³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

UPDATE: Sorry, I misheard what Jack Dromey told me after he was selected tonight. He said the last seven Labour selections in the Midlands had either had all women shortlists, OR picked women.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Jack Dromey has won the nomination as Labour candidate for Birmingham Erdington.

When I asked a victorious Mr Dromey whether there should have been an All Woman Shortlist in Erdington, he said that the last seven seats selected in this region had had All Women Shortlists.

So it's good for Jack they made an exception for once.

UPDATE AT 1845GMT: Jack Dromey has won the nomination as Labour candidate for Birmingham Erdington.

ENTRY FROM 1742GMT:
I'm in Birmingham where the Labour Party in the Erdington constituency will announce tonight whether Mr Harriet Harman - ie the Labour Party Treasurer Jack Dromey - has finally been picked as candidate for a decent Labour seat.

Mr Dromey is one of four contenders for the job - all men. And win or lose, it's a good story.

It could be a humiliating failure for Mr Dromey, who has been trying to get a seat for at least 13 years - in between failed bids for the leadership of his union Unite (what was the T+G)...

But everyone we've spoken to thinks he will finally succeed tonight, opening up the wonderful possibility of another husband and wife team on the Labour front bench.

But if Mr Dromey is chosen there will inevitably be talk of a "fix".

In late selections like this the shortlist is drawn up by just three members of Labour's National Executive. (Just like the Conservatives, Labour says there isn't time, with the election so imminent, for local members to decide the short-list).

That argument is completely bogus of course - Labour members in Sedgefield chose their shortlist back in 1983 at a much, much later stage than this - to the benefit of Tony Blair. Everyone knows the reason the national parties start deciding these late shortlists is to parachute in people who might not get picked if the normal democratic processes were applied.

In his recent book the former Labour General Secretary Peter Watt says the party was planning to run Mr Dromey as candidate in Wolverhampton North East had Gordon Brown not cancelled the election in 2007.

The big question local dissidents in the West Midlands are asking is why the National Executive did not impose an all woman shortlist on Erdington, like many if not most of the other winnable seats who are picking Labour candidates at this late stage?

That must have been a real blow to Harriet Harman, who, in one of her other jobs - Equality Minister - is a great champion within the Labour hierarchy of such positive discrimination to advance the cause of women.

Mr Dromey and Ms Harman, respectively Labour's national treasurer and chairman, were officially absent from the NEC's decision-making processes on Erdington, but critics of the process will find it hard to believe there was really a level playing field.

I'm still pondering the significance of Alistair Darling's famous interview with Jeff Randall on Tuesday night in which he talked of the "forces of hell" briefing against him.

In my blog on Wednesday, I suggested there seemed to be an air of Mr Darling being "demob happy" in the way he spoke on Tuesday. He knows he won't be chancellor after 6 May, whatever happens.

That set me thinking. With so many Labour MPs standing down, is it possible that Mr Darling, too, plans to step down as an MP, to take his place in the Lords, and some lucrative financial jobs in London or Edinburgh?

If so, the news would be a big blow to Labour's election campaign.

But there's an alternative, almost contradictory, scenario. Might Mr Darling be positioning himself to take over from Gordon Brown in the event of an election defeat? Not as a long term Labour leader, but in a caretaker role while the party sorts itself out, and waits for a young, strong, long-term prospect to emerge.

Mr Darling's reputation has certainly been enhanced during his three years as chancellor, and now, with just three words, he's managed to distance himself very effectively from the more unpleasant aspects of the Brown regime.

Unlikely? Yes. But I can tell you that the idea of Mr Darling as caretaker is certainly being contemplated by some of his friends.

Oh dear. The Speaker John Bercow let his mask of political neutrality slip slightly for the Oxford University newspaper Cherwell.

"We must learn from what Blair has done," Mr Bercow told interviewer Clement Knox. And by "we", Mr Bercow clearly meant the Tories, the Cherwell account suggests.

Mr Bercow was explaining to the student newspaper that his own political shift over the years (from right to centre left) had been "partly philosophical and partly pragmatic", and that such a shift was required for the Conservatives to "capture the centre ground".

And Mr Bercow says he has always been committed to principles such as "free enterprise, individual liberty and the rule of law", and also "believed very strongly in social justice and an overwhelming need for equality before the law".

Would every MP sign up to such principles?

The events of the last 24 hours have illustrated the paradox of Alistair Darling's position.

For the next ten weeks, until polling day, Darling is "unassailable", to use the word which Margaret Thatcher notoriously used about Nigel Lawson more than 20 years ago.

After the events of last summer, when Gordon Brown was forced to ditch his plans to install Ed Balls as chancellor, Darling has been in a very strong position, and will no doubt exert that strength to get his way in the pre-election budget, due in late March.

But Darling knows he will only be chancellor until polling day, and indeed that may give him a slight "demob" spirit, enabling him to be a little more loose in what he says.

Yet, in the unlikely event that Labour, against all odds, was to win the election, then Gordon Brown would be even more unassailable than his chancellor. Darling would surely be out, and Balls would almost certainly get the Treasury.

Indeed, if I were a Conservative campaign planner I'd be designing posters along the lines of "Vote for five more years of Brown, and get Balls too".

And whilst I'm giving the Tories free advice, I've never understood why they never link Gordon Brown's famous "moral compass" with the activity of "spinning". You know, something along the lines of: "We know where your moral compass is, Mr Brown. It's spinning."

My colleague Jake Morris has interviewed Damian McBride at length today about the Alistair Darling "forces of hell" interview and this is McBride's version of events. I think it is worth placing on the public record.

"Alistair Darling has read the allegations in the Andrew Rawnsley book and given that, you can understand why he believes what he seems to, but that doesn't mean it's right.

"When the Decca Aitkenhead interview came out, obviously what the Sunday journalists and broadcasters were trying to get to was: there's a stark contrast between what Alistair Darling was saying and what Gordon Brown had been saying about Britain being well-placed to withstand the recession.

"So there were extensive conversations between the Treasury and Number 10, and at least one conversation between Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, where it was agreed the key thing was to make clear to the press that the '60 years' thing referred to the world economy and not just Britain, and that the action we were taking was going to protect Britain from the damage we'd seen in previous recessions.

"Because basically the headlines were 'Alistair Darling says: 'Britain faces the worst slump in 60 years'', the Conservatives were leaping on it saying what they were saying about Britain was right, and you had to explain to people that Alistair had been misrepresented in the way the interview had been written up.

"That was a joint effort and that was kind of the agreed objective for the day, from Gordon and Alistair downwards. Everyone, from myself and the PM's spokesman and Alistair Darling's press people, we were all told that is the message for the day.

"There was no 'background briefing' or anything like that. It wouldn't make sense. You couldn't say on the one hand that Alistair had been misrepresented and what he'd actually said was consistent with what Gordon had been saying, but on the other hand, Alistair's made a terrible mistake and what he's said is wrong.

"Of course you end up with quotes in some of those papers from sources saying GB was dismayed with Alistair Darling's interview. That kind of thing happens because if a journalist really wants to, they can always find someone who can be vaguely described as 'close to Gordon Brown' to give them the quote they need, but I don't know if on this occasion it was true.

"But I can categorically state that I didn't brief against Alistair Darling or brief against the interview. You know, I had journalists ringing me up saying "Come on, you must accept this is a disaster - look at the news - it's dreadful for you guys." And all you could keep saying is, of course the news is going to be like that if they're going to misrepresent the interview and say Alistair was talking about Britain, but he wasn't.

"In fact, the only dispute we had with the Treasury that day was when we were under that kind of pressure, and we were saying to them: "You need to put out the transcript of the interview to make clear what he did say and to show that he was quoted out of context."

"The Treasury were very reluctant to say that, and what became clear was that nobody had a transcript of the interview. So the only dispute, which was limited to our sort of junior level - not Alistair and Gordon - was that we were saying to Alistair's people: 'What are you doing? If the chancellor's doing a two day interview with a journalist you need someone there with a tape recorder. That's basic.' And you feel a lot of frustration when you are told we can't put out the transcript because we didn't record the interview.

"There was never an 'angry' reaction to the interview because even before the papers had dropped that Saturday, the Treasury had told us what the headlines were and that Alistair had been misrepresented, so when we saw the interview it wasn't a case of 'Why has he said this stuff?', it was 'He's been stitched up, he's been quoted out of context.''

"The comments Alistair Darling made in the [2008] interview about other people coveting his job were not what was capturing the attention. I'd forgotten about them til you just mentioned them now. What mattered was the headlines on the news, and that's what we were having to deal with it. The other stuff was just by the by, but it kind of added to the atmosphere that this was an explosive interview.

"I remember only a few weeks previously, George Osborne had given an interview to Decca Aitkenhead and she'd completely turned him over. He'd said all kinds of ridiculous things like he was too young to remember the miners strike. I called up the Treasury and said: this is great stuff, you should use this at Treasury questions, and a few weeks later, instead of using that material, they've given an interview to Decca Aitkenhead themselves.

"Anyway, since that weekend of the interview, it's developed into a complete myth that we were out there over that weekend doing loads of briefings, which just wasn't the case. If you look back at the Sunday papers the following day, it's clear it wasn't the case. Now because you have this book out I'm sure Alistair Darling reads what's written there and thinks it must be true.

"You can't blame Alistair Darling for reacting that way.

"But the irony is he reads things about what Maggie Darling is supposed to have said in that book and he says "That's not true", he reads the allegations about Gordon and bullying and he says that's not true, but then he reads the allegations about someone like me, and he assumes it's correct.

"There's a broader point in that he's had some people around him for a while who were quite prone to believe anything journalists told them, or even think that any bad publicity for Alistair must have something to do with No.10, and that's obviously affected Alistair's views.

"This hadn't always been the case but it started when a former journalist came in to work for Alistair, who was inclined to almost expect this was the sort of thing that went on, and assume that every story or column had some briefing behind it.

"So I'd be told by journalists that they'd ring up the Treasury about a story, and the Treasury would get into a flap about where the story had come from and start having a go at me or someone else in No.10, and before you knew it, some simple story had turned into a big row.

"If you do that all the time, sooner or later journalists will just ring you up, flam up some so-called briefing from No.10, and you end up reacting to something that doesn't exist. And that's what started happening with the Treasury.

"I don't particularly feel animated about it in all truth. When I read the Rawnsley stuff at the weekend, there was straight factual stuff in there about me - phone calls I'd made, things I'd said to people - that just weren't true, they hadn't happened, so you start to take everything else with a pinch of salt.

"He didn't speak to me about what he was going to allege about me. There were supposed conversations I'd had written about in the book, and I think to myself that only two people know what happened in that conversation and he didn't speak to me. So how could he rely on one person's account, how can he not check with the other person?

"But then again, I've only got myself to blame that Rawnsley wouldn't bother checking things with me. Because of what happened last April people will say he deserves everything he gets, who cares what he thinks, and they'll believe anything that's written about me.

"I only have myself to blame for that, but if you sit there and read things that are wrong, you still feel a bit aggrieved, and when I get The Sun turning up at my school today and turning up at my mum's house on the back of what Alistair said, of course you're a bit pissed off 'cos you think I've paid a big price for what I did, I'm trying to get on with my life and yet I'm still being accused of things I didn't do.

"I got in touch with Rawnsley on Sunday and said the following things you have written about me are wrong and I know for a fact that the following things you've written about Gordon or other people are wrong too. He said he'd get back to me."

Last year, the Conservative treasurer Michael Spencer said that in the upcoming fight with Labour they would "blow them out of the water" with the money they raised.

Today's publication of the latest donation figures by the Electoral Commission, the last set before the election, suggests they will do just that. The Tories raised a whopping £10.4m in the last three months of last year, dwarfing Labour's still respectable £5m.

And remember the national spending limit for the 12 month period before polling day is just under £19m, which suggests that with adding other funds in their war-chest, the Conservatives will have lots of money left over after polling day.

Mind you, they might well need that if there's a second election soon. (Goodness knows how Labour would ever fund such a follow-up contest).

To put today's Tory figure into more context, in the equivalent quarter before the last general election in 2005, the Tories barely raised £2m. The only time that they've topped £10m since records began was in the period of the 2001 election, boosted by donors energised by William Hague's "Save the Pound" campaign and inflated hopes of a swift return to government.

Digging deeper, however, and the picture is even better for them and worse for Labour. Nearly half of the Labour donations were from just three people: party Treasurer (and Nottingham Forest chairman) Nigel Doughty and perennial Labour saviours Lord (David) Sainsbury and Ronnie Cohen.

The vast majority of the rest, nearly £2m, are donations from the trades unions.

It's true that the Tories are not lacking in big individual donors either, with property magnate David Rowland giving nearly three-quarters of a million, party co-Treasurer Stanley Fink (tipped recently to get a ministerial job) giving half a million, and another Lord Sainsbury (this time John) giving the same.

But where the Tories really power ahead is in the mid-level donations - 53 gifts of between £25,000 and £50,000 - not just raising a great wad of cash but also inoculating themselves against any future changes to party funding which restricts the amount individuals and companies can give.

As an aside, Labour bogeyman Lord Ashcroft seems to be content with masterminding the Tories' marginal seat operation. He gave only £80,000 through Bearwood Corporate Services in sponsorship during the latest quarter. Such is the bounty from other donations, they hardly need Ashcroft's money any more.

Perhaps Labour should call upon the help of a man who is used to spending millions of pounds to win vital contests.

But Sir Alex Ferguson will have to do a little better than the £6,000 he gave this last quarter if the red team is going to prevail in the upcoming election spending frenzy.

I bumped into Nadhim Zahawi at a conference given by this morning, who told me that he had just been chosen as the Conservative candidate for the safe seat of Stratford-on-Avon.

I didn't have the heart to remind Mr Zahawi, but this news will no doubt have given the former Conservative Deputy Chairman and Lord, Jeffrey Archer, a quiet smile of satisfaction.

Zahawi was Archer's personal assistant during his aborted bid for London Mayor back in 1998-9, when Archer was forced to quit over revelations which eventually led to the peer going to jail for perjury.

Indeed, assuming he gets elected this spring, then Nadhim Zahawi will become the fourth of Archer's personal assistants to become a Conservative MP. One was David Faber, who quit politics to become a professional writer. The other two, David Mellor and Richard Ryder, both made it to John Major's cabinet table.

This coming Wednesday's meeting of the Commons Justice Select Committee was going to be an interesting event in any case.

Their witness that morning is the Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell, who was due to talk about what happens constitutionally if there is a hung parliament after the election.

Now surely committee members won't be able to resist the urge to ask Sir Gus as well what exactly he advised Gordon Brown about his treatment of Downing Street staff - especially since two of the Conservative members of the committee are the professional trouble-makers Andrew Tyrie and Douglas Hogg.

Who were those students seen behind David Cameron on Monday while he made his speech on constitutional matters at the University of East London (UEL)?

"They weren't our students," my source at UEL tells me. "We were puzzled when we saw the pictures on TV because there were so many white faces. Whereas the population of UEL is much more black and Asian."

And I'm also told that when the Student Union President Joseph Bitrus was asked on LBC radio today why the student audience looked so bored with the speech, Mr Bitrus too expressed puzzlement, and said that they weren't his students.

So did the Conservatives bus their students in from somewhere else just to be sure that Mr Cameron's speech got a good reception and there weren't any embarrassing protests?

Indeed, were the audience students at all?

I think we should be told. After all, one of the themes of Mr Cameron's speech was "transparency".

Conservative MPs today, Tuesday, will stick by the "first past the post" system for Parliamentary elections, as the Commons votes on the government's plans to hold a referendum on whether to introduce the Alternative Vote (AV), in which voters state their preferences - 1,2,3 etc.

But John Strafford, of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy, points out that the Tories actually use a similar preferential voting system, a variation on AV, for all their candidate selections and elections of party leaders.

Mischievously, I looked up the voting figures for the Conservative leadership election last time round, in 2005.

Lo and behold, the votes from MPs in the first round were:

David Davis - 62
David Cameron - 56
Liam Fox - 42
Ken Clarke - 38

It was only in subsequent ballots, after the weaker candidates, Mr Clarke and Mr Fox, were eliminated, and David Cameron picked up many of their supporters' second or third preferences, that he won through.

If the Conservatives had used "first past the post" in 2005, then David Davis would have won.

The Liberal Democrat chief executive Chris Fox has just assured me that orange diamonds are here to stay.

Despite the party's new branding with aqua, "absolutely no aqua diamonds will be countenanced", he says.

David Cameron has repeated his pledge to cut the number of MPs by 10%, and the Tories plan to table an amendment to legislation next week to bring this about (though it wont succeed).

This measure would be mean a reduction from 650 MPs (in the next Parliament) down to about 585.

Sixty-five constituencies would be axed. And 65 more MPs would lose their jobs.

And it is clear that the Conservatives plan to go full speed ahead with this pledge immediately on achieving power.

They know that cutting the number of MPs is likely to prove popular with voters, but many Conservatives also hope that the operation will help the severe unfairness in the electoral system at the moment, which operates against them.

(It is surely absurd that there should be any doubt whether the Tories' current 7-9% lead in the polls would lead to a working majority, when in 2005 Labour got a pretty handsome majority of 64 with a lead of less than 3% in the vote.)

Cutting the number of seats in time for the subsequent election (in 2014 or 2015, assuming the next Parliament runs to a usual term) would mean a new boundary review - just after the new boundaries in England and Wales introduced in time for the coming election.

In particular, the Conservatives plan to bring in two new rules for that boundary review which might help swing the distribution of seats back in their favour.

First, they would legislate to ensure that Parliamentary seats should be much more equal in population.

Second, they will change the convention whereby constituencies do not cross county boundaries.

The latter means that many seats in small English counties such as Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are unduly large, and so the Tories do not get as many seats as they might.

The main losers from this process are likely to be Labour and the Liberal Democrats, but one leading expert on the process tells me that many Conservative MPs will inevitably lose their jobs as well.

Which is why some Tory MPs are not that pleased with Mr Cameron's pledge to cut the number of MPs, and are getting quite jittery about what will happen when they have to fight against Conservative colleagues for the diminished spoils.

Local Liberal Democrat parties are in revolt over the decision by the party's high command to introduce "aqua" - a kind of turquoisey blue - as an official party colour in addition to the traditional orange/yellow. See for what I mean.

"Which 'cretin' decided to use 'aqua' as an official Lib Dem colour alongside yellow?" asks the latest edition of .

"The 'aqua' is almost identical to the colour used by the , as is plainly obvious to all except those with the misfortune to suffer colour blindness."

Liberator describes the change as a "piece of idiocy by style obsessed fools who cannot see the political implications of using blue... it is a liability who should not be allowed within a million miles of the general election campaign".

This has led to a "grassroots rebellion", the co-editor of Liberator Simon Titley tells me.
"Cowley Street (Lib Dem HQ) recently sent out 'style guidelines' to local parties but many constituencies will be sticking with the traditional yellow/orange colour. The ALDC () last week sent its members guidelines on how to adapt the style guide for local 'Focus' leaflets, but has produced mock-ups in both colour schemes."

Mr Titley adds that: "During the forthcoming election campaign, the proportion of local parties sticking with the old colours will be an indication of the extent of the rebellion."

And an indication, too, of how much the Lib Dems practise the kind of devolution they preach.

Mind you, I did think the old Lib Dem orange was getting very tired and dated.

And please will the Lib Dems abolish those irritating orange diamond placards - now presumably aqua placards - which activists wave around and which spoil our TV pictures in campaign coverage.

I can easily see myself decapitating some wretched activist with one of the placards before long.