Poll to poll

David Cameron's call for a general election may or may not be ignored by Gordon Brown.

If he calls an election, Cameron will be able to say Brown's responding to his call. If he doesn't, he'll accuse him of running scared.

But how ready are the Tories for a general election?

Privately, some of the delegates, sorry representatives, I spoke to at a reception this evening are hugely unenthusiastic about the prospect of an early election.

(A reception, incidentally, where David Cameron was expected but unable to attend - I'm contemplating dusting off the "Leader snubs Welsh Tories" headline).

Opinion polls during the last fortnight have offered David Cameron little cause for hope.

The Tories have so far selected "14 or 15" candidates for the 40 parliamentary seats in Wales.

They may have chosen candidates in target seats but in Blackpool this does not look like a party on election alert.

St David's Day again.......

I worry that I may have become a tad predictable in my questioning of politicians.

I emerged from grilling shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan for the Politics Show to be greeted by another senior Tory brandishing a pound coin.

This apparently was the bet placed on me asking whether the Conservatives would make St David's Day a bank holiday.

Tories in the Welsh Assembly have long favoured this option as a way of making their party appear more Welsh. Conservatives at Westminster - bank holidays are decided by the Treasury - have long ignored the request.

Apparently I've now been asking this question for seven years - almost as long as the Tories have been refusing to answer it.

Which of us will wilt first?

Postcard from the seaside

Blackpool has some of the warmest, friendliest people in Britain - and some of the grottiest hotels.

We are being charged £143 a night to stay somewhere that would cost you under £20 a night at other times of the year.

The "hotel" promises that it is spending £5m to restore it to "it's (sic) former glory" - punctuation that reveals the current state of the building.

A colleague checked in early this morning and was disappointed to discover that his room didn't have a shower.

"It's not standard," came the reply. "You have to ask for one specially."

His reply: "I didn't ask for a bed either, but I expected the room would have one."

This may be the last major political conference held here. Not before time.

Lembit �pik

Greetings from Blackpool, which is so far living down to expectations - and the Conservative conference has yet to begin.

More on them, a lot more, later. But here's the last word on the Lib Dems - whose Welsh leader seems to be suffering an identity crisis.

Gordon's Gazza Strip

I've been too busy working to think at length about Gordon Brown's speech and his emphasis on Britishness - was it 71 or 72 references?

But the debate in the Welsh blogosphere is alive and kicking. Some think it's a direct response to May's elections. That may be true but Britishness has been a consistent theme of Brown's for a year or more - long before he became Prime Minister.

He's even been known to praise Paul Gascoigne's goal against Scotland in Euro '96 - something few of his compatriots would have the stomach to do.

The emphasis on Britishness may reflect his sensitivity about any possible English backlash to the idea of a Scot deciding public services in non-devolved England while his own constituents have their schools and hospitals run by an SNP devolved government.

Brown needs English votes to remain PM and is engaging in a far from subtle attempt to win over former Tory voters. (Bournemouth was abuzz with speculation about imminent defections by Conservative MPs.)

So Brown continues to bang on about Britishness - and has been encouraging members of his Cabinet to take up the theme.

Peter Hain needed little hesitation to join in. Welsh Labour leader Rhodri Morgan talked about "shared British values". One of those in the running to succeed him, Carwyn Jones, impressed MPs by talking up unionism at a conference fringe meeting. (A few future leadership votes in the bag there).

There is a danger for Brown that the Britishness appeal may backfire in England. As Frank Field has suggested, every time he opens his mouth to stress his Britishness he inadvertently reminds English voters of his Scottishness.

Slap in the face for Plaid

My colleagues at Sky have put together one of the must-have accessories of the conference season - political Top Trumps.

These cards feature leading politicos from British parties, rating them for categories such as looks, majority, parliamentary skills and charisma.

Lembit Opik will be chuffed to learn that he features - although slightly less pleased to see that his rating for "looks" is 33 - the same as Menzies Campell.

At least he beats William Hague (25) in that department although Hague's parliamentary skills do score highly.

Most senior UK politicians do figure, although Peter Hain has been strangely excluded. He is doubtless "relaxed" about it.

SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond does feature, although there is no place for his Plaid Cymru counterpart Ieuan Wyn Jones, despite his recent promotion to the role of deputy First Minister.

This could well see the first autumnal surge in the Elfynometer and must surely be immediately denounced as either a snub or a slap in the face to Wales.

If it's any consolation, Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan is also overlooked. It's a cruel world.

First political memory meme

I've been tagged by Peter Black. Should I be pleased? I haven't got the hang of all this blogging etiquette yet.

Peter has tagged me to talk about my first political memory. I'm old enough to be able to remember the days when the Barnett formula was just a glint in the eye of a Labour MP.

I can vaguely recall the 1970 general election when Ted Heath surprised almost everyone to defeat Harold Wilson.

My 1970 memory is rather more local than that. I must have been six and remember being in the playground at Sully Primary School and a car passing with a loudspeaker blaring out asking people to vote for the local Tory MP Raymond Gower.


This next bit is a bit scary - I was 10 or 11 at the time - but in 1974 (not sure whether it was February or October) I persuaded my father to take me to a public election meeting at the old school in Sully to hear Gower speak.


Sadly, I can't recall whether the meeting - there were around a dozen people there - was dominated by great issues of state or the future of the tennis courts on Sully Rec.

Sir Raymond was a super-assiduous constituency MP fuelling various tales, some of them apocryphal, about his dedication to all local matters. It was said he only put a pound's worth of fuel in his car each time so he could cultivate voters at each filling station.

Election leaflets featured the numbers of parliamentary questions asked and speeches made (these were the days before computers so I suspect someone in the House of Commons library had to count them).

No hospitalisation was too routine to be unrewarded with a sympathetic letter (these were the days before word processers), no achievement too trivial to be ignored - any appearance in the local paper would be followed by a congratulatory personal (if standard) letter.

He was an MP for 38 years for Barry (later Vale of Glamorgan) a typical Conservative backbencher of his generation, never rising above the rank of parliamentary private secretary but being knighted for his services.

The next time I met Sir Raymond, as he then was, was when I started work as a lobby correspondent for the Western Mail in late 1988.

Less than six months later I was covering the by-election caused by his death - a contest won by John Smith who is still the Vale MP despite a five-year break when Walter Sweeney regained the seat for the Conservatives.

Come, Rhondda

A Labour spin doctor has e-mailed me this photograph of the AM for Rhondda speaking to the Labour conference in Bournemouth.

It would be rude not to use it - not that I do everything spin doctors tell me to do.

If you look closely you can probably make out Gordon Brown lurking in the shadows.

Beached

What is it with Neil Kinnock and beaches on the south coast of England?

It's many years since the former Labour leader memorably stumbled into the surf on Brighton beach. Today comes news of an intriguing clash with semi-naked protesters on Bournemouth's seafront.

The protesters were highlighting the Government's refusal to offer them full compensation for pensions they lost when their companies went bust.

Lord Kinnock arrived on the scene and was greeted by protester John Benson who called him
a "bloody traitor", a "bloody disgrace" and told him to "bugger off".

The former Labour leader said he had come to the protest to find the "guy who has been telling lies about me".

Despite the hostile reception Lord Kinnock sympathised with the protesters:

"They're very decent people and they're making a point... They've got a case they've been dreadfully let down by the system. The government has sought to provide some support and is
following it through still."

He may be pleased to learn that I think next year's Labour conference is in Manchester, which doesn't have a beach.

Relaxed

Welsh Labour are officially "relaxed" about Eluned Morgan's call for an end to the clear red water strategy.

So relaxed they've just asked us, at a conference stunt, not to ask the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, and the Cardiff North MP Julie Morgan about the issue.

Rather than ask difficult questions, here's a pretty postcard from the BBC Westminster autumn tour.

Wish you were here.

Clear red water

Bournemouth's Manchester Hotel has played host to the Wurzels, Little and Large, and Ken Dodd.

Tonight, over a buffet of chicken wings and vol-au-vents, it hosted Rhodri Morgan, Paul Murphy and around 60 delegates to the Labour conference - at a fringe meeting that resembled a polite inquest into last May's Welsh Assembly election results.

Morgan and Murphy were brought together by MEP Eluned Morgan, who took the chance to criticise Rhodri Morgan's approach of claiming to put "clear red water" between Labour in Cardiff Bay and Westminster.

Speaking hours after Gordon Brown told the conference about plans for a personalised NHS in England, she called for a more aspirational route from Welsh Labour to follow the New Labour approach.

Eluned Morgan said Labour had to face up to the fact that in some areas "people simply don't like what we are doing".

She added: "We should not be tiptoeing around the nationalists despite being in coalition with them."

Former Secretary of State Paul Murphy told the meeting Labour should resist the possibility of "an obsession with identity in Wales".

(Assembly) Leader of the House Carwyn Jones said Labour should proclaim its unionist beliefs more - a move welcomed by one devosceptic MP.

Former first secretary Alun Michael said the Assembly should be increased to include 80 members, two per constituency, with no regional list AMs. He also suggested a Northern Ireland-style power-sharing deal in which all parties would share responsibility for making devolution work.

Two MPs told me privately afterwards that many of their party colleagues are still in denial about Labour's poor results, blaming Tony Blair's unpopularity rather than problems with the NHS, particularly in the western part of Wales.

I think this inquest could have some distance to run.

At our best when at our longest

Well, that went on a bit, didn't it?

Having waited most of his life to deliver today's speech, Gordon Brown had understandably rather a lot to say.

The style was very different - wisely Brown didn't try to ape Blair's theatrical approach to these events.

Few of the policy announcements were wholly new - the proof of the pudding will be in the delivery of noble aspirations. (Although do you know anyone who's in favour of an impersonal health service?)

Delegates here would have cheered had he simply stood up and announced that he's not Tony Blair - which in a sense he did.

Brown did acknowledge in a New Labour way rising aspirations among patients when it comes to the NHS. Out of hours GPs? Regular NHS check-ups for all?

A reminder that things won't stand still in the NHS - and the challenge the Labour/Plaid coalition in Cardiff Bay faces in keeping up with progress east of the border as it ticks off items in the "one Wales" document during the next four years.

Waiting for Gordo

The queues around the conference centre are lengthy - and lengthening. It seems that every Labour MP, AM and activist wants to hear what their new Prime Minister has to say.

Well, not quite everyone. We need some sort of Welsh angle for Wales Today. How about an MP fighting a marginal seat whose job may depend on Gordon Brown's appeal to the voters?

Easier said than done. We offered exposure on Wales's most-watched TV programme, a chance to connect with constituents. So far the shrinking violets we had in mind have yet to overcome their shyness.

One MP's office said she was away from the conference "on parliamentary business" - an enigmatic phrase that should silence those cynics who think Parliament isn't sitting this week. There are, it seems, still facts to be found in places near and far.

Another MP has yet to respond to countless calls to his pager and mobile. His office say they've been unable to track him down, although he is supposed to be in Bournemouth.

Some may think that in this age of self-publicists and spin it is especially refreshing to discover professional politicians who believe the X on the ballot paper stands for "no publicity".

UPDATE: I later discovered the "parliamentary business" involved a week-long Commonwealth Parliamentary Association trip to India followed by a visit to Sri Lanka. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

Election alert?

I've just had a chat with a Labour MP who's been busy getting quotes from printers for his election material.

I'd have thought the odds were against a poll next month - the MP is advising Gordon Brown to delay until next year - but you never know.

Johnson's disease

It happens to all of us. Sometimes the words in your brain, or on paper before your eyes, don't come out of your mouth in the way you intended, or in the order right.

It happened to my Radio Wales colleague Peter Johnson, an experienced and immaculate broadcaster, who yesterday revealed to Sunday Edition listeners the existence of a scary new disease called "bluetooth".

I think he meant bluetongue, although perhaps he didn't.

Symptoms of bluetooth disease include unsightly growths in one ear, a tendency to shout usually found only in those who are hard of hearing, and a propensity to drive white vans or Mondeos as vehicles of choice.

Scientists have had diseases named after them for less. Peter, take a bow.

Back to the future

Welsh Labour has a new campaigning slogan - and a portable backdrop on which to display it.

The slogan is "Working hard for Wales".

Ring any bells?

Yes, it's the same phrase adopted by Alun Michael as Welsh Labour leader in the first Assembly elections in 1999.

Well, it got him elected.......

A spinner repents

Readers of Peter Hain's now defunct blog may remember this from April: "BBC Wales was running a story - which was utter rubbish - claiming that Labour would go into coalition with Plaid Cymru after the Assembly elections on May 3rd.

"As I have made clear in the past, party members simply wouldn't wear a deal with the separatists. So the BBC Wales claim is flatly wrong.

"Many of my colleagues believe that nationalist sympathies are rife in the BBC Wales newsroom, and such blatantly and unjustifiably pro-nationalist coverage will have done nothing to assuage their concerns."

Five months on, with Labour now in coalition with "the separatists", here's an extract from Wales United: Partnership for Progress: "The BBC embodies the values of inclusion and fairness, with Welsh-produced success stories like the BBC's Doctor Who and Torchwood showing not just what Wales is contributing to Britain but how Britishness contributes to Welsh success."

It's only fair and inclusive to point out the joint author of that paragraph, although you've probably guessed by now that it's one of the two mates above.

News from the bunker

Greetings from Bournemouth, where the BBC is operating from its traditional base of the conference centre car park.

I may not see daylight again before Thursday as any Labour conference news struggles to compete for airtime with Charlotte Church giving birth.

Labour are using the conference to launch a pamphlet arguing the case for Wales remaining in the UK.

Authored by Rhodri Morgan and Peter Hain, it states: "Ten years on since the referendum in Wales, we can rightly celebrate both the successes of devolution and the economic, social, cultural and political ties that bind together the countries of the UK - which are stronger than ever before."

Political ties stronger than ever before? With nationalists in power in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh?

In the next paragraph, they add: "Plaid Cymru's new role in the Welsh Assembly Government has not at all dented their separatist aspirations."

Discuss.

Fashion victim or Aga chic?

There's an interesting interview with Peter Hain in today's Daily Telegraph.

Students of the life and times of the Work and Pensions (and Wales) Secretary may find their attention distracted by the rather jazzy Argyll sweater he's wearing. Eat your heart our, Ronnie Corbett.

On the eve of the Labour conference in Bournemouth, the big question in British politics is clearly this:

Is Peter Hain

a) Taking up golf;

b) Wearing a Christmas present from David Blunkett;

or c) Preparing for a new life as a knitwear model?

Answers on an e-mail please.

Chilling out with the Lib Dems

I've just finished watching Sir Ming Campbell's speech to the Lib Dems in Brighton - a more energetic and impassioned performance than before, received politely rather than rapturously.

He took on the age issue, promising to make age an issue at the next election as, he argued, with age comes experience and with experience judgement. (At 66, he is almost old enough to be First Minister of Wales - Rhodri Morgan celebrates his 68th birthday next week).

I spent the rest of the morning touring the conference centre armed with a copy of Hello!, trying to find out whether delegates think Lembit "Cheeky Girl" Opik is an asset or a vote-loser.

Most activists were on his side, arguing that politics needs "characters".

The man himself was chuffed to get the results of our totally unscientific poll when I popped in to the conference chill-out zone to interrupt him during a foot massage.

You can see the results, including the massage, should you be so minded, on Wales Today at 6.30pm. Or watch it here.

The qualified holistic therapist in charge diagnosed me as "tense". After a week locked in a conference zone with a bunch of political anoraks, who wouldn't be?