I am told that the top echelons of the Conservative Party and large numbers of Tory backbenchers think that Andrew Lansley has “gone native” in his time as Shadow Health Secretary.  He is regarded as having got “too close” to the NHS and is not seen as the man who would deliver the sort of root-and-branch “reforms”surgery that the Conservatives really want to embark upon should they become the Government after the next General Election.

Now the Health Service Journal reports that Stephen Dorrell, who was the last Conservative to hold the post of Secretary of State for Health, has attacked Lansley’s vision for NHS “reform” and implying that Lansley would be too timid in making changes to the way in which the NHS works.  Dorrell’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference failed to include the usual ritualistic praise for the relevant Shadow Minister and he didn’t once mention Lansley by name.  Only afterwards – when questioned – did he mouth that Andrew Lansley had his “full support”.  Then, when asked about Lansley’s “vision”, he damned it with faint praise saying “We want to see not so much a new idea but a clear view” and that it needed “filling out”.  Finally, he played right into the speculation about Lansley being too close to the NHS saying:

“The guy has done it for six years; he does understand the service. Andrew is respected in the service, he does know what he’s talking about and he has a clear idea of what he is trying to do.  But right across the public services, what we’ve got to have is a bit of sunlight.”

With friends like that Lansley should feel nervous.

Allegedly, David Cameron “will not hear” of moving Lansley out of the health brief.  Not hearing advice to do something, doesn’t 0f course mean that you won’t do it.  If he offers Lansley 1000% support, I guess we know that Dorrell’s got a new job …..

One of the sharpest and loudest bursts of applause during Gordon Brown’s speech at the Conference today was for the restatement of the intention to legislate before the General Election for the removal of the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords of the remaining hereditary peers.

So sharp and loud was it that it roused from its slumbers a pigeon that had been roosting in the roofspace of the Brighton Centre.  The pigeon then flapped around the Gallery for a few minutes before disappearing whence it came.

It is just as well that it had disappeared before it was captured by the Conference Stewards given what they did to the handful of red balloons that had been released just before the speech began.

The Labour Party Conference today coincides with Brighton University’s “Freshers’ Pub Crawl”.  Several thousand scantily-clad and inebriated freshers have converged on Odeon Cinema adjacent to the Brighton Centre.  The armed Police are looking nervous: what if they surge towards the security cordon? An ambulance has had to be called to a delegate overcome by the expanses of bare flesh heat.  Ed Balls sweeps by with his entourage and looks scandalised.

Will he be talking to Lord Peter Mandelson to suggest some candidates for cuts in University funding?

My Conference Pass and papers have been sitting somewhere in a North London Royal Mail Sorting Office for the last couple of weeks – so my first act on arriving at Brighton was to make my way to the Conference Office to join the queue for what used to be called ‘Late Accreditation’.

In previous years this has been notorious with waits of four, or even six, hours not uncommon.  In fact, I was in and out in about an hour and spent a pleasant time chatting to friends and colleagues.  The queue, while I was there, included two Ministers, several MPs, a number of Labour Peers, a London Assembly Member and even a former Party General Secretary – no special treatment, everyone treated the same – and all in good humour (with the only exception being a woman from a public affairs company with five passes to pick up for her clients).

Security is as tight as ever – two pass checks, a bag search and a metal detector arch – but in addition at one of the pass checks you are asked a security question.  This is fine, although a bit of a surprise the first time it happens.  And it is fine as long as you know the answers.  One Labour Baroness – who will remain nameless – discovered that her age had been keyed in wrongly (or at least that’s her story).  In the end, she had to say “Do you really think I look that young?” before they let her in.

I was interested in Sean Fear’s analysis on Political Betting of how the London Borough elections will pan out next May.  His predictions (bear in mind he is a Tory activist) give the political map of London Government becoming:

• Conservative  16  (he calls Ealing, Kingston, Merton and Sutton as Tory in what will be close contests)
• Labour  8 (he calls Islington as a Labour gain from the LibDems)
• LibDems  1
• No Overall Control  6
• Too close to call  1 (Haringey – between Labour and the LibDems)

I’ve not done my own calculations yet.  However, his analysis looks reasonably plausible, although I would want more information from a number of places before taking a firm view.

In July 2005, I was asked by John McTiernan, then Political Secretary to the then Prime Minister, for my assessment of what would happen in May 2006 in the London elections.  I gave my view Borough by Borough (which subsequently turned out to be almost exactly correct).  This was dismissed as “much too pessimistic” and was told “what you are forgetting is that by next Spring the situation in Iraq will have really improved and we will have got the ID cards legislation through and that’s going to be seriously popular”.  I make no comment on the political judgement expressed ……

There is a high state of alert at the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting that is now in session.  Mayor Boris Johnson is in the Chair with the Uber Vice Chairman Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM at his side and two seats away from Sir Paul Stephenson, the Met Commissioner.

And everyone is on their best behaviour: no inadvertent body language to suggest anything other than perfect harmony between them all.

Everyone is also being careful to minimise references to ships, tillers, captains on the bridge, or anything remotely nautical.

The result is that there is even more of a degree of formality about the Commissioner’s report than usual.  However, the Commissioner has clearly been working on his hand gestures while speaking.  The preferred style is now: left hand placed on hip; right elbow on table; and the right hand used to emphasise points with small karate-style chops.  The UVCDMKMAM – whilst avoiding eye contact with the Commissioner – tried to coordinate his nods with the Commissioner’s chops.  However, his hands remained clasped firmly across his stomach throughout, unless he and the Mayor were exchanging terse written notes. 

An hour and a half into the meeting – still on questions to the Commissioner slightly to the irritation of some members who were waiting to get on to the rest of the agenda – the elephant in the room was finally mentioned.  The member who raised it (which apparently meant that the UVCDMKMAM had won the Mayoral Office sweepstake on who would do it) was – of course (so perhaps it was a rigged sweepstake) – John Biggs AM, who elegantly said he welcomed these question and answer sessions as it demonstrated to the public who was in operational control of the Metropolitan Police and how the MPA’s role was to ensure that the Commissioner was accountable and to set the overall priorities for London’s police. 

Mayor Boris Johnson has taken to quipping that – as a sign of Conservative economy – he has cut the number of Deputy Mayors from six to three since taking office.  This neatly glosses over some inconvenient facts: first, that one of the first acts of Mayor Johnson was to INCREASE the number of Deputy Mayors (adding five personal appointees to the statutory position held by Richard Barnes AM, who was given the substantive position of being responsible for opening garden fetes and the like); and second, that three of those appointees have had to resign in somewhat embarrassing circumstances.

However, how many of his diminished top team will still be there by this time next year?  Rumour has it that the answer is “not many”.

According to Paul Waugh in the Evening Standard, Anthony Browne, the Mayor’s Policy Director, is about to resign to concentrate on becoming MP for Devizes.

James Cleverly AM, the amiable Assembly Member for Bexley and Bromley, clearly has his eye on the Parliamentary seat of Beckenham that is about to be vacated by Jacqui Lait – look at the picture on his blog post).

Likewise, the UVCDMKMAM, Kit Malthouse AM, is – I am reliably informed – letting it be known that he is available for a Parliamentary seat.

And the by-now-indispensible Deputy Mayor and Chief of Staff, Sir Simon Milton, is widely tipped to be made a Life Peer by David Cameron and appointed as a Minister in the Lords, in the obviously inconceivable circumstance of a Tory election win next year.

So who will that leave to mind the shop for Mayor Johnson?

Step forward that safe pair of hands Brian Coleman AM ….. your time will come!

Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones is a member of the Shadow Cabinet and is Shadow Security Minister and National Security Advisor to the Leader of the Opposition.  Or is she?

The BBC has repeatedly described her today merely as a former chairwoman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.  What can this mean?

Three possibilities:

1. The BBC has got wind of another member of the Shadow Cabinet who is being sacked and is dropping a large-size hint;
2. The BBC, in another example of its pro-Tory bias, is quoting her as an “independent” expert, when really she is a mouth-piece of the Conservative Party; or
3. BBC news editors are so incompetent that they don’t realise that she is a member of the Shadow Cabinet.

I know which I think is the more likely.

Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Uber Vice Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, has provoked a predictable storm with his interview in today’s Guardian.  I rather suspect that he will be rather pleased with all this – although from his holiday retreat (on a boat somewhere? – see below) he has, of course, indicated that his views have been distorted in the article.

Was it distorted?  I have to say that in my view at least, it has the sound of the authentic voice of the Uber Vice Chairman.  The boating references (getting ready for his hols?): he and the Mayor (or should it be the Mayor and he?) have their “hands on the tiller” of the Metropolitan Police and “we do not want to be a passenger on the Met cruise.”

No doubt, what Kit Malthouse was trying to suggest was that somehow there has been a sea-change in direction (to continue the nautical metaphor – a firm shove of the tiller?), since the old days when, in his view, there was a Labour Mayor, conspiring with a Labour Home Secretary and a Labour-led Metropolitan Police Authority, to give the Metropolitan Police an easy ride.  Now this suggestion shouldn’t really come as a surprise after all he and the Mayor (or should it be the Mayor and he?) are Tories, elected just over a year ago, and want us to believe that their election has made a difference.

But has much changed in practice?  I certainly remember sitting in the room when the then (Labour) Home Secretary gave the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner a tremendous bollocking about street crime figures.  I also remember a Labour Mayor and a Labour-led MPA setting very clear parameters and priorities for (along with the necessary budget) the introduction of Police Community Support Officers and later Safer Neighbourhood Teams.

Yes, of course, in the last year there has been a tremendous focus on knife crime.  However, I would have been more surprised if this hadn’t happened, rather than that it did.  No sensible Metropolitan Police Commissioner would have failed to respond to public concern on the number of young people who were dying as a result of knife violence in London.  And no administration (Labour or Conservative – or even Liberal Democrat) would have ignored it either – all would have expected a substantial Police response.

It is the proper role of the MPA to set the strategic priorities and the budget for the Met.  To pretend that this does not impact on operational performance is ridiculous.  It is what having an accountable police service is all about.

So why the hysterical reaction from the Metropolitan Police?

My sources in New Scotland Yard tell me that the Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had to be dissuaded from flying back from his holiday to “demonstrate that he was in charge.”

But who on Earth authorised the statements quoted in the Evening Standard?

‘One senior insider said: “This is nonsense. If you look at what the police have delivered in the past year that is all down to Sir Paul and nothing to do with politicians.

“Paul has been very robust with Mr Malthouse in recent months. It is ridiculous to say he has wrested control away from the police. He is a local politician thinking he is a national politician. He is very full of himself.”’

Saying things like that about the de facto Chair of the Police Authority does not make future good harmonious relationships all that easy – particularly as Kit Malthouse had gone out of his way to say how much he trusted the Commissioner’s judgement.

Maybe to solve the Met’s budget problems next year they should sell tickets for those who want to be there when Sir Paul Stephenson and Kit Malthouse have their first private one-to-one after they are both back from their hols.  Sounds like a hot ticket.

As we wait for the result of the Norwich North by-election, I am told that on the ground Norwich North Labour Party is united  – behind Ian Gibson.