I’ve been assuming that the last few weeks press comment on the Prime Minister was speculation, artificially whipped up by the press in the Silly Season. Telling stories and listening to them is, after all, only human nature; no one really minds if the story tellers get it wrong, they’ve kept us entertained.

And yet there’s a fatal weakness in Gordon Brown’s position that makes it easier for a pretend crisis to turn into a real one. Not having a mandate from the people means that journalists and politicians have more leverage. In a sense Tony Blair did this to Gordon Brown. Either the 2005 election should have been fought on the understanding that Gordon Brown would take over soon afterwards or there should have been an election within about 12 months of his taking over; a possibility that has been blown away by the credit crisis.

Now elements in the Labour Party are apparently plotting a repeat performance; to topple Mr Brown and once again to have no opportunity for the voters to have their say.

It’s not difficult to see that a lot of Labour MPs are scared that they are heading for an electoral defeat. The basic story is going to be how the government spent far too much money in the fat years as a kind of propitiation because of the anger generated by the invasion of Iraq, so now there’s not enough money to help in the lean years. What’s puzzling is that the Parliamentary Labour Party should still think there’s any way of pulling their chestnuts out of the fire. That David Miliband should believe that he’s any chance of winning the general election is even more puzzling. The questions about Gordon Brown being able to win the election simply point up the unreality of the media. He can’t win and he won’t win and nor would David Miliband.

The only scenario where it makes any sense to be Gordon Brown’s successor – now – is one where a hung parliament follows the general election or the economy takes such a dive that some kind of coalition government seems sensible. In that case the Labour leader might become a Ramsay Macdonald figure. But that train of events is too remote a possibility right now so what was David Miliband thinking of.

Incidentally, I visited a David Miliband (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) blog where he writes of returning from his holiday ‘hopefully browner and fresher’.

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All of a sudden we seem to be in an energy whirlwind with a 35% increase in gas prices and dire warnings about running out of electricity by 2015. It looks as if the regime for ensuring our power supplies is just as flawed as the one regulating the financial system.

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There was an extremely worrying item on the news about Americans defaulting on their mortgages because the in most US states it is the bank that bears the risk of the property value falling below the value of the mortgage rather than the purchaser. I haven’t actually seen it spelled out like this but I’m guessing that it is this risk for the banks that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are insuring them against. Anyway, this could cause a stampede of mortgage defaults – the biggest ‘get out’ clause in history. Presumably, folk walking away from negative equity situations – even when they could afford to pay the mortgage payments – is going to make it more difficult for the US government to help banks who would have been prepared to renegotiate with homeowners who genuinely wanted to hang on to their homes.

How much of the ongoing problems in the US are going to spill over to Europe still seems as much a mystery as when the credit crisis broke a year ago. My guess is that there only one or two European banks will get into further deep trouble but that a rolling recession will affect one country after another.

Here in the UK, the government really needs to do more to restart the property market even if this means some kind of national housing bank. Right now, the EU would probably say that this was unfair competition but they might come round eventually.

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On the personal front, I’ve been too busy writing to do a lot of walking but I did manage a short walk near Brook on Thursday evening. Fields of barley waiting to be harvested – a lovely colour. The weather around here has been unsettled but not bad enough to flatten the barley.

We’ve repainted our front door – was royal blue, now cream. Today we bought a new doormat to set it off. Tomorrow, we plan to have our first home grown runner beans and the waste ground at the back has produced a bowlful of blackberries. This waste ground is quite a phenomenon at the moment. The plants (nettles, reeds, foxgloves, thistles, and brambles) reach up to my chin and its almost impenetrable.