Big Ears fuels Labour stalking horse speculation

The Labour Party's friends in the media had quite a day today. The Independent on Sunday's report on Charles Clarke fielding a stalking horse in the non-existent Leadership stakes is a strong candidate for political makebelieve out of personal bile trailed by fanciful journalism. Do the UK Press Awards include one for fiction?

The News of the World proclaimed 'Melt-down Brown' and that and the rest were mopped up here in the BBC's round-up of the Sunday papers.

The Indy story mysteriously concluded:

Leadership speculation has been fuelled by a left-wing motion on the party agenda for this year's conference in Birmingham to lower the candidacy threshold to 7 per cent of MPs.

As affectionadoes of the Labour Party Rule Book know, the Calder Valley CLP proposed Rule change if agreed applies in the event of a VACANCY - a far cry from stalking horses, requiring 20% of the Parliamentary Labour Party to back an opponent. But that's what you get from misleading headlines on Labourhome: Leadership challenge on agenda!

As I blogged on Friday - not now.