Comrade Cruddas on the March!

Jon Cruddas is the left-wing Labour MP (don't often hear that description of Westminster's governing party reps these days) who didn't quite manage to defeat Harriet Harman for the all important deputy leadership of the Labour Party. Bet he's gutted now! It turns out that he was offered a job in the recent reshuffle - Housing - which he turned down because Brown didn't agree with his plans for more council house building (it went subsequently to the ever ready Margaret Beckett). Well, Cruddas is using his continued leisure on the backbenches to start formulating a left-wing alternative to current nostrums, which must surely be of concern to the prime minister as he struggles to make capitalism work again. Not only has Cruddas started talking of establishing a new, leftish think tank, but he is increasingly the unions's favourite to succeed Brown, and he is keeping the ideological momentum going with an article in today's Guardian about the failure of free-market finance and the need to establish a 'People's Bank'. Go comrade!