Shopping With Jackie Ashley

I think I agree with Jackie Ashley's article in today's Guardian, summarised as: "It's not a big idea but the old ideas that Brown needs now. More help for the poor is what we want to hear. The day this stops being a Labour issue is the day that the party is finished."

That's exactly what we need to hear right now. Some tough, plain speaking to remind Gordon of the immense responsibility on his shoulders and kick him in the right direction. Jackie should know what Gordon Brown needs to do. She is, after all, the wife of Andrew Marr - the decisive journalist whose interviews with the PM have been described variously as "the journo's equivalent of a savaging by a dead sheep" and the man for whom "being inquisitorial is like being licked to death by a bunny (though not the Hugh Heffner variety)". So - tough speaking from a serious journalist can be expected there, then.