Is Harman distancing herself from Brown as poll figures get worse?
MPs may be on half-term this week, but the rumour mill is in overdrive - most of it concerning Gordon Brown's dismal prospects as a series of opinion polls deliver increasingly miserable results. Yesterday's Ipsos-Mori poll showed Labour trailing the Conservatives by 20 points - the biggest gap since before the banking crisis, and final proof that any 'bounce' Brown and his aides may have engineered has well and truly fizzled out.
As an Ipsos-Mori analyst, Julia Clark, put it: "Previously, people were willing to buy Brown's argument that this is a global recession and not just something happening in the UK." Now, she said, the Conservative message was getting through: that the downturn is at least partly his fault.
The poll came through before today's monthly press conference where the PM will face questions about bankers' bonuses, and a day after Jackie Ashley's Guardian column had holidaying MPs' ears pricking up with the story that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel might be engineering an escape route for Brown before the next general election.
Merkel is among those who believe that the G20 nations need to find a new worldwide financial regulator - and according to Ashley's source, Merkel's favourite to head such a body is Gordon Brown.
"She is said to be quietly pushing the idea behind the scenes and getting quite a good reaction from other leaders," wrote Ashley. "Barack Obama can be won over, says my source, and even Nicolas Sarkozy would be pleased to see the man he's been tussling with off the European stage."
The plot raises two questions. First, has the message that seems now to have reached the great British public - that Brown is to blame for the mess we're in - somehow not reached his fellow world leaders? And second, who is Ashley's mystery source?
Here we have a possible answer - Harriet Harman. She is known to be close to Ashley and according to many in Westminster she has an agenda - to line herself up as Gordon's successor. Harman denies this absolutely. A spokesman said last night: "She is a very loyal deputy. She always has been and she always will be."
But critics point to all sorts of recent evidence of her deliberately distancing herself from Brown. Last week, for instance, she called for a retrospective clawback of bonuses paid to executives at banks since rescued by the state - much more radical than anything proposed by Brown or her cabinet colleagues and seen as a clear bid to win over the Labour left.
Whether Harman could actually win a leadership election is debatable. Some find it laughable and have Alan Johnson as clear favourite; others remember that she surprised us all by winning the deputy leadership contest last year, beating Johnson in the process.
THE MOLE: PM UNDER PRESSURE
FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 18, 2009
The Mole: Brown and the whistleblower
Jackie Ashley's article in the Guardian
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