David Brooks, one of the most influential conservative commentators in the US, has just penned a love-bomb to David Cameron in the New York Times. The Republican party, he argues, must take lessons from across the Atlantic to revive its fortunes. Here is the key passage:

The flow of ideas has changed direction. It used to be that American conservatives shaped British political thinking. Now the influence is going the other way.

The British conservative renovation begins with this insight: The central political debate of the 20th century was over the role of government. The right stood for individual freedom while the left stood for extending the role of the state. But the central debate of the 21st century is over quality of life. In this new debate, it is necessary but insufficient to talk about individual freedom. Political leaders have to also talk about, as one Tory politician put it, “the whole way we live our lives.”

Well worth a read.

There is one huge roadblock to any future leadership challenge to Gordon Brown: any challenger would need the backing of a fifth of MPs to trigger an election. This restriction is a big reality check to those speculating that Mr Brown’s position is in danger.

But, as someone pointed out to me recently, this is not the only way that Mr Brown could be deposed. There is a Labour rule that would allow for a change of prime minister without the immediate need for a party leadership election. It is effectively the “silent coup” clause.

If the cabinet joined forces and convinced a serving Labour prime minister that his time was up, he would become “permanently unavailable”, in the words of the party rule book. The cabinet, “in consultation with the NEC”, would then be able to anoint a new prime minister “until a ballot…can be carried out”. An election is not immediately triggered: the cabinet could decide to “leave the post vacant until the next party conference”.

There appears to be the wiggle room in these procedures (which I have pasted below) to put off an embarrassing leadership election until a general election — if the cabinet were united.

Clearly there are some massive qualifications to this fantasy politics. Can you imagine Mr Brown stepping down that easily? Or the cabinet acting acting in unison? And how bad would things need to get to convince the cabinet that appointing a doubly unelected prime minister would be wise? All highly unlikely. But it is always worth knowing the rules of the game.

4B.2e Procedure in a vacancy

(i) When the party is in government and the party leader is prime minister
and the party leader, for whatever reason, becomes permanently unavailable,
the cabinet shall, in consultation with the NEC, appoint one of its members to
serve as party leader until a ballot under these rules can be carried out.

(ii) When the party is in government and the deputy leader becomes party
leader under (i) of this rule, the Cabinet may, in consultation with the NEC,
appoint one of its members to serve as deputy leader until the next party
conference. The Cabinet may alternatively, in consultation with the NEC,
leave the post vacant until the next party conference.

Minutes after the polls closed and a good 20 hours before we can expect the official result, Conservative Home have called the London mayoral race for Boris Johnson. Brave stuff.

The betting markets have moved heavily against Ken Livingstone. According to punters at Betfair, he now has just a 15 per cent chance of winning.

This graph shows the pattern of betting on Livingstone through the entire campaign.

One key part of Gordon Brown’s trip to the US has until now remained a secret: the prime minister caught up with Rupert Murdoch.

The meeting, held in Mr Brown’s suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, lasted about half-an-hour. We’re not sure what they chatted about. But the timing of the get together should give us a clue.

Mr Brown’s meetings with the media tycoon have begun to synchronise with the electoral calendar — they met at Chequers last year just before the prime minister decided against calling a general election. Mr Brown is probably wishing he could delay today’s local elections too.

One wonders whether Mr Murdoch already knew that his stable of UK papers would back a Tory candidate for London Mayor (you can read the endorsements here, here and here). Whether he told Mr Brown that The Sun and The Times were deserting him, at least for now, was probably irrelevant. I’m sure Mr Brown got the message.

Those who have worked with Mr Brown say he pays incredibly close attention to how the papers cover him — much closer attention than the average reader. The mayoral result on Friday may well reinforce his theories about the power of the press. More seasoned observers of Mr Murdoch’s career may well see it as another example of how seamlessly he moves with the prevailing political winds.

British soldiers must be feeling a little dizzy. Gordon Brown has made some big promises to them about troop numbers in Iraq, which have invariably proved inaccurate. Remember the 1,000 troops home for Christmas? And the halving of British troops serving in Iraq to 2,500 by the Spring? Ministers have either done some creative work on definitions of “home” or blamed changing conditions on the ground. But, from what I have been told, it has as much to do with the prime minister’s penchant for round numbers.

Mr Brown’s role in the “1,000 home for Christmas” has been well reported. The catchy announcement was made without consulting the Ministry of Defence. There was then a scramble to work out how the pledge could be met. In the end, about 500 support troops sent to Kuwait were defined as being out of Iraq and therefore “home”.

Mr Brown’s role in the setting the 2,500 target for the draw down in Iraq is less well known. Again, he delivered a catchy message (this time in the Commons in October): the British presence in Iraq would be halved by the Spring. The number was chosen “after detailed discussions with our military commanders, a meeting of the National Security Committee, [and] discussions with the Iraqi Government and our allies”, according to Mr Brown.

But since then, British officers have concluded there must be at least 2,800 men to be able to protect the base adequately. So even when the withdrawal resumes, we are unlikely to hit the magic 2,500 number. The rounding error had more to do with Downing St than inaccurate military plans, according to one defence insider. Another official suggested to me that the low number risked upsetting officials in the US and losing Britain any benefits, in terms of the special relationship, it has derived from taking part in the war. “They can be rather unforgiving”, the official said.

Anthony Seldon, Tony Blair’s biographer, has penned an thoughtful oped arguing that Gordon Brown has a personality better suited to good times. Had he taken over in 1997, rather than 2007, his eccentricities would have proved “less of an obstacle”, Seldon argues. This passage is worth quoting:

Personalities of Brown’s introverted type flourish when things go well, but find it hard to cope in adversity. Many prime ministers, like Churchill, have had their own “psychological flaws” and yet have served with distinction. Blair’s own extrovert and optimistic personality would have been better suited to the adverse conditions that bedevil any long-serving administration. But the combination of his immaturity and Pollyanna mindset was fatal when mixed with the euphoria of those early years in power, when it was inevitable that only flim-flam emerged from No 10.

Brown’s seriousness would have made a much better fist of it. He had the makings of becoming a considerable prime minister, especially if he had then stood down for Blair before 2003, as Blair initially intended to do for Brown. But the dinner discussion at Granita went the other way, so we shall never know how Brown might have fared if he had jinked ahead.

Whatever the merits of this theory, No 10 have clearly recognised that the prime minister has to show some more empathy — cue the furrowed brow, (near) apology over the 10p rate, and hand-wringing over effect of the credit crunch on hard working families. Expect more.

Forget affordability. The toughest problem facing Treasury officials may be finding a way to make timely payments to some of the 5.3m households that are set to lose out from scrapping the 10p rate.

The rub is that if officials choose to keep Gordon Brown happy by using his cherished tax credits system, the lucky losers identified for compensation may be waiting for up to 18 months for their backdated cheque. This would coincide with the much heralded plans to raise the minimum wage, which will not come into force before October 2009.

I’m not convinced voters will be understanding about such a long wait.

Here is why it could take that long. The tax credits system is cumbersome and hard to manage. It works on an annual basis and is fiendishly difficult to adjust mid-year in any significant way. Monthly payments are set at the start of the financial year in April. A process of “reconciliation” then takes place in September, where overpayments and underpayments are calculated. (About 2m families are told at this point to give money back to the government because they have been overpaid. Great politics.)

A best case calendar for extending tax credits to those low-paid workers without children would look like this:

• November 2008: Alistair Darling announces the changes
• Jan/Feb/March 2009: People apply for tax credits for 2008 (effectively backdated payments) and 2009
• April 2009: Monthly payments begin that compensate for both the 2008 and 2009 financial year

A more realistic scenario was outlined to me by Ian Mulheirn of the Social Market Foundation, who wrote an excellent review of the options available to the chancellor.

“Amending the tax-credit system to assist these people would only take effect from April 2009 and any backdating in respect of 2008 would probably take another six months,” he told me. Basically, the backdated payments for 2008 would be calculated when it comes to “reconciling” the tax credit payments in September 2009.

This would effectively mean that even those lucky few chosen to receive compensation would be out of pocket until October 2009.

Is that a message that will win votes on the doorstep?

A far simpler and much quicker alternative, advocated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is to increase income tax allowances, a measure Gordon Brown has criticised in the past because it is more regressive than tax credits. Changing the income tax schedule was not mentioned by the Treasury in its letter outlining the 10p rate U-turn.

The question is: will the prime minister swallow his pride and admit that tax credits are not the best solution to his compensation puzzle?

Gordon Brown is losing friends among gamblers.

Punters on Betfair, an online betting exchange that works like a stock market, now think there is just a 23 per cent chance of him winning  a majority at the next election.

That means he has now slipped behind Tony Blair — who had better prospects of winning a majority at the height of his unpopularity.

You can see the “Blair trough” and the “Brown low” in this graph, which shows the trends in betting on Labour winning a majority since the 2005 election.

The lengthening of the odds on Brown has accelerated in recent weeks.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, have moved up to 40 per cent — making a Tory majority the most likely outcome at the next election.

This will not please our elected representatives.

John Ralfe, the former head of corporate finance at Boots and an indefatigable apostle for the cause of trimming MPs’ “outrageous” pensions, has just  launched his latest assault.

In a submission to the Sir John Baker’s review of MPs’ pay, he has analysed the true cost to the taxpayer of the parliamentary pension scheme. His conclusion: for the scheme is to truly represent its stated cost to the public purse, it should be cut in half.

The cost of the MPs scheme is double the official estimate because the government actuary uses aggressive and over-optimistic assumptions about longevity and future returns from the stock market, according to Mr Ralfe. (This is explained in more detail here.)

In his submission, Ralfe tantalisingly outlines what we would need to take away from MPs to rectify the imbalance.

He says we should reduce the annual pension accrual from 1/40th to 1/60th (which basically trim the pension from about £1,500 a year to £1,000), move from final salary to career average, and impose a 2.5 per cent inflation cap. This will bring MPs in line with most other pension schemes in the country.

Can you hear the pips squeaking?

There has been a lot of fuzzy language used to describe those that will be punished by Gordon Brown’s 2007 Budget. News reports have suggested it will hit “low-paid workers” — Labour’s core vote. The implication has been that “middle-England” swing voters will benefit or go unscathed.

The full picture is more complicated. More than a third of middle income households will be worse off, according to this excellent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on an unrelated subject. Holly Sutherland led a team that calculated the impact of the 2007 Budget. Her analysis largely tallied with the IFS (who own the only other non-governmental model to do this kind of analysis) but she chose a slightly different way of presenting some of the information (see the chart below).

While about a quarter of households will lose out from the budget, this disproportionately hits middle income households. A smaller percentage of rich and poor households will see their incomes fall (although they could lose more).

When journalists describe “low paid workers” they are also describing households that could have a combined income of £36,000 — which puts them right in the middle of the household income distribution curve. These couples, who don’t have kids, will soon feel the pinch in their monthly pay packet.

Some Labour MPs have suggested to me that unrest over the 10p rate is a matter of principle with limited electoral implications. This graph suggests that may be wishful thinking.