Westminster Report - Sir Andrew Turnbull joins the stop Brown campaign

Sir Andrew Turnbull - is he acting for the Blairites?
Fascinating stuff in this morning's Financial Times, with former Cabinet Secretary and Treasury Permanent Secretary calling Gordon Brown "Stalinist" - and on the eve of the Budget. So why now has this former top civil servant decided to speak out? Has Sir Andrew joined the stop Brown campaign? With opinion polls suggesting a 15% point Tory lead if Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, Blairites are getting increasingly anxious about the prospects of a Brown Premiership. How much better is it to have non-obvious individuals like Sir Andrew shafting the Chancellor than the usual motley crew of Alan Milburn, Stephen Byers and Charles Clarke? To add to the irony, all of this came a day after Mr Brown and Mr Blair displayed a show of unity in launching the new Number 10 Policy Review! The joy of politics.

Talking of that Policy Review, wasn't it a damp squib? It looked like a relaunch of John Major's ill-fated Citizen's Charter with its promise to make the public services "more responsive" to consumers. If after 10 years, the best intellectual policy New Labour can come up with is websites for schools and hospitals and GPs in supermarkets, then perhaps the Tories are really going to romp home after all.

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