He's Off

Gordon Brown has said he is quitting as Labour leader as he revealed that Nick Clegg had requested formal talks with his party over a future government. Gordy said he was asking the party to call a leadership election in which he would play no part.

He said he hoped the new leader would be in place in time for the autumn party conference.

He also said he was to press ahead with "formal discussions" with the Liberal Democrats after the request from Mr Clegg, before adding, "The reason that we have a hung parliament is that no single party and no single leader was able to win the full support of the country. As leader of my party I must accept that as a judgment on me. I therefore intend to ask the Labour Party to set in train the processes needed for its own leadership election." - Press Association

Of course timing, as any comedian will tell you, is everything and this announcement at just after 5 p.m came shortly after news broke that Cameron didn't know that Clegg had a meeting with Gordy today. Cameron coming across as a lover whose advances have been spurned must now realise that the game is up. The electoral reform carrot has now been dangled in front of Clegg and his little nose is twitching.

Don't know if anybody else caught the Politics Show on Saturday night on BBC Parliament channel but it was fascinating stuff, not least the revelation by Ann Leslie of the Daily Mail that her newspaper weren't actually supporting the Conservatives bit campaigning against the Labour leader. This is exactly the way that the Independent and the Guardian seemed to have been playing it, she explained that there were huge swathes of Conservative voters up and down the country who couldn't stand Cameron but disliked Brown even more. This possibly backs up the survey/poll last Wednesday night that found 4/10 voters hadn't decided which way to vote, they hadn't read the morning papers!