Is Ed too young?

So Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour Party just five years after he entered the House of Commons. If David Cameron calls a general election in 2009 rather than the following year, Ed Miliband could become Prime Minister just nine years after he became an MP.

By coincidence, David Cameron moved into Number 10 nine years after he became an MP.

We are now ruled by a political elite that have never had a proper job in their lives (I exclude David Cameron's stint as PR for Carlton TV) and are getting younger and younger. Surely, those who seek to govern us should have had some experience of life before getting their hands on power or at least have a dozen or more years of being a back bencher before moving into government.

I have been looking back over the most recent PMs.

Gordon Brown was an MP for 24 years before he became PM.
Tony Blair had 14 years' experience.
John Major was an MP for 11 years before entering Number 10.
Margaret Thatcher had 20 years as an MP.
Jim Callaghan waited 26 years before becoming PM.
Harold Wilson took 19 years to climb the greasy pole.
Alec Douglas-Home took 33 years between becoming an MP and becoming Prime Minister but his spell was interrupted by going to the Upper House.
Harold Macmillan also spent 33 years before he moved into Number 10.

Some of these were good premiers and some bad but they all had 10 or more years learning the ropes. Our future politicians should take note...

Blair not wanted in Europe either...

So it looks as if Tony Blair's ambition to become the first president of Europe is going to hit the (gravy train) buffers before he even buys a ticket.

Nicolas Sarkozy, who was initially one of Mr Blair's most vocal supporters, declared that there would be a joint Franco-German candidate for the post.

Of course it will, because as I have often said the EU is a Franco-German stitch-up with the Germans doing politically and economically what they couldn't do militarily twice last century and the French doing what they do best - collaborating with the Germans.

Message to Gordon - act now before it is too late or rather stop acting

If Gordon Brown really wants to save his premiership and even at this late stage it is possible... just - he needs to do the following:

1) Stop jumping on every bandwagon - wishing Andy Murray well at Wimbledon, promising gongs to Olympic medal winners, etc. Brown does it so ineffectually that it is obvious that he is only doing it because Blair did - forgetting that Blair got away with it.

2) Stand up to the EU - reinstate weekly bin collections, abandon any idea of ID cards, get rid of the Human Rights Act.

3) Remember that Blair was a one-off and stop trying to ape him. For ten years Brown stood by and watched Blair act because that is what Blair does and Brown indisputably can't. He is obviously out of his depth socially when not discussing endogenous growth theory so he should stick to what he knows.

4) Stop telling people he is listening and then telling them what he wants them to hear. As Alastair Campbell memorably said when Harriet Harman and Frank Field were having their spat - time for a little quiet.

Gordon Brown has probably, no make that almost certainly, lost Labour the next election and will go down, as I have said, before as his generation's Jim Callaghan - the older man who took over from a charismatic, people pleaser with an eye for the main chance.

But if he takes my advice (yeah right!), the scale of the defeat may not be so huge...

Stop the fiddling...

Finally, MPs' expenses have been published.

I understand the need for a second home for honourable members who live, say, more than 50 miles from Westminster.

However, wouldn't a small flat or semi do? David Cameron has a sprawling home worth £750,000 in his Witney constituency - not to mention a large house in Notting Hill.

And why are we paying for MPs' television licences? If I have televisions in two homes, then I have to pay for two licences - why was Tony Blair allowed to claim for his second set?

Yet again we are the mugs of the EU

Much is made of the prosperity of Ireland. Rarely is it mentioned that this is due to huge EU subsidies.

Indeed, when we hand back £7.4billion thanks to Tony Blair's incompetence surrender desire to become EU president negotiations, the gap between what we get and what the Irish get become even wider.

The UK will receive just £582 per subject while the French get £1,118 per citizen and the Irish £2,336 (24 per cent more).

Tell me again all the miraculous benefits we get from being in the EU…

Good riddance to Blair- his final traitorous action

In a parting shot, Tony Blair signed the EU constitution after promising that he would not.

In more than 40 further areas of policy — covering energy, tourism, space policy, transport, civil protection and migration — Blair also surrendered Britain’s right to veto EU decisions.
The innocuously titled "Annex 1" consists of just two closely typed pages. However, it contains areas where Britain will no longer have the power to veto EU decision-making, including specialised courts; intellectual property rights; citizens’ initiatives; transport; space policy; energy; culture; tourism; sport; civil protection; immigration and frontier controls, crime prevention and police co-operation.

Get us out of the EU.

The return of John Reid

John Reid, thought to be a potential challenger to Gordon Brown, has announced that he will resign as Home Secretary when Tony Blair goes and will not serve under Gordon Brown.

Reid has always been regarded as a man of ambition which is why his decision to stand down has been regarded as surprising.

Perhaps Reid agrees with my analysis that Gordon Brown is the Jim Callaghan of his generation and when Brown leads Labour to defeat in the next General Election, he will be in a perfect position to launch a leadership bid once Brown steps down.

Reid can link himself to the three successive Blair wins and distance himself from the Brown premiership and say: "Nothing to do with me, guvnor. I didn't do it cos I wasn't there. Don't blame me - it just isn't fair."

Have we heard the last of John Reid? I very much doubt it.

Gordon Brown - The Sunny Jim Of Our Time

Today The Daily Telegraph is running a story that Tony Blair is likely to resign on Tuesday.

Apparently, he will go in an attempt to limit the expected electoral damage in next Thursday's local elections.

The story goes on: "Even Mr Blair's most loyal supporters concede his unpopularity is so deep that his resignation could actually improve the party's showing, particularly in Scotland which Labour may lose control to the nationalists.

"The move could also wrongfoot his opponents and even cushion any political fallout for Gordon Brown if, as expected, there is a rout of Labour in the chancellor's Scottish backyard."

However, I believe that whenever he goes - next Tuesday, next month, after the summer - that it is all over for Gordon Brown.

If - as expected - Brown does become PM he should call an immediate general election (as should have Jim Callaghan in 1976, and John Major in 1990): he has no mandate to govern.

I can tell you now that Brown won't call an election. He will claim that he has to have time to "bed in" to show the electorate what he is like.

That's the problem - what he is like.

Frankly, Gordon Brown comes over if not "psychologically flawed", then certainly as a bit peculiar.

Lord Turnbull, the Permanent Secretary at the Treasury from 1988 to 2002, who can claim to know Brown well, said that he had a "very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues... He cannot allow them any serious discussion about priorities. His view is that it is just not worth it and ‘they will get what I decide’. And that is a very insulting process You can choose whether you are impressed or depressed by that but you cannot help admire the sheer Stalinist ruthlessness."

Brown has two choices: go to the country when Blair resigns to get his own mandate (and lose); or hang on until 2010 and lose then.

Either way, he will be seen as the Sunny Jim of our time.

NHS car parks pay for patients...apparently

I don't know why I am still amazed by Tony Blair's rhetoric - after ten years I should be used to it - but I am.

As anyone who has ever visited a sick friend or relative in hospital knows, the parking fees are astronomical.

Now Tony Blair has said that they have to be exorbitant or else the NHS would have to face cuts. The PM, confronted at a meeting of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee, said NHS trusts needed the cash and losing it would mean cuts. Leaked minutes of the 20 March meeting said of Mr Blair: "He defended hospital income from parking charges as otherwise the money would have to come from patient care."

What???

The parking fees, which vary widely, have become cash cows for NHS trusts which raked in more than £95million in England last year. Mr Blair and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt are resisting growing demands to scrap them or enforce capping.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb said: "The PM is blind to what is happening. Excessive hospital car park charging can become a tax on sickness, hitting those on low incomes and the elderly hard."

And Labour MP Sharon Hodgson said: "The burden of car parking and other travel charges just adds too much financial stress and strain to many cancer patients and others with serious illnesses. The Government needs to show sympathy, at least by exempting certain patients from parking charges."

The parking fees apparently pay for doctors and nurses. It was only a while back that he was telling us that we couldn't have cheaper petrol because the tax pays for "schools'n'ospitals".

Does every tax pound fund the NHS?

What do we pay National Insurance for?

Vote Labour!