Michael Hammond 36 who once caused three innocent men to be searched at gunpoint after he claimed he
Michael Hammond, 36, who once caused three innocent men to be searched at gunpoint after he claimed he had seen one carrying a pistol near Downing Street, was told he had put lives at risk with his actions.
The fantasist called police 133 times in an 11-month period between September 2003 and last August. As one suspicious ally of Mr Brown put it: “If Tony really wants Gordon to succeed him, why would he move him from the Treasury?”My hunch is that the voters may decide Mr Brown’s future. If Mr Blair wins big, he might feel emboldened enough to ask him to go to the Foreign Office. If he wins small, Mr Brown will be in a more powerful position, and the day when he calls all the shots will be fast approaching.a.grice independent.co.uk. There is even talk of a new deal under which Mr Blair would endorse Mr Brown as his successor if he agrees to become Foreign Secretary.I am not sure the Chancellor would ever do another deal with the Prime Minister; he believes Mr Blair has let him down over the succession three times. Mr Blair seeks conflict with his own party to define himself to the voters. His vision is very different to the Blairites’, which is why they want to ram through more reforms in the hope he would not expend energy reversing them.Their differences can be overstated Sometimes the two camps exaggerate them.
Mr Blair will listen to Mr Brown’s concerns but will not give him a veto. His trump card is a big majority in his Cabinet, where Mr Brown has few acolytes.The composition of the Cabinet after the election is again the subject of feverish speculation after reports that Mr Brown’s opposition to moving to the Foreign Office is mellowing. “It depends on whether Gordon wants one,” said one close ally. Hence the unnecessary legislation on foundation hospitals and John Reid’s warning this week that he would allow hospitals to close if they fail to attract enough patients.Mr Blair does not think the differences on public services are so great that a row is inevitable. Tony is labelled right-wing, which is equally absurd.”Mr Brown plays to the Labour gallery by appearing to the left of the Prime Minister.
As one cabinet minister who tries to remain neutral told me: “Both sides are guilty of name-calling. Gordon is portrayed as an opponent of reform, which is rubbish. There is no credible left-wing alternative; the choice is between different shades of New Labour.However, the Prime Minister and Chancellor have diverged sharply over public services, the most problematic manifesto issue. Mr Blair wants to extend the role of the private sector in state-funded health and education to ensure more consumer choice for patients and parents. Mr Brown believes the NHS cannot be treated like a market place, pointing to the two-tier system in dentistry, and worries that Labour might destroy the public service ethos.
He is happy to use the private sector to boost capacity, but does not want it to compete with public providers. The question exercising Labour minds is whether they are now ideological. True, the divide is small in comparison with the personal and policy divisions inside the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s. But a bigger tax cut might look irresponsible when he is perilously close to breaking his golden rule.The manifesto compromise, I suspect, will be to promise no increase in income tax rates but to say nothing about national insurance, allowing some room for manoeuvre.No one doubts that the differences between the Prime Minister and Chancellor have got personal. But he will probably recognise the need to repeat Labour’s 1997 and 2001 pledges not to raise income tax rates to counter fears about “third-term tax rises”.
Polling presented to Thursday’s Cabinet meeting suggested that many people on middle incomes feel “close to the edge” after Labour’s backdoor tax increases.In an ideal world, Mr Blair would like Mr Brown to scupper the Tories’ pounds 4bn tax cut by reducing tax in his pre-election Budget But we are not in an ideal world. The Chancellor will no doubt find a way of destabilising the Tories, perhaps by taking some people out of the top 40p tax rate. The tempers of the Downing Street neighbours may have cooled a little in recent weeks after their explosive argument over the garden fence about a new book claiming that Mr Brown had told Mr Blair he would never trust him again
But the relationship remains on a knife edge. The neighbours have only stopped insulting each other so the children don’t hear. In the Blair camp’s eyes, Mr Brown is no longer fully detached, merely semi-detached.
The crunch is coming because crucial decisions about the Labour manifesto must be taken soon.