LABOUR AND THE PHANTOM PHONE CALL

I was cooking tea the other evening (gnocchi in ricotta and spinach, as you ask) when the phone rang. When I answered it was a recorded message of a soap actress telling me how important it was that I cast my vote for Labour in the forthcoming European elections.

I was a bit spooked to be honest, not because of the message, but because I was thinking it was a bit weird receiving a phone call from someone who I was pretty sure had died. I kept thinking how hearing a voice from beyond the grave was slightly blotting out the message about voting.

Anyway, right at the end of the call, I realised I was listening to the woman who used to play Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street, and it was her character that had died, not the actress. And anyway, I had mixed her up with Wendy Craig, who used to play Pauline Fowler in Eastenders, who had died of cancer around the same time as Jade Goody. The Pauline Fowler character had also died.

There was a certain synergy with the confusion I felt over that call with how I feel about Labour these days. I'm listening to Labour but I can't work out who they are or whether they are still alive.

I always thought Labour would regret getting rid of Blair, but even I couldn't have guessed just how much. Downing Street just hasn't been working under Brown's leadership, we've lost the narrative arch of policy and the press run rings around us. This is Brown's fault. All his fault. Yes, he has had the downturn in the economy to contend with, but Blair kicked off two wars and still managed to set all the agendas. Brown treats his back benchers like rags to polish his ego, making them do things like vote for indefensible counter terrorism bill with its inexplicable and shameful 42 day detention plan, and he has revenge attacks, briefing against talented Ministers and damaging the party because he's been personally affronted by them in some way. Or because they don't have penises, one or the other.

And yet, you know, I don't think Labour is dead. There is still something about Brown that makes me want to believe. I am still willing him to break out of the Gang of Knobs who have surrounded him since he became PM and start to listen to the party members and begin to trust his instinct. I can't believe he thought it felt right to do a Youtube shoot, I can't. He's a good man, he just fell in with the wrong crowd. The spirit of Labour is still there, it just needs the PM to be the man we all know he can be and stop freaking grinning.

I choose to believe at the moment then that Brown's Labour Party is not merely a phantom party that died on Blair's departure, but alive and working. Brown and Co had better start to make themselves look solid soon though because people can't vote for a party that isn't there - as the European elections have taught us.