Return of the Blair casts a shadow over Brown

Tony Blair is to co-host a summit on the global financial crisis with President Nicolas Sarkozy in January, in a move likely to infuriate Gordon Brown.

Mr Blair's office has been in in touch with the Prime Minister to invite him to the Paris conference, but Mr Brown has so far refused to accept the invitation, with an official saying last night he was still considering his "diary commitments".

Sources said that Mr Brown was "relaxed" about the event taking place. However, any attempt by Mr Blair to overshadow Mr Brown's efforts on the world stage is likely to anger Downing Street aides. He has rebuilt his political reputation by claiming to lead the world in tackling the global financial crisis – most recently with a "road map" for financial reform he presented at a G20 summit last weekend.

But he may now have to contend with Mr Blair taking on a formal role in the global response to the economic crisis.

The summit will come days before Barack Obama is sworn in as US President on Jan 20, and threatens to upstage a follow-up G20 summit that Mr Brown is expected to host in London in April.

Tony Blair: Love is... A Cruel Mistress

Is there nothing a man wouldn't do for love? The following news story touches the heart on a mild Thursday morning, as the hunt is on for the identity of a mystery Blairite bard who is thought to be a member of Gordon Brown's Cabinet.

At Downing Street upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't Blair,
He wasn't Blair again today,
Oh how I wish he'd go away.

Business Secretary John Hutton was accused by his Tory shadow Alan Duncan of being behind the lines which appeared on the Spectator website. Mr Hutton totally denied the verse was his. "I would write better poetry than that."

The Minister shook his head and looked slightly embarrassed as Mr Duncan teased him that the poem belonged to him. The Tory MP said the poem could only have been penned "by one person" and the "finger of suspicion" pointed at Mr Hutton.
.

During a Commons debate on Post Office closures, he said: "We are told that somewhere in Downing Street, thought to be a member of the Cabinet, there is a poet, a bard. "Looking at the flavour of the language, I think it can only be but one person."

.
Mr Hutton said it was not him, insisting: "Those are absolutely not my words."

Mr Duncan said Mr Hutton had once claimed Gordon Brown would make a "blooming awful prime minister - and I translate for the sake of decency". Total politics at its best.

Democracy improves by 8.3%

No doubt blogs in Wales will be shrieking about the proposals by the Assembly Commission to give AMs a pay rise well above inflation. The standard criticisms will be aired: 'public service workers are getting a much smaller increase' and 'why are AMs getting so much when they have so little authority?'

It is worth stopping to listen to Dafydd Elis-Thomas, the Presiding Officer of the Assembly. Defending the pay rise proposals he said: "This is the cost of Welsh democracy. We need informed, businesslike, democratic scrutiny." While it is true that we need informed, businesslike and democratic scrutiny, how will this be achieved by stuffing the mouths of AMs with more gold?

To have informed and businesslike scrutiny we do need to attract decent people to the Senedd with a decent wage. If democratic and informed scrutiny is required then why not spend the money recruiting a few extra AMs to increase capacity? Starting to sound a bit familiar? Well, yes, it's exactly what the Richard Commission recommended years ago.

New Labour has never been particularly warm to the concept of devolution. Tony Blair didn't go along with the Richard Commission's findings and it is unlikely Gordon Brown will agree. Welsh MPs in Westminster weren't particularly happy with proposals to increase the number of AMs either. Perhaps Welsh MPs are more concerned about their jobs than the good of Welsh democracy, which is a running theme at the moment...

Update 16:07: Six Plaid AMs to refuse pay rise

Tony Blair: The Official Portrait

The BBC have reported on the unveiling of the first official portrait of Tony Blair.

The oil painting by artist Jonathan Yeo shows the former prime minister wearing a commemorative poppy, to represent his leadership role during the Iraq war.

Yeo said Mr Blair, 54, "came bouncing in" for sittings and described his subject as having "Tigger-like energy".

Mr Blair, who refused previous official portrait requests, agreed to the painting before leaving office. It will be displayed at London's Lincoln's Inn.

Yeo, son of the Conservative MP and former minister Timothy Yeo, said the poppy featured in the painting was symbolic, but was not meant to be judgemental:

Of all the things that people remember him for, the war in Iraq is going to be one of the main things that people discuss. I was thinking that I had to find some kind of representation of that, but that it shouldn't be trite or too judgemental. It was November and of course when he came in he was wearing a poppy. I thought that was perfect.

OH DEAR!

Yeo, who has painted portraits of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Duke of Edinburgh, claimed he understood the reason for Mr Blair's upbeat mood during his sittings:

It was a few weeks into Gordon Brown coming off the rails... I can't help but think that his hugely positive good humour and Tigger-like energy might have had something to do with his successor having trouble in the job.

Emperor's New Clothes: Tony to buy a new hat

Just managed to open my laptop for a few brief moments on my weekend break and what do I discover? - some of my blogging colleagues talking about Tony Blair's future enthronement. Good heavens, I go away for a few days break from blogging and return to this development.

Tony Blair launched his campaign to become the first fully-fledged President of the European Union yesterday by describing the notion of left- and right-wing politics as redundant. With France preparing to oversee the appointment process, Blair set out his vision of modern European democracy at a meeting of the French governing conservative party by also claiming that EU countries could achieve far more by working together than acting in isolation. 'Europe is not a question of left or right, but a question of the future or the past, of strength or weakness,' said the former British Prime Minister, speaking in French.

After Blair's speech, Sarkozy took the former Prime Minister for lunch at the Hotel Bristol near the Elysee Palace. Despite support from Sarkozy - who is the architect of the mini-treaty for a European constitution - Blair is an outsider for the EU job. His support for the war in Iraq and Britain's reluctance to join the euro and other core projects is likely to count against him when EU leaders vote for their president later this year.

Hold on a minute - he may have spoken French to delighted political types, but shouldn't he be left alone to sort out the Middle East first?

United Kingdom - Middle East - Europe - The World

If my careers adviser is reading this post - you don't know what you're talking about!