Poor Darling

Maybe TB is going soft in his old age but he can't help but feel sorry for Darling. It's a new low for the man banned from most pubs in the country when he can't even order a second bottle of wine in a restaurant without being public rebuked by a waiter. You have to feel sorry the guy, especially given the position he is in...

Darling's

interview

in the Guardian today shows a different side of the man trapped in his own loyalty: "For Brown to repay his friend's loyalty by sacking him would be brutal - even Shakespearean. But then, politics can be like that. Darling is one of the most experienced politicians in the country. And yet, more than once, I find myself wondering how much of a political animal he really is."

Of all the characters in this unfolding tragedy you have to wonder when Darling will reach breaking point - he has taken the fall for Gordan's mistakes in the past and he continues to take the fall now and still his boss has the audacity to brief against him. The loyal friend and ally is being stamped and trodden on and you have to wonder if he will be a

Stamper

to Gordon's Urquhart?

A Howe moment from Darling and it's curtains for Gordo...

"Me? Well, I'm just a backroom boy."

Has anyone else noticed the alarming similarities between Jack Straw and Francis Urquhart?

Out of nowhere the cabinet senior, who knows more about the inner workings of the Labour Party than any other, is poised to take the highest office in the land.

Like Urquhart, Straw has been the inner cog in the machine that oversaw Blair and Brown's leadership campaigns and has been known to "put the stick about" when the need arises.

The cunning operator who put people in power, now has the power to take it away.

Straw however is lacking the subtlety of Urquhart - the midnight briefings are all seemingly linked to him. TB imagines the grey suit is still in the dry-cleaners for the time being but come September will it be put on?

Remember the rule though Jack...

If student politics taught him anything he will know that the one that wields the sword never wears the crown...