David Miliband prepares to take over
The Prime Minister's potential rivals on what could be called the "modernising" wing of the party seem to be coalescing around David Miliband, writes Rachel Sylvester. I am told that James Purnell made clear to the Foreign Secretary a few weeks ago that he would not stand against him in a leadership contest if one takes place this year. Andy Burnham does not think he is ready for the top job. Alan Johnson, the former postman with the populist appeal, now sees himself as a mentor rather than a rival to the younger man. These four would make a powerful dream ticket. Those who know Mr Miliband well say that although he funked it last year when he did not challenge Mr Brown, he now has the cojones to go for the leadership. He is planning a highly political conference speech. Rachel Sylvester The Times
Full article: The prosecco plotters circle wounded Gordon Brown 
How it went wrong for Labour
Gordon Brown has become the true symbol of the state of his party, writes Polly Toynbee. His indecisive lack of definition led him to create a cabinet with a split in his tent big enough for tea and sympathy with Mrs Thatcher, big enough for the CBI's Digby Jones as a business minister. At that crucial crossroads, Labour needed to decide why Blairism had failed, why Blair - the most adept politician of his age - had fallen out of the sky taking Labour's fortunes with him. What went wrong with triangulation? Why was the public profoundly unimpressed by Blair's obsessions? It was partly Iraq, to be sure. But his marketising, personalising, choice agenda in public services alienated many without attracting anyone. For Labour now, the privatising agenda is becoming what the Europe fetish was to the Tories - toxic internally and irrelevant to anyone else. Polly Toynbee The Guardian
Full article: A law to label real fur - that should bring the voters back
A winning formula for the next election
Don't knock cheap flights
You shouldn't be flying at all, the environmentalists say. Well, most of the people who use budget airlines fly less frequently than the eco-warriors attending their conferences in Bali and Borneo, says Alice Thomson. They fly on an average of one family holiday a year and tourist flights account for less than 2 per cent of greenhouse gas emission in Britain. In many ways cheap flights are more eco-friendly. They cram more people on to the flight and they are at the forefront of finding lighter, more fuel-efficient planes. And where are families expected to go if they can never fly abroad? British holidays are expensive. It is hard to rent a holiday cottage for less than £700 a week. Dubrovnik is cheaper than Dorset. Alice Thomson The Times
Full article: With Dubrovnik cheaper than Dorset, we need cheap flights
How to destroy a town centre
The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games boasts that huge city-centre television screens will be a "lasting legacy" of the Olympic Games, writes Griff Rhys-Jones. I have a horrible feeling it may be right. Nobody can rationally object to a temporary screen and a fleeting festival, but eight permanent mammoth tellies with 40 more to come, for ever, will clearly be a horrendous imposition. They are already, rather too obviously, advertising billboards - flickering ominously through the night and bearing the legend “Philips” in big letters. Sadly, these proposed city-centre TV screens embody far less sinister doublespeak than George Orwell predicted. They are not evil, but gormless. They combine government gung-ho with the relentless creep of commercial pressure, and that curse of the 21st century - well-meaning nincompoopery. Griff Rhys-Jones The Times
Full article: Giant TVs win my gold medal for crassness
Israel's forgotten nukes
According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs, says George Monbiot. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess. This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened. George Monbiot The Guardian
Full article: We lie and bluster about our nukes - and then wag our fingers at Iran
