Gordon has set up a National Economic Council with 19 members and 2 secretaries. It will apparently "meet frequently to coordinate economic policies across Government [since] Britain is facing a period of immense economic challenges".

What do people think about this?  Is it a PR stunt or is it expected to do useful work? If so, how?

How come Tom Harris, perhaps the only minister who wrote with us, the plebs, in LabourHome in recent times, is sacked?

With the exception of last year's charade, has Gordon Brown ever stood for election by the Labour Party for any post? I have a dim memory of him losing a deputy leadership contest in the 1990s

A ComRes poll in the Independent gives 39:27:21. We shouldn't read too much into a single poll (the Weighted Moving Average is 44:25:18) but it does suggest that opinion is more volatile than people think, and that the dreadful headlines might not have done as much harm with the electorate as we'd have thought.

Some people on this site (eg Tom, Snowflake) are valliantly making the case for Labour. But will the electorate listen whilst Gordon is in charge? The Guardian quotes a former minister thus: "the electorate now thinks of Brown in the same way as a householder who sees an unwelcome visitor through the spyhole in the front door when the bell rings. At first, the householder just refuses to answer the door. But if the same visitor simply goes on ringing the same bell, the householder will go to any lengths to get rid of him."

This may (or may not) be unfair - but is it realistic?

Can anyone explain why Gordon has gone to Iraq and Israel?

Mark Twain once remarked that the wonderful thing about science was the remarkable return of conjecture from a small investment of fact. The same goes for this pair of meaningless by-elections with pundits great and small allowing their analysis to run rings around the limited facts to hand. Actually it's simple. Our vote stayed at home.