They Want Mili-Banned

Two Labour backbench MPs are calling for Gordon Brown to sack David Miliband as Foreign Secretary after yesterday's will he, won't he stance over whether he was mounting a leadership challenge. The latest new on that front is that David told Jeremy Vine on Radio two that he is "not running a leadership campaign".

However, what would occur if Gordon where to sack Miliband from his cabinet?

For a start he would be accused of double standards. How often in his 1o year wait to become Prime Minister did Gordon not say, or leak stories to further the cause for his anointing as the divine Tony's successor. Admittedly he did wait longer than the first year of Blairs leadership before doing so, young David may be showing exceeding haste in copying his mentor.

The other thing is outside the cabinet would Miliband not become a stalking horse, unrestrainable, or at least more so that at present. The fact that rebel extraordinaire Bob Marshall-Andrews is one of the two calling for his sacking is strange when you consider the predecessors. Look at the almost constant threat to Margaret Thatcher from Michael Hesletine and then John Redwood when they were outside the confines of her cabinet. You also wonder, if not for his untimely death in 2005, just what role Robin Cook would have taken in the anointing of Blair's chosen heir. I doubt he would have sat back totally, indeed I think he would have given the Labour Party a contest, maybe even have won it. One thing he would have had over Miliband would have been the experience he was lacking.

So what will Gordon do with the questionable mini-rebellion of youth? Take him aside as a caution? Take him out for a meal to discuss when he will seamlessly pass on the baton? No can't do that Granita's been shut down. Gordon can't afford to have such talk within the ranks of his cabinet, at the same time he can't allow it to be unconstrained from the backbenches.

He faces a dilemma when he does return from Suffolk, and gets confortable by retying a tie around his neck. Cause he sure hasn't carried off the casual element of smart casual on his holiday so far, possibly because he can't truly relax with the knife's grinding on the stones at Westminster.

The Little Mice with Clogs Won; Just Not For a While

There on the stair, those little mice have got Alistair Darling to do something for those losing out from his predecessor and boss's abolition of the 10p rate of income tax.

However, we have to wait and somehow survive until the pre-budget report in November to hear details of the new support, it would seem.

The 39 Mice on the Stairs

39 Labour rebels, including Linlithgow and Falkirk East MP Michael Connarty, who put their name to a rebel ammendment to the Budget Bill, set for a vote next Monday were subject to a Pied Piper charm offensive yesterday. The ammendment calls for immediate compensation for the approximately 5.3m lower-paid who face higher taxes as a result of the doubling the lowest tax rate to 20p rate instead of 10p.

Mr Darling, that's the Chancellor not a character from Dirty Sexy Money, had a meeting with 50 parliamentary aides and backbenchers concerned about the abolition of the lower rate along with chief whip Geoff Hoon last night. Darling apparently has a very cunning plan (didn't know there was a Baldrick at the Treasury) although Yvette Cooper his deputy denies he even promised this or is able to do anything about it. The two pipers emerged from this latest charming of the mischief of mice as if all was well is Hamlin, I mean Westminster. Mr Darling saying it had been "very useful", Hoon saying when asked if the issue had been sorted said "Of course", always worrying when a chief whip says that about a potential rebellion.

One of the MPs who came out of the meeting Ronnie Campbell MP for Blyth Valley appeared to be swayed saying "It's going to be sorted, no problem, by the end of the financial year." Pity we've only just started the financial year then isn't it?

However, Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) was not so easily swayed by the paltitudes. "I want to see the government coming forward with proposals", she said," that ensure no one on a low income is worse off with the abolition of the 10p tax rate. I hope it will come forward with further measures this week. We need more detail."

Of course Gordon Brown has done what he always does under times of such split opoinion in his party and extended the review into poverty to include those affected by the abolition of the 10p rate. As the Norfolk Blogger said the other day, "in layman's terms, due to Labour making people earning less than £18K a year poorer, Labour want to investigate why people earning less than £18K a year are poorer." Yes Nich I agree with you that really doesn't need that much investigating.

Concerned of Fife Cannae Help

Well the Tim'rous Beastie has returned from his travels to far flung forweign cheese boards only to have to face up to his angry mischief of mice upon returning. They have voiced concerns about the doubling of the lowest tax band to 20p, since they emerged from their holes in Westminster to canvasss for the local elections next month.

He apparently has spouted out platitudes that he understands "how difficult it is when food prices and fuel prices are rising", "it's difficult out there", "we get it". However, all that was ruined by the "We have a responsibility to listen, to hear and to understand what is being said. But there is a responsibility on all of us to unite." By unite he means his mice cannot let the budget be defeated.

In the second reading of the finance bill Yvette Cooper mentioned the issue by saying the population will benefit "from this package because of what we have done for pensioners, for families with children and for low-paid workers through allowances and tax credits." I went to check on the (Working) Tax Credit calculator to see if single me, with no kids losing out on the tax changes qualified. To my surprise it said I was entitled to working tax credit, that was until I saw the figure it would give me, £0.00. Whoop de do!!! No wonder with this lack of understanding of the problem her PPS Angela Smith considered walking away from her post.

Seeing as in the last week another 2p per litre has been added to cheapest pump price I can find for petrol taking it to £105.9. I've hit a double whammy in the last week. Another 86p to fill the tank, another 96p in tax dedcuctions.

Thankfully Jeremy Browne the Lib Dem spokesman pointed out how London-centric the effects had not been picked up by the media.

"a salary of up to £18,000 [the threashold of those affected] does not constitute low earning, although it may sound like low earning to some in the London media commentating classes."

As one of those is a skilled job under that level outwith the great metropolis of London under that threshold I can concur. My one advantage is that living in Scotland at least my Council Tax is frozen this year although my water and sewage rates have increased.

So the message from Labour is.

We Listen, We Hear, We Understand. But.... we're not going to do a thing.

Of Mice and Brown

Well the Big Cheese of a Tim'rous Beastie is still over and the US of A and tried to defend the abolition of the 10p tax rate in a press conference last night thus:

"I am satisfied that once people understand the scale of the good things that we have been able to do in reforming the tax system, that we are tackling poverty by increasing tax credits for the poorest, then whatever questions people have about these changes can be answered."

He's ignored the fact that the level at which the abolition of the 10p rate affects people actually comes above that at which tax credits can be applied for. Some of us that is affects do not have children and therefore cannot claim that tax credit either.

At a time when we are facing longer time throwing money away on rent, because we now need to save more before we can buy. When our fuel costs increase by far higher levels than seems reasonable, I found a receipt from about a year ago for petrol and almost cried. When even our weekly food shop is taking more out of pocket.

It very much is like the ordinary people in Sherwood Forest. We are struggling to make ends meet with our non-inflationary pay increases while at the same time we are getting taxed more heavily. Of course there are those who are better off than us, who do actually benefit more from the 2p cut to 20p for the standard rate of income tax. But many of us fall into a black hole, between poverty and benefiting from any good thing from this tax reform.

Tax under Labour is less based on ability to pay that tax than at any point under the last Conservative government. The proportionate tax burden on the poorest, when Income Tax, National Insurance, Fuel Excise, VAT, Council Tax et al is taken into account in far closer to the proportion paid by the most wealthy. If only more Labour MPs were prepared to continue to stand up for the principles and the people they must have joined the party for in the first instance. If only they'd done it a year ago when as Chancellor Brown proposed it in the first place rather than now a week after it's implementation.

As it is the mischief of mice on the government benches will continue to make the fat cats wealthier they'd just better watch out for the masses are getting hungry for revenge.

From Drive Time Hero Back to Zero

Yesterday morning very few people knew much about Angela Smith. The MP for Sheffield Hillsborough is the PPS for Yvette Cooper, the Chief Secretary of the Treasury.

However, yesterday at the end of most people's working day this MP with ties to the Treasury was threathening to resign over the abolition of the 10p tax rate which has already affected the poorest tax payers.

However, the government clearly concerned that with the Tim'rous Beastie already declaring that there was no crisis with the Treasury earlier in the week; a resignation from within could not be tolerated. So the Whips Office got on their steads and rounded up the posse that would persuade this heroine of the working classes to neglect her princinples like so many others and toe the government line.

They even broke the Tim'rous Beastie away from the meal, probably a cheese board, that Laura and George Bush were preparing for him in the Residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Apparently it was Brown himself the architect of the 10p rate abolistion in his last budget as Chancellor who persuaded Ms Smith to let the Treasury release statements that she was not in fact going to resign.

Sadly the Tim'rous Beatie of Number 10 has managed to convert another to his mischief of mice. However, it does appear that Linlithgow and Falkirk East MP Michael Connarty will probably not be so easily swayed, at least by his words, having said earlier this week that the [Labour] party's core voters felt "betrayed" and that "hundreds of thousands" of them would abandon it at the next General Election if Chancellor Alistair Darling did not offer compensatory measures to alleviate the financial pain felt by an estimated five million low-paid people as a result of the abolition of the lowest rate.