Jackie Ashley makes me laugh

Mrs Marr must have spent all day on the phone yesterday collecting anonymous quotes for her weekly article.  Firstly, she deals with husband’s interview with their mutual friend:

Actually, Brown's performance was by no means his worst and he has interesting things to say about political reform. It's just that he found it impossible to move quickly enough as the tempest broke, and is struggling to play catch-up. David Cameron and Nick Clegg have sounded more decisive and worked harder to respond to public anger.

But Brown's talk of commissions, reports, debates just appears too far off. As a leader he is in a weak position because he seems to be a dead man walking. His own future is dependent on too many Labour MPs, including ministers, for him to sound decisive.

And now to the quotes or not as the case maybe:

Two key figures in Tony Blair's administration see it like this: New Labour will be destroyed at the next general election and whatever is left will be swept up into a new centre-left coalition, in which the Liberal Democrats will be key players. It's happened, apparently, because of "Tony's catastrophic misjudgment over Iraq and Gordon's failures since."

The prime minister's attempts yesterday to seize the initiative over the expenses furore don't seem to have helped. "Gordon just doesn't get it" and "it's too little too late" were typical comments from some.

And then:

I'm told that he [Brown] has already agreed a great swath of peerages for former Blairite apparatchiks, part of the deal done when Tony Blair left No 10 and wanted to "look after" his people.

This is the first I have heard of this.  Perhaps these were the same unnamed sources that provided the ingredients for this piece in the Guardian last week.

The rest of the article deals with the realignment of the centre-left the great lady says may take place after Cameron takes over.  Some of us have poked our finger in this pie before.  The Guardian can dream for this but it won’t happen.  Clegg will not be interested.

It is desperate stuff.  I suppose you can get away with anything when you one half of New Labour’s gifted media couple.