on that and we could see and election as early as next month. The next 7 days are crucial for the future of our Parliament, governemtn and ultimately country.

What is clear is that the country along with the governemnt is in complete meltdown. They are resorting to desparate tactics now. Life in the bunker must be grim…

I have had several emails over the last few days wondering what has happened to the blog. Well I am happy to report that it has not closed down. As some of you may have noticed from my twitter feed, i had to make an unscheduled visit to London as my Grandmother was dying. Since returning to Glasgow I have been too busy to post on the blog and I’ve not been able read enough news and articles to be informed enough to post decent articles. Thus I decided to take some time off the blog and then return to it in election week.
Well, we are now in election week and I’ll be back to the blog as of today.
On Friday there will be live coverage of the local election results and then on sunday evening there will be further live coverage for the Euro election results. I recomend you listen to Iain Dale’s radio programme coverage. I can’t link at the moment as I’m mobile but I’ll add a link when I can.
The polls still suggest the tories will get the highest share of the vote. More concerningly are the figures showing UKIP finishing in 2nd place. Couple that with Westminster polls showing Labour in 3rd place and this could all be Gordy’s last hoorah. I still think he’ll hold on to the leadership and have a cabinet reshuffle to make it look like things are being done.
His real problem is Cameron is getting all the coverage and Brown is not coming across as a leader.

I have been busy campaigning for the euro elections in Scotland where there is not normally a good reaction to the tories. However, this time, despite people not pleadging their support for the tories, there is a lot less of an anti tory attitude which is probably more to do with the unpopularity of labour than anything else. What is clear is that people want change, they are fed up with the present order and they want something new that will breathe new life into our broken society. The first stage of that process begins this Thursday when people have an opportunity to say they do not want Brussels controlling their lives, they want to be able to govern themselves. The only way that this will have the possibility of being achieved is by voting for that change by voting Conservative.

We knew it was going to be bad. We knew there was to be large amounts of borrowing but never did we know that it was to be a suicide essay of epic proportions written by a government who is in the dying days of power.

They expect 3.5% growth in a few years – that is pure fantasy designed to win voters. They are not good at estimating as shown with the increase in borrowing.

They are raising taxes for the highest earners – again another election factor. There can be no other explanation for it as it will not raise much money. It is designed purely to appeal to the left and as such is a complete and utter disgrace.

The Chancellor has all these wonder ideas about the economy in 2011, but as David Cameron said, he has forgotten that there is an election before then!

This was a completely cheap and shameless budget. A budget which could have been (and may well have been ) written by school children. It is a political budget aimed at the Labour Party rather the country. This government is not governing in the national interests, they are governing in their own selfish interests and that is a 100% disgrace.

Borrowing will now be in excess of £175bn this year alone! Remember, last year he estimated borrowing would be £32bn! Not all that good at estimations are they? This is an incredible figure and it puts borrowing at the highest levels since the Second World War. No Chancellor has ever announced such large rises in borrowing ever in the history of democratic governments in this country! This country will be the laughing stock of the world because of the economic incompetence and stupidity of our government over the course of the last decade.

David Cameron was absolutely correct when he said, “Our children are going to be in poverty for decades”. They will never forgive the people who have done this, Britain cannot afford another five years of Labour. Labour have made an “utter mess” of the economy. Any claim they made to economic competence is dead, over, finished.”

There wasn’t anything of substance from Cameron, but that doesn’t matter. At this stage he needed to rip right through the budget. The electorate is angry at this budget and they will be able to connect with Cameron’s anger in the Commons today. A budget response is not about opposition proposals it is about attacking the government where they are wrong and in this instance there was nothing right.

What is clear is that this government has lost the plot. They are now prepared to borrow, borrow and then borrow more in a shameless effort to gain more votes. Well I have news for Brown &co: You are finished and every last ounce of confidence that anyone had in you has now evaporated over the course of the 51 minute Budget statement.

This budget could have been used to take the county’s economy in a new direction, away from spending and borrowing and into a new era of saving. It didn’t and what it actually did was to ensure Labour loose the next election.

UPDATE: I notice on the HM Treasury website that the 2009 budget is entitled “Building Britain’s Future”. That is a falacy and a joke. It must be.

UPDATE: I’ll have further analysis on the budget up tomorrow afternoon. I’m currently sifting through the full document there’s 268 pages to get through!

So the G20 has ended with, as what we are all told an ’historic agreement’. Gordon Brown declared a new world order and the French President said the results were, “beyond what could have been imagined”. $1tn has been promised by the G20 to the IMF.

A few points to consider:

1. The money doesn’t actually exist at the moment and so if created will have an adverse effect on inflation in each of the ‘donating’ countries
2. The money won’t all be spent, the agreement is up to $1tn, when and where required
3. The IMf helps countries who are at their wits end. For this money to be released, we have to wait for the countries to collapse.

Therefore in effect, pretty much nothing other than headline grabbing agreements were made. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown is being made to look like having saved the world he is now moving onto saving the galaxy. I mean look at him strutting around the Excel centre like he’s the world’s best friend. It’s a joke, he did not save the world, if anything he caused more harm than good, at least in this country.

At the end of the day, we all woke up this morning still in a country in a deep recession with the same system of people pleasing politics in place. The sooner such an era is over, the better for us all.

Conservative HQ has set up a website where you can send your apology from Gordon to your friends and family. A rather good idea, but is this the best way to utilise party funds? I’m don’t think so.

Anyway, to forward the apology to your friends, click here

It is widely expected that David Cameron will be announcing some changes to his shadow cabinet at some point over the next couple of weeks. Originally he was planning some changes back in the summer but Gordy bottled it again and didn’t do a proper reshuffle himself. Cameron was forced to wait, but he can’t wait much longer as changes need to take place before an election. The shadow team we enter February 2009 with will be the one that enters the general election and then hopefully becomes the cabinet after the said election.

My tips for some changes begin with Home Secretary. I expect Dominic Grieve will be moved back to his former job of Shadow Attorney General. This will create a vacancy in his current position of Shadow Home Secretary. As this is such a prominent position, Cameron will need a close ally and also someone who will be good at the job. I reckon he will go with the current Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Herbert. If that happens there will be a vacancy there as well.

Amongst some names I expect to enter the shadow cabinet are Maria Millar, Justine Greening, David Burrowes and Ed Vaizy.

The current Shadow international development secretary Andrew Mitchell is quite unpopular and has been rather ineffective in his role. I have no idea who will replace him.

There has been much talk of the likes of David Davis and Ken Clarke returning to the mix. I expect not. Davis is now a liability for Cameron after their fallout over 42 days and Clarke is liable to mistakes. A possibility which Cameron simply cannot allow.

William Hague has been speaking out quite a bit recently, ut that’s more to let us all know he’s still around. I think he wants to be leader again knowing that if Cameron lost the next election, there would be no hesitation in dumping Dave as leader.

Finally, Caroline Spelman will no longer be party chairman. Eric Pickles has long been the hot tip as a replacement, but names such as the current shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has also been mooted.

Could there possibly be a general election in the summer next year?

Today we learn that Gordon Brown is to give David Cameron access to the Civil Service in the New Year. This is a signal that an election may be on the way. It’s convention that the service speaks to the Opposition in the months preceding an election so that there can be a swift hand over of power should the opposition win the election.

having said that, we all know what Gordon is about so don’t read fully into it. He may be playing a game, but then again he may well be considering an election next year, it just depends whether he can pluck up the courage this time round.