The Sunday silliness

I’ll save you the trouble of spending quality time going through the not so quality Sunday papers.  There is nothing there.  Not quite true, but almost.  There are countless articles on whether Mandy should or shouldn't return to the Commons.  Not wanting to admit that I scan the red tops on a Sunday, I’ll highlight the Telegraph’s latest take on all matters Mandy:

Lord Mandelson is being urged by a group of Labour MPs to give up his peerage and fight the next election in a safe seat in north-east England.

His supporters hope Hilary Armstrong, the 63-year-old former chief whip, could be persuaded to back Lord Mandelson, her friend and political ally, as her successor in North West Durham, which has a Labour majority of 13,443.

So, they you have it.  Mandy is not to return to the Commons to become prime minister but will return at the next election to be part of the rump of Labour MPs that will partly fill the opposition benches.  From there he will be in a pivotal position to manage the Labour infighting.  Whatever next.  At this point we will move on.

Next, we have the latest call for Brown to step down in the autumn.  It comes from Peter Carpenter, the not known member of Labour’s ‘Thousand Club’ (admittedly, even I had to do some digging to educate myself in what that happy band of recession proof brothers actually do).  This highly non-influential figure makes this jaw dropping remark:

Talking to people, I am not alone in holding the view that it would be better for Gordon if he came to the conclusion that he is part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Finally, we do some real news:

A much-publicised law designed to stop wealthy tax exiles bankrolling political parties has been quietly dropped until after a general election.

The disclosure means that key Labour donors such as Lakshmi Mittal as well as Tory donor Lord Ashcroft will still be able to pump millions of pounds into the forthcoming election campaign.

Lord Oakeshott, reportedly to be a Lib Dem treasury spokesman, has come to this startling conclusion that Labour had abandoned its principled stand of just a few weeks ago because of concerns that the party cannot fight a cut-price general election against cash-rich Tories.

What a brilliant analysis.  This Lord will go far.

The best we can hope for on this Sunday is that there is blue sky over the once-upon-time industrial power house city of Birmingham.  It would be good to have some cricket.