PM4PM? Never. Mandelson as caretaker leader? I’d put money on that

The silly season is upon us and the story that Peter Mandelson is hovering over a safe seat in the Commons with an eye on the premiership had a certain air of inevitability about it. William Rees-Mogg tipped some coal on the fire yesterday, suggesting Mandy’s aides briefed the Sunday Telegraph on the story, although it was really only a matter of time before someone somewhere dreamed it up.

For all his charms Mandelson would never win an election. He wouldn’t even tangibly limit the electoral damage David Cameron will inflict on Labour in 2010. He is unloved by voters and travels light on policy; his real skills lie in organising the party’s communications and strategy. He’s a Gerrard rather than a Rooney.

However in the aftermath of the next election I could see Mandy as an excellent caretaker leader. Harriet Harman may have been heading in the right direction in the gist of her comments over men and women this week, but the way she expressed them reminded us of just what a divisive figure she is.

Jack Straw and Alan Johnson would be, I imagine, less enthusiastic about grasping the poisoned chalice after a heavy defeat at the polls. Mandelson would have the strength of character and the political nous to stabilise the party while it began patching up its wounds. If I was the betting type I’d put money on Mandy running the party for a couple of years after 2010.

 

Interview with David Kingsley, Labour’s original spin doctor

I met David Kingsley, the advertising guru who helped transform the Labour party in the 1960s. Here he talks about working for Harold Wilson, how it feels to be compared to Alastair Campbell, and whether he thinks Gordon Brown can beat David Cameron at the next election.

A small box sits on the mantelpiece in the study, a slogan playfully scrawled across its side in marker pen.

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‘Fidel Castro gave this cigar to Harold Wilson,’ it records. ‘H.W. then gave it to D.K. at a meeting on the evening of his son Andrew’s birthday.’

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Next to the cigar case is a black and white photograph. It shows three men flanking Wilson, the tough-talking Labour prime minister whose mercurial personality dominated the politics of the 1960s. They appear to be smiling in modest celebration.

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“Won two, lost one,” David Kingsley chuckles, nodding at the picture. Now approaching his 80th birthday, he allows himself the indulgence of raising a bushy eyebrow. He is talking, of course, about general elections. Kingsley’s natural aversion to boastfulness must be one of the reasons his story has remained one of the untold tales of modern politics, until now.

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Before Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson refashioned the Labour party into an election winning machine, before ‘spin’ entered the daily lexicon of British newspapers, even before Margaret Thatcher paid two brothers from Baghdad to design her first election poster, a team of elite executives became the first professionals from the world of marketing to help a politician break into Number 10.

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‘Let’s Go With Labour’ and ‘You Know Labour Works’ were the motifs that powered Harold Wilson’s Labour party to two consecutive general election victories in 1964 and 1966, accompanied by innovative TV broadcasts. They sprang from the fertile mind of a young media guru who felt his socialist leanings tugging more urgently than his wallet.

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At the age of 33, David Kingsley was already a veteran marketeer with his own business and experience of working in New York for Proctor & Gamble, the founders of modern advertising. He was “something of a man-about-town”, he remembers with a laugh, a dynamic figure who made regular TV appearances and knew the power players in London’s blossoming advertising scene. Like Alastair Campbell, Kingsley was – and still is – a dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporter.

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Excitement was buzzing in the air when Harold Wilson shaped up to fight the ageing Harold Macmillan in 1964. Here was an energetic challenger, fresh and full of self-belief, who promised to forge a new Britain in “the white-hot heat of technology”.

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So when a mutual friend told him the prospective prime minister was considering radically changing the Labour party’s election strategy, Kingsley jumped at the chance to help.

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“I had a feeling that politicians weren’t very good at communicating with the people, and the people found it very difficult to understand what the politicians were doing,” Kingsley says.

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“The Labour party didn’t know how to communicate with words. If you look back, none of the parties really did.

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“I became very interested in how one could use the latest marketing techniques to understand how you needed to get through to people, instead of just throwing out headlines.”

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After Labour won the 1964 election with a slender majority, Kingsley persuaded Wilson to let him bring in two more high-flyers from the advertising realm, Peter Lovell-Davis and Denis Lyons. Together they became known – only partly in jest – as the prime minister’s Three Wise Men. The first golden age of Labour PR had truly begun.

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“We quickly became very involved,” recalls Kingsley. “Every second Tuesday we’d go to Number 10 and chat over what was happening. Sometimes we’d find ourselves in the embarrassing situation of carrying messages from Number 10 to the party because they didn’t always see eye to eye. It was an extremely interesting period.”

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Political folklore has it that the trio of Mandelson, Campbell and Blair were the first senior figures within the party to really hook themselves to the addictive potion of opinion polling, the gauge of public favour widely seen to be responsible for forming many of New Labour’s early policies.

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But Kingsley insists it was the Three Wise Men – together with their friend Bob Worcester, who later went on to found the hugely successful research company Mori – who started using regular opinion polls to guide party strategy. It was they, years ahead of Tony Blair’s watershed moment, who identified the potential appeal of ditching the Labour party’s manifesto commitment to nationalisation. At the time, even raising the idea would have been like uttering a blasphemy. It was quickly shelved.

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“They weren’t doing proper [opinion poll] research when we arrived,” Kingsley explains. “What they liked was to show their ratings once in a while, but they weren’t digging deeper to find out why people had views on things.

“So the research part of it was very important. In fact to my mind, introducing the Labour party to proper opinion poll research was one of the most important things we did.”

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For a moment he looks slightly rueful.

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“Bob [Worcester] was very good. If they’d used him more we needn’t have lost the 1970 election. I know everyone always looks back, but he was tracking very clearly what was happening and what the problems were in a way the Labour party had never experienced before.”

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It’s clear the art of spin, now so associated with vicious briefings and irresponsible hype, was governed by a certain gentlemen’s code in the 1960s. Kingsley describes Wilson as “a marvellous chap” who would bring his wife and children to parties and would charm friends and foes with his bluff northern manner. He takes pains to point out that even at the peak of the Wise Men’s activities, advertising was seen as a precursor to real discussion.

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“The most notorious slogan we ran against the Conservatives was ‘Yesterday’s Men’,” Kingsley says, referring to the controversial campaign that portrayed Ted Heath’s team as puppets languishing in the dustbin of history.

“But that was actually planned as a preliminary to clarifying our position. It was a preliminary to talking. I always believed you should talk about your policies and your principles, because those are the key ingredients which other people tend to feel good about or not.

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“Things go wrong in politics when people think they know it all, when they aren’t actually closely in touch with what’s going on around them or what people feel like. But everything goes so quickly these days. We used to have time to think about these things. Now you have to think on the spot for 24-hour news.”

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Kingsley parted amicably from the Wise Men and the Labour party when Ted Heath’s Tories scraped to power in 1970. He says he has never been tempted to return to the heart of British politics, preferring to split his time between charity work and advising a number of African governments.

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He still takes an interest in the Labour party’s fate, though. What are his thoughts on Gordon Brown’s chances at the next ballot box? There is a long, meditative pause as Kingsley rubs his hands together.

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“Well,” he offers, “when the first troubles came to the Labour party, and MPs were beginning to say ‘We must get rid of Brown’, I wasn’t of that ilk. We didn’t know what was going to happen, but I thought he’d come through very well at the right moment, and…”

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Again Kingsley hesitates, weighing his words carefully.

“And, I think he has. It doesn’t mean he’s done everything right or everything wrong. But I still think he is the right person for this time. You can’t just go by what the newspapers say.

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“There’s still a lot going to happen in the next 18 months or so until there’s an election. I think it’ll swing back to Labour, more than anything because Cameron and his crew seem to be so bad at doing things.”

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At this point Kingsley raises his hands in mock incredulity.

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“They don’t ever seem to get anything right. I’d love to advise them how to do things because it would be very easy. What is amazing is the Conservative party hasn’t yet managed to modernise itself in the sense of being a party that cares for the whole country – they just haven’t done it.”

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Asked whether he sees the likes of Alastair Campbell and Andy Coulson as his progeny, Kingsley is more evasive. He is grateful to Peter Mandelson for breathing life back into the Labour party in the 1980s, he says, and he recognises a certain parallel between the professionalism the Three Wise Men brought Harold Wilson and the professionalism New Labour’s modernisers brought to the party 30 years later. How about Blair himself?

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“I will always praise Tony Blair for getting the party into the frame of mind where it realised it needed to win something,” Kingsley says slowly. “Of course, many of us lost faith with the Iraq war and… it deteriorated after that.”

Silence settles for a few seconds. An email pings softly on the laptop behind him.

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“He did a very good job for the party,” Kingsley finally pronounces. “But he was a bit of a disappointment. As a person.”

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As the conversation draws to a close, Kingsley lets slip a surprising revelation: he didn’t draw a penny in salary from the government in all his time as its communications maestro. Offering his services for free gave him a feeling of distance from the political machine, he says, and the freedom to do as he liked. His only remuneration came in the form of a Havana cigar, itself a gift from Fidel Castro to Harold Wilson.

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“I’ve promised to give it to one of my sons, but it’s probably falling to pieces,” he explains, gesturing towards the box on the mantelpiece. “I know the exact date Wilson gave it to me because my first son was born earlier in the evening, so I arrived at Number 10 late from the hospital.

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“He had it ready for me, and I said, ‘I don’t smoke’. He said, ‘David, you don’t have to smoke this, but do have it as a celebration of your son’.”

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Kingsley smiles at the memory. “I keep meaning to give it to Andrew, but I think perhaps we ought to frame it or something.”

 

Sunday news round-up: Ivan Cameron, Margaret Thatcher and Harriet Harman

In a week dominated by the sad early death of Ivan Cameron, the eulogies have been plentiful. Gordon Brown for once managed to find the right words in his address to the Commons on Wednesday, when he said that “the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow no parents should have to endure”.

Among the shower of memorial articles produced since Wednesday morning, Matthew D’Ancona’s piece for the Spectator – written late on Tuesday night – has a special resonance. He pointed out, as others have, that Brown and Cameron are now bound by the tragic human bond of both having lost a child. He added:

In most cases, one finds that there is a formative event that moulds a political leader and acts as the fulcrum of his or her life. In Mr Cameron’s case, there is no doubt that the birth of Ivan, the challenges that followed, and the deep love he felt for his elder son had a tremendous impact upon his public as well as his private life.

Dominic Lawson’s piece in the Sunday Times today is also worth a read.

Elsewhere, Lindsay Duncan’s portrayal of a magically slimmer, better looking and generally less insane Margaret Thatcher has sparked a raft of retrospectives.

The New Statesman dedicated this week’s issue to a ‘trial’ of Thatcher by recollection.

Among the memories the great and good have of her resignation – Paddy Ashdown recalls the entire departure lounge of Glasgow Airport erupting in euphoria – is this lovely vignette from former Labour MP Oona King years later:

On one occasion I was accompanying Gordon Brown after a meeting at Westminster with MPs. As we drove slowly through the House of Lords car park, we passed an old woman struggling to get out of a passenger seat. Gordon was nearest to her, but was rifling through papers for his next meeting. The old woman seemed to stand to attention at the sight of the car and waved almost bashfully towards us, evidently assuming we might stop and speak to her. When Gordon didn’t look up, her eyes slipped past his and, momentarily, locked on mine.

“Gordon,” I said, still surprised to have looked so closely into those eyes, “you’ve just blanked Margaret Thatcher.”

He seemed uncomfortable.

I bet he did. Also looking uncomfortable this week was Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, who took a seat opposite Andrew Marr after a long week of briefing and counter-briefing over whether or not she is manoeuvring to succeed Gordon Brown.

Harman gave dull scripted answers to questions on British complicity in the torture of terror suspects and the proposed part-privatisation of the Post Office. The interesting bit came when Marr pressed her outright on whether there was any truth to the rumour of her party leadership ambitions:

Absolutely not a shred, not an iota of truth in it. None whatsoever.

Brown’s allies have never seen Harman as a serious threat, despite the fact she snatched the deputy leadership election from stronger candidates. Compare the careful ostracisation of David Miliband last year with the outright thuggery of the whispering against Harman this week. Her on-the-record denial of ambition to Andrew Marr should mark a short, sharp end to the affair.

 

Chuka Ummuna: “It would be spectacularly awful if I didn’t get elected for Streatham”

The buzz surrounding Chuka Ummuna, Labour’s 30-year-old prospective candidate for Streatham, is remarkable given that he’s not even a professional politician yet. His name must be one of the hottest Google searches of the moment judging by the number of hits I get relating to a tiny article I wrote on him months ago.

 

Chuka took a break from his legal work last Friday to come and tell our politics class at City how he handles the pressure of people’s expectations, what drives him and how it feels to be compared to the US president. The first thing that struck me was how well a good dose of litigation prepares people for politics. At a glance he reminded me not of Barack Obama, but a grittier talking Tony Blair.

 

He kicked off explaining how important he thinks it is to be able to go ‘off message’ and break with the party line. “For any Labour politician doing that after 10 years in government, it is quite a challenging thing,” he admitted, referring to the element of dutifulness that will inevitably encroach on his public profile if he wins Streatham. But he quickly went on to demonstrate his ability to deliver cutting comments by taking a sideswipe at ‘identikit’ politicians:

 

I think the problem we’ve got is there are politicians who aren’t idealistic at all, even when they’re young… A lot of people muck around doing student politics, then go and work researching for an MP, then go to work in a think tank, then think they’re ready to step up to Parliament.

 

So for them, it’s a career.

 

He wouldn’t be drawn when David Miliband’s name was mentioned, insisting: “I am talking across the board”.

 

I think it’s quite easy to get warped by the environment in which you are working. In the Blair era, if you even dared to think about certain things you’d be treated like you had committed a gaffe…

 

People now tend to talk as if they’re managing the big ship UK PLC. Maybe it is partly that we have, in a way, allowed ourselves to become part of the Establishment.

 

When the unavoidable question came up, Chuka said it was “extremely flattering” to be compared to Barack Obama but emphasised, “I wouldn’t dream of comparing myself to him”. He also said race isn’t something that makes him self conscious.

 

Being mixed race, I can operate in any environment, but I don’t walk into a room and think, ‘I am the only black person here’. It’s not something I generally think about. When you open your mouth people tend to be interested in your ideas rather than what you look like.

 

 

At the moment he’s juggling a full-time job and gearing up to fight for the Streatham seat at the next election. “I’m trying to meet as many people as possible,” he said, “so I can communicate what I want to do in the community.” In a sense he echoed David Cameron’s call for a return to localism when he described the Streatham community as the starting point and focus of his urge for politics. He added:

 

Do I feel the pressure? It would be spectacularly awful if I didn’t get elected. If I couldn’t live and work for Streatham, I don’t think I would want to go anywhere else.

 

Throughout the chat Chuka’s delivery was impressive and he struck a relaxed pose lolling on one of the university’s cheap plastic chairs. It was hard not to feel fired up when he described the UK political landscape as “going through a real moment” and when he said it was “an exciting time” for young people with the drive to effect change.

 

It was only when I went back through my notes that I realised how careful he’d been in everything he said. He managed to provoke some strong reactions – and agreement – while avoiding pinning himself down to much detail. I think that was what brought back the memory of a young Blair before the travails of war and office soured his idealism.

 

Sunday news round-up: Eastern leaders meet Etonian leaders

I was speaking to an old Labour communications maestro this week, who said something to the effect that the Tory party under David Cameron still hasn’t managed to modernise itself properly. I generally disagree – I’m fairly sure Dave and George Facebook and Twitter each other at ever opportunity – but William Hague certainly let the side down a bit on today’s Andrew Marr Show.

He had a distinctly uncomfortable moment. Scheduled to meet the Chinese PM Wen Jiabao after appearing on the show, Hague was asked whether it was tough raising the question of human rights in Tibet with Chinese leaders as well as working with them on economic and nuclear issues. He said consistency was the key, adding:

Eastern leaders, if I can lump them all together in one bracket, appreciate consistency.

As opposed to Etonian leaders, who prefer vacillation and indecision? I hope Wen hasn’t been reading any Edward Said recently. A slight look of panic crossed Hague’s face as he seemed to realise he’d made some of the world’s most powerful leaders sound like kids with behavioural problems, and he looked glad when Marr moved the chat on. Incidentally, anti-Tibet protestors clashed violently with police ahead of Wen Jiabao’s visist at the Chinese Embassy in London, but they appeared to be miffed about human rights rather than Hague’s moment of Orientalist madness.

Civil strife seems to be the theme of the week. The most incisive comment reaction to the wildcat strikes that have erupted around the country over contracts for foreign workers at Total’s Lindsey refinery came from Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. In autumn 2000, truckers and farmers enraged at soaring oil prices blockaded refineries around the UK. At first, Blair’s government treated the situation as a bit of a joke – but it ended up bringing the country to the verge of disaster. Underestimating the strikers this time around could come at a high price. Left-wing Labour MP Frank Field was worried enough to write in today’s Mail:

Labour risks a wipeout at the next General Election unless it gets a real grip of its immigration policy. Failure to do so allows fingers to be wrongly pointed at foreign workers who have added much to our country. Anger should be solely directed at the Government.

Make no mistake. The men and women on the picket lines are not just fighting for their jobs, they are also asserting their national identity.

Field misses the point that Brown’s original pledge of “British jobs for British workers”, made at last year’s party conference, was an artless grab for the jingo vote and an unrealistic promise. Commentators across the spectrum, from Carol Thatcher on today’s Andrew Marr Show to Andrew Grice in the Independent, pointed out that Brown has given quite a few hostages to fortune over the years, most of whom have been bloodily executed over the past 12 months.

Finally, to the House of Lords scandal, which has already earned itself the tedious tag of “Ermingate”. In today’s Sunday Times Jack Straw promised an overhaul, although given the Commons vetoed a partially elected chamber last year it’s going to be slow progress. Amidst the mudslinging – apparently Conrad Black and Jeffrey Archer will be booted out alongside the Sunday Times Four under emergency rules – one person has come out of it all looking rather good.

Baroness Royall is, according to The Sunday Times:

The foxy Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, who swept in to read the riot act. Flame-haired, cool-eyed, with sexy long black boots, the Labour leader of the disgraced upper house looks more likely to crack a whip than pass the port.

 

Garlic and fiscal policy

Margaret Thatcher has become the Labour Party’s favourite economic garlic sprig to ward off preying Tories.

For the second time in a week, Gordon Brown invoked the Conservative matriarch’s name to cast George Osborne and his allies on the wrong side of the sterling debate.

With the Opposition benches licking their chops in anticipation of another week’s good hunting at PMQs, Conservative MP Philip Dunne drew first blood by quoting a Brown mantra from 1992, that “a weak currency arises from a weak economy which arises from a weak government”.

 

This is the kind of banter Brown relishes. “I would advise the Conservatives not to talk down the pound,” he pronounced lustily, instantly winning a roar from his side of the House. He carried on:

And I would advise Conservative members to take the advice of Lady Thatcher, who said that trying to help the speculators and talk sterling down is the most un-British way.

Raising the spectre of Thatcher always seems to have the desired effect. The jeers from backbench Tories took on a momentarily confused note at the mention of the Iron Lady, as if they were suddenly flummoxed by the ideological conundrum her legacy represents for Cameron’s centrist reinvention of the party. It’s a shortcut to a pressure point within the Conservative ranks.

Gordon and Dave’s exchanges started on a contrite note following last week’s slanging match over Baby P, but it wasn’t long before the mud started flying. Brown accused the Tories of being the “do nothing party”. Cameron said Brown had forgotten the difference between fiscal and monetary policy. Incredulously shaking his head, Brown leaned forwards to the dispatch box.

 Let me tell him the difference between monetary and fiscal policy.

 Jacqui Smith, usually a sober presence at Brown’s right hand, let out a giggle. Cameron is being daring in taking the fight to Brown’s doorstep, but he risks being outgunned. The Tories have had to wheel their economic battleship around significantly in a matter of weeks, and they need to be more careful and more consistent.

You get the feeling the next few months are going to be crucial for the Conservatives. A recent poll by Politics Home shows public confidence in Osborne has plummeted, and Cameron’s ratings are beginning to drop off too.

An election at some point in the second half of 2009 is a safe bet. As Cameron told the Commons on Wednesday: “On this side of the House we’ve made our choice. It’s called spending restraint.”

The challenge Cameron faces between now and autumn 2009 is convincing the British electorate this is the right thing to do, not just another short-term political tactic.

 

 

Prime Minister’s Quandaries

Even the best PR is a fickle potion.

 

A few months ago a coven of elite spin-doctors assembled in Number 10, chucking every newt’s eye and bat’s tail in sight into the mix to revitalise the Prime Minister. Sure enough it was a new Gordon Brown who strode out into the midst of the financial storm, resplendent in his finest economic battle dress, proud and upright in the dispatch box and – for the first time in his premiership – striking something like fear into the Tory front benches.

 

It all started so well on Wednesday. An early Conservative question on unemployment played into the Prime Minister’s hands, and when Labour backbencher Phil Wilson handed him a peach by recounting a compliment from Paul Krugman, who recently won the Nobel prize for economics, Brown’s fiscal armour positively gleamed.

 

 

“Let me congratulate Mr Krugman on his Nobel prize,” the premier quipped. In the context of what was to follow, Brown’s grin was a disastrous misjudgement.

 

The ghost of Baby P, the 17-month-old boy brutally beaten to death by his family, has haunted this week’s news coverage. It is a tragic story that falls naturally to David Cameron’s strengths as an empathetic communicator and an advocator of social responsibility. He wasted no time in pinning Brown down.

 

“Yet again, nobody is taking responsibility, and no-one has resigned,” Cameron told a roaring House. “Is it not unacceptable that the person who runs the children’s services department is responsible for looking into what her own department did?”

 

 

At that point, the alchemic magic that has gilded Brown’s return to confident form seemed to evaporate. As Cameron hammered home point after point, channelling his party’s righteous anger into sharp jabs, the Prime Minister looked like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been cut.

 

With his head down and eyes averted, Brown rumbled his way through a scripted response to Cameron’s demand for an independent inquiry into Haringey Council’s children’s services department.

 

“We already have the executive summary that was published yesterday and which identified weaknesses in the system,” the PM droned as jeers filled the chamber. “A decision will be made about what to do in relation to Haringey and what procedures need to be followed.”

 

It was back to the bad old days. Brown got the tone wrong, and when the time came to keep his shoulders square and make his delivery crisp, he did exactly the opposite. Back in Number 10 the cauldron must have been boiling over.

 

Cameron, on the other hand, looked like a man filled with real passion. As the temperature rose and speaker Michael Martin intervened ever more desperately, Brown accused his opposite number of playing party politics with Baby P. For a moment Cameron swaggered forward and glared at the Prime Minister like a squaddie who had just heard his mother colourfully insulted in a pub joke.

 

“I think that what the Prime Minister said just now was, frankly, cheap,” he said hotly. “I would ask the Prime Minister to withdraw the attack that that was about party politics.”

 

Withdraw he would not, despite the catcalls from the Conservative benches. When a dull question finally came from Labour MP Lynne Jones about the future of the Post Office card account, Brown drank it down like a tonic on a sweltering day.

 

“I am grateful for what my honourable friend says,” he gasped, and by God he was. On the basis of this performance, Brown must be hoping the credit crunch runs deep and long. On the other side of the House, Cameron has shown for the first time in weeks why he was elected leader.

 

Sunday news round-up: Auntie’s bloomers

In a week dominated by the Sachsgate affair, it’s no surprise the Sunday papers have taken a look at the BBC through a critical lens.

This morning the BBC’s director-general Mark Thompson told The Andrew Marr Show Jonathan Ross would be keeping his job, although he described his three-month suspension as a “final warning”. Thompson went on to defend his £816,000 annual salary:

I get paid significantly less than my opposite numbers in ITV and Channel 4. I took a pay cut. People are happy to do that because of the creative challenges.

No doubt he had in mind the News of the World’s splash when he said that. The NotW used a simple Freedom of Information request to get details of the BBC’s top 50 salaries – all of whom earn more than Gordon Brown’s relatively modest £190,000 a year.

The story’s strapline on page 4 sums up the paper’s thrust: “For £14.3m [the aggregate of the salaries] we could employ 677 nurses, 695 teachers, 540 firemen or 596 coppers.. but what DO we get? 50 money-grabbing BBC fat cats!”

The Sunday Times had the same table of stats showing the Corporation’s top earners but didn’t deem it as newsworthy, stashing it away on page 13 as part of a double page spread on the fallout from Sachsgate. Instead the paper led in with comments from a source close to Cabinet minister Andy Burnham suggesting the BBC should “tackle its salary culture”.

The Daily Telegraph quoted a senior Tory source saying the Conservatives would force the Beeb to cuts its licence fee by £6, effectively returning £800 million to viewers in a year. The source tells The Telegraph the Tories would “rein in the overweening ambitions of the BBC” which, in spending huge amounts of money on the likes of Ross, was “acting as if it were Manchester United buying Ronaldo”.

Zeituni Onyango

On the other side of the Atlantic, a real auntie has been giving Barack Obama an unwelcome distraction.

According to The New York Times, Obama had no idea the 56-year-old Kenyan relative he affectionately referred to as “Auntie Zeituni” in his memoir was living with illegal immigant status in Boston.

She made small donations to his campaign amounting to $260 which David Axelrod has said will be refunded.

In today’s Observer, Paul Harris and Gabby Hinsliff remark: “Illegal immigration is a political minefield in US politics and the story could be a vote-losing headache for Obama.”

With a matter of days to go until America’s next president is sworn in, all indicators are pointing to an Obama victory. Like Tony Blair in 1997, he is playing this down. Several commentators have hoped this won’t result in an overly cautious first term as it did for New Labour.

On another note, Andrew Rawnsley thinks David Cameron is quietly keeping his fingers crossed for a Democrat win.

Finally, in today’s Telegraph, Philip Sherwell and Tim Shipman report that if elected Obama will face an early test from Islamic terrorists, who have threatened to test the new president’s mettle. There is a great piece in this quarter’s Granta Magazine that ties in with the ongoing threat from within presented by extremists. Unfortunately you can’t get it online but I’m planning a longer blog piece with some of the higlights.