Who will be the next leader of the labour party ?

[snowychap]

Brown is just too spineless to sack him

The obsession with Tories for sacking people is amazing - would explain the jobless figures under them I suppose :-)

Two Labour backbenchers have called for David Miliband to be sacked...

:? :?

[Awol]

Brown is just too spineless to sack him

Sorry Jon but why should he sack him? and Spineless - sorry that does not make any sense

Hi Ian. By spineless I mean weak, indecisive, a ditherer if you will. All the evidence of his Premiership to date indicate those character traits (election that was abandoned, 10p tax cave in, referendum etc etc etc).

Miliband has been positioning himself for a leadership challenge, what otherwise was that article he wrote in the Guardian about if not his vision for Labour? if Brown really was a leader he'd stamp his authority on the situation and sack or demote him.

My opinion is that he is too weak to act decisively and will put decisions (and reality) on the back burner in the hope of limping to the party conference in September. If he makes it through August I can see him going for a strategy of appeasement and promoting Miliband in the reshuffle.

It is looking bad for them though Ian, even Harriet Harperson has had to deny she's plotting, as has Jack Straw. No smoke without fire? The ship is sinking and the rats know it, so the real question is whether any of them have the courage to save their party from electoral oblivion.

The obsession with Tories for sacking people is amazing - would explain the jobless figures under them I suppose :-)

Not sure what your point is unless it was a little dig at me? In fun, obviously :winkold:

[snowychap]

promoting Miliband in the reshuffle.

There really isn't anywhere for Gordo to promote him to, though, is there?

Unless Gordo gives Miliband his job.

[Gringo]

Make him chancellor - that would soon shut him up.

[snowychap]

Interesting comment from Bickster that Miliband is a "stalking horse", I just wonder who's challenge that would be masking?

Ol' red eyes is back

Blair slams 'vacuous' Brown in leaked note

Tony Blair accused Gordon Brown of generating 'hubris and vacuity' in a devastating private memo analysing his mistakes, which last night threatened to blow a hole in the heart of government.

The former prime minister believed his successor had presided over a 'lamentable confusion of tactics and strategy', attacking Blair's record instead of building on it and failing to spell out an agenda for the future, according to the scathing note penned after last September's chaotic Labour party conference. Such tactics would not win the next election, he concluded.

The note leaked to the Mail on Sunday newspaper now threatens to trigger open warfare within New Labour, with its emergence so soon after David Miliband's broadside against the Prime Minister which was seen as part of an orchestrated plot to destabilise Brown by those loyal to his predecessor.

It came as Blair's close ally and former cabinet minister Stephen Byers accused Brown's government of trying to scale a massive electoral mountain with policies more fit for a 'Sunday afternoon stroll', in criticisms closely echoing Blair's own fears about the lack of a forward-looking agenda for New Labour.

Byers told The Observer it was time for big new ideas to capture voters' imagination and claw back marginal seats, adding: 'As David Miliband said, we need to remake our case afresh. That means not just obsessing about the question of Gordon Brown's leadership, but also considering the policies that will re-establish the coalition of support that has won Labour three elections.'

Loyalist Labour MPs last night angrily questioned the uncannily close timing of the three bombshells from Miliband, Byers and - probably unwittingly - Blair himself. Brownites are unlikely to blame the leak on Blair, who is currently in China and whose spokesman last night insisted he continued to support his successor. But the hunt will be on for the undisclosed recipients of the memo, who are suspected of deploying it when it could do most damage.

Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham, Perry Barr, said: 'At a time when the whole of the Labour party is trying to come together it is disappointing that Tony Blair's friends are trying to cause internal rows with their leaked memos and their personal attacks on Gordon. Tony should tell his friends to stop causing trouble.'

Blair is in regular contact with an inner circle of intimates, ranging from close political friends such as the European Commissioner Peter Mandelson and former minister Alan Milburn to former Downing Street apparatchiks like Matthew Taylor, now running the RSA - as well as some serving cabinet ministers, including Miliband, and even Brown himself. A much-edited version of his analysis, couched as friendly advice, is understood to have been sent to Brown later in the year.

But there is no clue to the recipient of the leaked memo. Friends said last night that it appeared to have been written at the height of frustration over the bottled snap election, when the disarray within the party was well known. But never before has Blair's anger and dismay at what has happened to his party been so brutally exposed.

The memo, in which Blair refers to himself in the third person as TB, complains that defining the new leader as a change from the Blairite era of spin meant that 'we dissed our own record... a fatal mistake if we do not correct it' and also that 'we junked the TB policy agenda but had nothing to put in its place'. David Cameron's own successful party conference was not particularly brilliant but compared with the 'hubris and vacuity' of the conference staged by Brown it made the Tories look substantial, Blair writes.

The memo concludes that Brown should have been seen as 'continuing NL [New Labour] not ditching it', adding that by trying to portray himself as a change from Blair 'he played exactly the same game the media wanted, but never the game that gives us the only chance of a fourth term'.

Blair's spokesman said last night: 'Tony Blair continues to be 100 per cent supportive of Gordon Brown's government.' He refused to discuss the memo, but its authenticity is in little doubt.

Even before the leak events appeared to be rapidly spiralling out of Brown's control last night, with other senior figures frustrated by his performance expected to pitch new ideas this month in the first glimpse of how a post-Brown Labour manifesto might look. Justice Secretary Jack Straw is also considering setting out his thinking before September's party conference.

Byers called for Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy programme for council homes to be turned into a deposit scheme where instead of getting discounts of up to £38,000 tenants could use the money as a deposit to buy a private home - thus helping unlock the crippled housing market.

'Labour has a political mountain to climb in order to win the next election, and yet we have a multitude of small policies and worthy initiatives that are more suited to a Sunday afternoon stroll,' he said. 'We must come forward with bold and ambitious policies that begin to change the terms of political debate by putting Labour on the front foot and the Tories on the defensive.'

Miliband and Straw are both now on holiday but due to return late in August - a dangerous time for Brown, who is due to attend the Beijing Olympics just as MPs are deciding whether to trigger a full leadership contest.

[Gringo]

Byers called for Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy programme for council homes to be turned into a deposit scheme where instead of getting discounts of up to £38,000 tenants could use the money as a deposit to buy a private home - thus helping unlock the crippled housing market.

Slightly OT I know but, fkn hell - more right wing than thatcher - byers needs sending to the island of elba.

[snowychap]

Labour ex-ministers' policy move

A group of ex-Labour ministers are to set out their own policy agenda to fill what they see as a "vacuum" at the heart of government.

The unnamed ministers told the BBC their initiatives would clearly distinguish Labour from David Cameron's Conservatives.

The move, expected within weeks, will increase the pressure on Gordon Brown.

Three cabinet ministers have attempted to damp down speculation about his leadership by rallying to his defence.

Alistair Darling, Harriet Harman and John Denham lined up on Sunday to declare their support for the prime minister.

Skills Secretary Mr Denham told BBC One's Andrew Marr programme that Mr Brown had a "profound understanding of what this country needs" and that a summer of leadership speculation is not helpful for the party.

He said the job of cabinet is to spread the message that the right man is already in the job.

"Anything that gets in the way of all of us as a team putting that message across effectively is a distraction from what needs to be done, and is in danger of letting David Cameron win by default."

'Best man'

Deputy leader Harriet Harman told the News of the World that the party needed someone who had the ability to see Britain through the current economic downturn.

"Gordon Brown is the right person for the job," she said.

And Chancellor Alistair Darling praised the prime minister's "determination and strong purpose".

Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks also rallied to Mr Brown's defence, saying he hoped the Tories' current lead in the polls would lead to increased scrutiny of Mr Cameron's policies.

Both Mr Wicks and Mr Denham said they believed the Labour party could win the next election, even though speculation over Mr Brown's position has raged since Labour's recent by-election defeat in Glasgow East.

The ministers' comments follow an article written by Foreign Secretary David Miliband earlier this week, in which he discussed Labour's future without mentioning Mr Brown.

'Restore dignity'

Meanwhile, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, called for would-be leadership challengers to "come out of the dark" and publicly declare themselves by the party's September conference.

Mr McDonnell said: "We desperately need to find a way out of this mess and to end the personal dog-fighting and to help restore some dignity to the standing of the Labour party and our government."

He later told the BBC that he would stand in a leadership contest, but called for the requirement for candidates to be nominated by 71 Labour MPs to be dropped.

Mr McDonnell's challenge of Mr Brown last year for the leadership failed when he could not secure enough signatures to get onto the ballot paper.

Shadow cabinet minister Chris Grayling said the government was "in chaos at a time when Britain faces serious challenges", and called for a general election "sooner rather than later".

"The Labour Party is clearly split right down the middle with some backing Brown and others trying to knife him," he said,

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable told the Andrew Marr Show that Labour's plummeting popularity presented an opening for his party.

"It is clear that the main political opportunities are where people are looking for an alternative to the Labour government, as they do in many northern cities and in the Midlands, where the Tories are nowhere and we are the effective opposition."

Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has published a secret memo in which former PM Tony Blair accused Mr Brown of playing into Tory leader Mr Cameron's hands with a "lamentable" and "vacuous" performance as prime minister.

The leaked memo, which was written in the aftermath of Labour's conference last year, says the prime minister junked Tony Blair's agenda but had nothing to put in its place.

A spokesman for Mr Blair told the paper that the former prime minister was 100% behind Mr Brown, but declined to comment on the memo itself.

Whether it's 45 or 70

According to this article you were a lot closer than I was (thanks to newsnight )!

...the requirement for candidates to be nominated by 71 Labour MPs..

[snowychap]

With friends like Jackie Ashley, who needs enemies?

A principled, decent man, yes. But Brown has to go

If David Miliband had a shred of doubt about the serious business he had started, he doesn't now. The personal briefing against him was vicious. But it was not deadly. For the second message he'll have drawn from the past few days is that by emerging from the shadows he has made himself stronger, not weaker. A man who has often seemed too fastidious for frontline politics suddenly looks like a killer.

Of course, he is by no means certain to succeed. Leadership challenges, as I wrote here last week, are dangerous and emotional affairs. That one-time plotter Michael Portillo was right to say at the weekend that the Tory party took many years to begin to come to terms with the assassination of Margaret Thatcher.

But even so, I think those dismissing Miliband's semi-challenge as vanity or duplicity are wrong. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Make no mistake, for Labour these are desperate times. Miliband's move has briefly taken the spotlight off the economy and the polling figures. Had he said nothing, however, and gone quietly off on holiday, Labour would still be heading for complete meltdown as soon as an election is called. Like other Labour politicians of his generation, he would face spending his best years in powerless opposition.

As a long-term Brown supporter, I've been asked over and over in the last week why I no longer think he can succeed as prime minister. And I say again, this is a principled, decent man, entirely uncorrupt and in many ways a welcome relief from the high-kicking, look-at-me heyday of the Blairites. Can't he turn it round, even now? If not, why not?

Let me try to answer. A successful leader needs to strengthen and expand the circle of those who feel loyalty, and who are in turn given loyalty. He, or she, starts with a small group of friends and admirers; then wins some recognition in the party; then starts to attract support in the media, and in politics from one-time or potential rivals. At some point, the circles of support spill out beyond the party and the politician begins to win support in the country. You can follow this path with almost any successful politician you care to mention.

And you can see where I'm heading. When Brown became leader, many of us wrote that he would now have to quickly and vigorously expand the circles of those who trusted him, and those he trusted. No longer could it be the tight clan, the embattled and suspicious inner core. He would have to open his arms to former opponents, and be ready to embrace new people and new ideas.

That meant bringing in old foes like Ken Livingstone as well as Blairites; opening to the left as well as the right. And for a short time, it seemed to be happening. A collection of Liberal Democrats, former business and military leaders, even liberal Tories, was recruited to Brown's Whitehall. A new, more relaxed Brown could be seen warmly joking with one-time rivals. The Blairite ultras gnashed their teeth in the darkness: maybe he could do it, after all. It is for historians now to judge the turning point.

But the people recruited early turned out to be people wholly dependent on his goodwill, not real partners. And as times turned tougher, instead of expanding the circle of support, he has tightened and narrowed it.

Consider a few examples: his old friend Alastair Darling blamed for the 10p tax fiasco, when it wasn't his fault - it was Brown's - and briefed against as a reshuffle victim; Douglas Alexander, one of Brown's most loyal lieutenants, unfairly blamed for the "election that wasn't" fiasco and kept at arm's length since; Harriet Harman, sidelined when she won the deputy leadership election, and again when she held the fort in No 10 this summer; Des Browne, sent out to defend Gordon on radio programmes after the Glasgow East byelection on the very day he read a report in one newspaper, inspired by someone at No 10, saying he faced the chop; Spencer Livermore, Brown's former senior strategist, said to have been reduced to tears in No 10 rows, before abruptly leaving for a job in advertising.

It's quite a list of bruised former friends. It may be that in every case, they - or the journalists in receipt of the nasty briefings - misunderstood what was really being said. It's not likely, though, is it? Whether Brown authorised all those briefings himself or not, he certainly continues to employ those who are responsible. It's beginning to look as though being a long-term Brown supporter is not good for your political health. Perhaps that's why there are so few of them left.

This is why Miliband's move has won him so much private backing. People don't feel Brown trusts them. Miliband may be geeky, and he may have prospered in Blair's Downing Street, but he is no Blairite ultra. Indeed, when he was being considered as education secretary, he was blackballed because of his support for the Tomlinson reforms and his unabashed enthusiasm for the comprehensive ideal. In Labour terms, he's a centrist; if the ultras think he would usher in a new age of marketisation and celebration of the superrich, then his Guardian article must have disappointed them.

Now he is the recipient of unsolicited advice from all sides, as the hubbub of excitement about a coming coup rises. Most of it is the political equivalent of junk mail. Anything said by a Tory commentator or politician should be dismissed - including the unconstitutional assertion that another leadership change would require an instant election. Most Labour commentary has to be filtered through in-boxes labelled faction, fear and personal advantage. He should listen to family, look in the mirror, and leave it at that.

I've known him since he was a 16-year-old schoolboy - when he tipped up at my sister's local Labour party, brimming with enthusiasm. Until recently I thought he was nice, bright, charming - but too cerebral to strike, too academic for the very top in politics. But something inside him has shifted. I've been struggling to think what it is, and the real thing is - he no longer looks frightened.

As for Brown, he can make any leadership challenge so bloody and difficult that he takes the party down with him. Or he could transform his leadership, somehow, and really open out again. But if this was possible, would he not have done it already? The best thing would be for him to stand aside, with a rueful smile and a few blunt words of regret; after which he would find himself one of the most popular men in the country. I don't suppose that will happen. New Labour faces the most agonising dilemma in its history. But when you are dangerously ill, refusing the doctor and ridiculing surgery isn't always the sensible option.

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It appears that Darling is 'in charge' this week (I assume Harman is off on holiday or is too busy whipping up support for a leadership challenge) and that Gordo's great plan to rescue his government is to take the Cabinet 'on tour' (WTF?):

Gordon Brown will hold his first cabinet meeting after MPs' long summer break outside London - most likely in the West Midlands.

A Downing Street spokesman said the gathering was set for 8 September.

Ministers will also be taking part in a range of other events in the region on the day to give them an opportunity to "engage" with the public.

The spokesman said the move was part of the government's commitment to "listen and learn" from people's experiences.

Darling role

Cabinet meetings are normally held on a Tuesday morning in 10 Downing Street.

The spokesman said it was hoped that in future more would take place away from London.

He confirmed Chancellor Alistair Darling was taking over responsibility for coordinating government activity while Mr Brown continues his family holiday in Suffolk.

He replaces Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, who was the senior duty minister last week.

The spokesman said Mr Brown continued to remain "closely involved" with key issues.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, who has previously called for cabinet meetings to be held outside the "Westminster bubble", said: "We will be taking politics closer to the people and hearing their concerns first hand."

But shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling said the prime minister was simply following Conservative leader David Cameron, who has held shadow cabinet meetings outside London.

He said: "Gordon Brown doesn't have a single original idea in his head any more...

"This really is a government that has run out of steam; Britain needs change with an early general election."

[Awol]

Snowy

Dare I mention *cringes* pop idol politics?!!

Tune in next week for the Westminster edition of It's a Knock Out when David Miliband will attempt to drown the PM in his own drool.

C units, the lot of 'em.

[snowychap]

It is bizarre, mate.

Why would the location of cabinet meetings have a beneficial effect upon anything?

Roll up, roll up and welcome to Gordo's wonderful travelling politics roadshow.

We'll see one of the cabinet putting on some tight striped shorts next and lifting unbelievably heavy dumbells with one hand.

[bickster]

A certain Villa fan will be the bearded lady

[Demitri_C]

you just have to laugh at the state of the labour party at the mo

[bickster]

The country is in the midst of thinking its up shit creek but lacking a paddle so Brown comes up with...................

The Cabinet Swap Shop Roadshow

Wonder if it'll be presented by Keith Chegwin, perhaps Maggie Philbin could be in the studio offering analysis with Poshpaws adding his own unique take on the days proceedings

Noel Tidybeard will just be in the background murdering some people in the name of TV Ratings

[Awol]

Even Polly Toynbee is putting the boot into the slack jawed idiot now

Unseating Gordon Brown may be Labour's last chance

Getting rid of the prime minister is a very high risk strategy, but a dying party should be ready to take dangerous medicine.

The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all. One bungle follows another and yet those about to die sit silently by. So is that it - the great September relaunch, the great economic recovery plan?

The problem is not lack of substance but absurdly grandiose expectations, raised mostly by briefings from No10 suggesting that there were magic answers. The ineptitude of Brown's Downing Street worsens by the week. The shrinking band of those he trusts are now his old rottweilers, who shred what's left of their leader's reputation. This week when they mauled Alistair Darling for telling an obvious truth (his actual words much exaggerated in the reporting), they attacked one of Brown's few truly loyal friends and a decent man. This is the sign of an inner cabal out of control. Brown apparently denies he orders these attacks on others, but fails to sack those who carry them out.

The latest disaster is Downing Street's mishandling of a windfall tax on energy companies. The idea was allowed to run until the last moment, suggesting £1bn of unearned profits might be taken to ease the pain of the poorest. Downing Street started the talk of issuing energy vouchers to the needy, and only days ago denied the idea was dead. When Compass, the left-of-centre pressure group, gathered a great popular petition in support of it, endorsed by 122 MPs, several parliamentary private secretaries and, privately, many ministers, it looked like pushing at an open door. After all, Brown himself was the architect of that £5bn windfall on the utilities.

So it was a needless shock when the prime minister told the Scottish CBI that windfalls were "short-term gimmicks and giveaways". Instead, the energy companies will next week spend a lot less than that £1bn on lagging lofts and insulating windows. Of course energy saving is essential - but it will get few of the vulnerable through this winter. As talks continue, the government now negotiates like a highwayman without a gun. What's to negotiate?

It was not the left, but the Conservative-run Local Government Association that exposed the big six energy companies for giving shareholders a 20% dividend increase. Now there will be a stormy Labour conference as Compass and the unions prepare an emergency motion. The winter death figures will be watched by Brown's enemies: fairly or not, any extra old-and-cold deaths will be laid at his door.

All this was so avoidable. In both the housing and fuel plans, no clear principle was spelled out. Brown should have said the government will not, and cannot, stop house prices falling. The stamp duty holiday is a bad mistake - all too characteristic of the prime minister. It's an expensive way to entice first-time buyers into negative equity, as all predictions are of steeper falls in house price. That money - maybe £600m - would be much better spent letting councils buy homes to keep a roof over the heads of families whose own homes have been repossessed - and buying cheap properties for social housing.

But again, Brown yearns for that "tax cut" headline. Again he cuts a good tax on property as he did in income tax, while letting unfair purchase taxes hit the poorest hardest. A windfall tax was a chance not only to relieve the hard-pressed, but to signal some recompense for a decade of wealth trickling upwards.

Charles Clarke's call for Brown's head was met by resounding silence this week, making it look less a clarion call than a lonely trumpeting of the Last Post. But it may come to be seen as the opening assassination salvo. The danger is it will be a painfully slow-motion stabbing, too late to make much difference.

A cabinet of minnows and spineless backbenchers include many - perhaps most - who want Brown gone, but lack the nerve to act. They wait for someone else, for Brown to walk away or for a proverbial bus to save them from the task. First they put it off in July: wait until after the summer, many said. Now it's wait until the party conference - as if that "speech of a lifetime" could make a scrap of difference at this stage. Then it will be "Don't rock the boat before the Glenrothes byelection". Will that deliver the electric shock to end the inertia that neither Crewe nor Glasgow East could? Or will they put it off until after Christmas, or catastrophic May elections? Some say a recession is no time for internal wrangling; but the longer they leave it, the longer the leadership question hangs over them. It will not go away.

Soon Cameron's lead will be gold-plated, his succession virtually inevitable. Another year effectively unchallenged by Labour, his contradictions and vacuities unridiculed and unexposed, will gift him an almost unopposed victory. Already at conferences the lobby groups and voluntary organisations hang on every word of shadow ministers, yawning through mere ministers on their way out. Already power, money, glamour, foreign interest and attention flock to Cameron in a political tide whose undertow knocks Labour off its feet with every wave.

Stoking up fear of some fictitious Blairite coup is the Brown camp's trump card. They spook the unions with warnings that privatisers, tax-cutters and wealth-worshippers will take over if Brown is unseated. Personal rivalries - as between David Miliband and Ed Balls - are falsely dressed up as second-generation Brown/Blair battles. But this is all costume drama, wearing the political clothes of yesterday. The imaginary Blair/Brown ideological distinction has now been exposed as the sham it always was. Brown used to let it be known he opposed university fees, war, ID cards, Trident, foundation hospitals and a host of other things he now supports. The 10p tax band abolition to bribe the better off was a wickedness entirely of his own devising. Letting rip the disastrous house price boom was him, as was letting top earnings soar unchecked while reckless banks had "light-touch regulation" and public sector workers were pinned to below-inflation pay. The sad truth is that he opposed Blair, not Blair policies.

So why would unions save his skin now? As the TUC gathers this weekend, they should consider that whoever was to stand as leader, they could win an election in the Labour party only with a radical new agenda. Unseating a prime minister is very high risk - but a dying party should be ready to take dangerous medicine if that's the last chance left.

So long, fair well...

I suspect the only relaunch Labour MP's would like to see Gordon make is into space..

[snowychap]

Ouch!

[Gringo]

Interesting comment from Bickster that Miliband is a "stalking horse", I just wonder who's challenge that would be masking?

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<-----------------------

Ol' red eyes is back

back from all the lies he told before

Ol' red's in town

The middle east peace mission wore him down

No EU presidency

No new crown

Ol' red is back

Only Blair could save Labour now

Tony Blair is the only senior Labour figure who would transform Labour's prospects at the next general election, according to a ComRes poll for The Independent.

The former prime minister would cut the Conservative Party's projected majority of 182 to just 20 seats – enough to raise Labour's hopes it could prevent David Cameron becoming Prime Minister. The Tories' current poll lead would be almost halved from 19 to 10 points.

The good news for Gordon Brown is that none of the alternative leaders being touted as his possible successor would secure Labour more public support than he is winning.

Under David Miliband or Jack Straw, Labour's ratings would be exactly the same as under Mr Brown, while the party would perform worse if Alan Johnson, Harriet Harman or Ed Balls took over.

Although the survey shows Mr Brown is unpopular among Labour supporters, it suggests the Labour brand is now tarnished in the eyes of many voters – another sign that changing its leader might have little impact.

Some 49 per cent of the public say they do not like Mr Brown or the Labour Party. Only 16 per cent say they like him and the party. Mr Brown is slightly less popular than his party: 20 per cent of people say they like Labour but not him, while 8 per cent like him but not the party.

Remarkably, 34 per cent of people who intend to vote Labour say they like the party but not Mr Brown. Only 3 per cent of them like him and not Labour, and just 58 per cent of Labour supporters like both the party and its current leader.

Ol' red eyes is back

back from all the lies he told before

Ol' red's in town

Back to replace the failed Brown

No need for change

Just return the crown

Ol' red eyes is back

[blandy]

Unfortunately the Labour Party has become a notion - just a sort of set of beliefs. Widely held but unrepresented.

[nrogers]

Will there be a labour party to have a leader, you know they hopefully will have to disband through bankruptsy

[Gringo]

Will there be a labour party to have a leader, you know they hopefully will have to disband through bankruptsy

Maybe they could get a few of those nice blokes who stash their cash in the cayman islands to bankroll their state management ambitions a la the blue party.