Live pictures from the Labour kitten plot

Ok, it's Friday afternoon so we can indulge ourselves a little bit with the dozens of kitten conspiracy pictures that are out there. That's my excuse anyway. What these guys over at Liberal Conspiracy have been doing with their time all week I don't know.

Iceland, Ireland and points in between.

Not that old joke but if you want to follow the news on the constitutional crisis in Iceland and the political crisis in Northern Ireland I recommend two top blogs.

Slugger O'Toole has been running a politics blog the way politics blogs ought to be run for quite a few years covering events north and south of the border.

The Iceland Weather Report sometimes does what it says on the tin and gives you the windspeed in Iceland. More often this cool site comments on the political temperature and, I suspect, unsettles anything that might look like a cosy, let's sweep this under the carpet too, concencus that afflicts communities where everyone knows your name.

And speaking of bold journalism did you read Nick Cohen over Christmas on Gerry Adams and the IRA? Strong stuff. That's enough click throughs to other people's sites for one day.

Court news and traffic violations

As if Steve Hilton, the Tory's top spin doctor, wasn't embarrassed enough to have news of his rail barrier rage arrest in, er, October 2008 reported in the prints today he also woke up to find he'd been caught in a classic Daily Mirror "berk on a bike" sting.

The Mirror followed Hilton, lampooned as the balding, bearded, gobblydeegook, Tory spinner in "The Thick of it", through eleven red lights this week as he cycled to work. They've done this before to other "cyclopaths" like Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

My immediate reaction (apart from they'll have to do better than that) is hats off to Hilton for cycling through London this week. It is baltic out there and when you get to Westminster the place is as draughty as Hamlet's Elsinore.

In other court news Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has been fined £350 and had three points put on her licence for careless driving following a minor scrape in Dulwich last summer. Remember the Mail on Sunday turned it into a "you know who I am" Haradan incident that had the local MP leaving the scene, driving while using her mobile phone and facing a firing squad in the morning. All these charges were dropped.

Frozen Britain knocks coup into teacup

This stunning satellite image of white Britain will be exclusive to every front page tomorrow morning. Everything else is just "a storm in a tea cup".

In England it will not be extremely cold tonight as there will be a breeze. But in Scotland it could be the coldest night of the winter for Britain, with temperatures as low as the minus 20s in the Highlands.

Gas supplies are low, salt wars are breaking out between councils and politicians and the snow is here to stay. I say sell sand, buy Harris Tweed.

It's a Record transfer deal

The news is out anyway so I may as well confirm my move to be the Daily Record's Westminster Editor at the end of this month, ending a long association with the Herald.

I first joined the Herald in the early 90s then returned to print after a spell as a tv director to the Sunday Herald in 1999.

When I moved back to the Herald in April 2008 my first phonecall to the Glasgow newsdesk was answered by Allan Laing, who shepherded me through my first day on the paper in August 1992. "Allan, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 16 years ago..."

The Herald was very good to me and long-suffering Glasgow subs used to my 400 word intro sentences will understand when I describe the Record as a good challenge. The job starts with the general election campaign of a generation and it will take me beyond that with a big Scottish readership. I'm looking forward to it.

As the job title implies I'll remain at Westminster, just moving to another office, and I hope I'll be able to keep Whitehall 1212 going as it is, a personal website that logs my journalism, shaggy dog stories and whatever else I'm interested in.

From Snow plot to slush in five hours

For today's Herald

I was going to write about how much suede protector Teresa May’s red boots needed and that other big story, slush on London pavements, after a nice lunch. But - hold page 6 - a coup plot was launched against Gordon Brown. The third one was due - and what a half-cocked, unorganised, rubber knife assassination attempt it was. But still, it messed up lunch.

News spread by twitter and text halfway through Prime Minister’s Questions while Gordon Brown was giving a gutsy good performance. Blackberrys being passed around the Conservative benches and the swift exit of the Prime Minister’s spokesman from the press gallery alerted us that the balloon had gone up.

Central lobby, where we bump into MPs, was virtually empty when we got down there and the odd Labour rebel left didn’t think this latest (too late?) attempt would amount to more than a pile of slush.

Rumours about cabinet resignations started the moment the Commons returned on Tuesday. Apparently Brown knew something was afoot just before mid-day when he stood up and gave a super-charged performance at the dispatch box.

Everyone ran around with mobiles strapped to their ears pretending they knew something. "We’re not calling on Gordon to go," insisted Patricia Hewitt on radio at lunchtime (Did someone mention lunch?) "This is not an attempted coup, this is an attempt to get this sorted once and for all."

Our slush expert predicted that none of the cabinet had the courage to walk out and that the day would end with Brown’s position strengthened.

What a gift for the opposition. Brown strengthened is exactly what the Tories want as every opinion poll tells them Labour can’t win with Brown as leader.
By 3pm the Polar Plot had frozen. A few "usual suspect" cabinet loyalists had spoken for Brown - Shawn Woodward and Ed Balls to the barricades.

Woodward had a point - with 120 days to a general election the country will be simply astonished at the behaviour of the plotters.

Brown’s convoy left the Commons just two hours and fifteen minutes after the plot unfolded. Bet he was glad he didn’t start his tour of the south of England yesterday after all.

Rumours swirled in the snow. Jack Straw was to lead the rebuttal operation and Peter Mandelson was due on Newsnight. But by 4pm, with darkness falling, no big beasts had come to Brown’s defence. Like previous botched attempts courage was the only ingredient missing from the atmosphere in Westminster. Did senior members of the cabinet - let’s name them: Mandelson, Straw, Miliband, Darling - have neither the guts to either stop this or to dip their hands in blood.

In the hiatus, while ministers watched and waited, suspicion grew that the cabinet was wobbling. What took them so long to endorse Mr Brown? Darling issued a statement saying that he wasn’t to be "distracted" from economic recovery. Hardly an endorsement and Labour backbenchers shook their heads as time drifted on.

The loyalty dripped in an hour before teatime. Harriet Harman issued her statement last a "friend" of David Miliband has said this is not going anywhere. It was all over at 6.18pm. The Snow Plot was a slushy coup.

How different today’s headlines could have been. Brown brilliant at Question Time, a narrowing gap in the polls, Teresa May’s suede protector bill. Instead it was coup and flop with Mandelson putting all children to bed with a nice story. Is Gordon Brown the unluckiest politician of his generation? You bet.

The Laird of Drambeg's Highland Coup

Sometimes at the end of a long day the old ones are the best - especially when they come from the pen of the late Ewen Bain, and the lips of Angus Og. This one for Nick Robinson, who has had a hard time today from the bloggers, and will get an even harder time from six cabinet ministers a leaping when they catch up with him tomorrow.