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2.45 a.m.

I was woken about an hour ago by the loudest clap of thunder I have ever heard and now can't get back to sleep.

The Times is leading with an article about Cherie Blair. It has published advanced extracts from her autobiography, Speaking for Myself. According to the Times, this is "catching the political and publishing worlds unawares, as it was originally intended to appear in October."

Mrs Blair tells the Times that:

"I know that Tony thinks Gordon could win the election and I know that he has spoken to Gordon about how he could do that. Tony has given Gordon advice. He and Gordon talk to each other even now."

Given the present state of the polls, I am absolutely sure that Mr Blair is indeed advising Mr Brown as to how to win the next election.

No doubt the felicitous early publication of Mrs Blair's memoirs is part of the same helpful process.

Extraordinarily bad news for Labour, if today's YouGov poll for the Sun is to be believed.

Labour are 26 percentage points behind the Tories; at 23 per cent, their rating is their worst in polling history. Furthermore, the only time the Conservatives have enjoyed a bigger lead was as long ago as 1968. Very dramatic stuff.

But I've been around too long to get over-excited about these findings; polls, after all, do ebb and flow. However, one there is one matter of particular significance that emerges from the YouGov figures: incredibly enough, the poll makes it clear that, appalling electoral liability though he is, Gordon Brown is nevertheless the best chance Labour have of regaining the ascendancy.

YouGov asked voters if they would be more or less likely to vote Labour if a string of other frontbenchers were leader, instead of Mr Brown. Every single alternative, including Tony Blair, would attract even less support than Gordon. Indeed, with deputy leader Harriet Harman or Ed "Golden" Balls at the helm, Labour's ratings would be as many as 10 points worse.

The inescapable conclusion, therefore, appears to be that we are going through a political sea-change, the sort that happens every generation or so. The electorate simply doesn't want Labour at any price; it's not just Gordon, it's the whole damn crew.

The Tories may not really be 23 points ahead, but their lead is nevertheless pretty substantial. And, being as dispassionate as possible, it's hard to see how Labour can get themselves out of this hole in the time available to them. They probably need to become reconciled to a sizable spell in opposition before they can stand any chance of getting back in contention.

It really is as bad as that for them. How swiftly political fortunes change.

Tomorrow, Sara and I are off to Crewe and Nantwich, to help in the by-election. It'll be interesting to talk to people there and get their take on things.

Further to my previous post on the issue of ageism, Age Concern North Wales Central have drawn my attention to this press release from the Institute of Advanced Motorists.

The release notes that:

drivers over the age of 70 are significantly safer than those under 30, and no greater risk to other road users than middle-aged drivers.

IAM Motoring Facts 2008, shows that as car drivers grow older they become less of a risk to other road users and less likely to be injured in road accidents themselves. However, any injuries they sustain are likely to be more severe due to age-related frailty.

Despite a doubling to 50 per cent over the past two decades in the level of those over 70 in Britain holding a licence, these drivers are responsible for just six per cent of pedestrian deaths. Male drivers under 30 are most likely to be in a fatal collision with a pedestrian and are responsible for 30 per cent of such deaths.

I trust that North Wales Police will pay due heed to the IAM's findings. Great Aunt Nellie is still waiting for her apology.

Yesterday, a very sad occasion, when we attended the funeral of Tom, Sara's uncle and my friend, who had died at the cruelly early age of 66.

The funeral was held in the little village of Manafon, hidden away in the heart of a gentle, green Montgomeryshire valley. The small, pretty church was packed full, and scores of mourners had to stand outside and listen to the service relayed to them by loudspeakers. A lot of people had turned out to pay their respects to a kind, intelligent man who was universally liked.

After the service and the burial, we made our way in convoy to the funeral tea in the neighbouring village of New Mills. The village hall was a pre-war, corrugated iron construction, warm in the spring sunshine. Inside, there was tea, bara brith, scones, jam and oodles of cream.

There was also a lot of political talk. People could sense that something really big had happened in the local elections and in London. There had been what John Prescott called a shift of the tectonic plates.

What, they asked, did I think would happen? Would there be an early general election? Would Gordon Brown be toppled?

Well, I told them, I was looking forward to my return to Parliament on Tuesday. Labour MPs, already muttering discontentedly, would start fighting amongst themselves like ferrets in a sack.

And no, I said, I didn't think Gordon Brown would call an early general election. A turkey, after all, doesn't call for an early Christmas.

As it turns out, and rather as privately expected, the internecine squabbling within the Labour party has already developed into full-blown conflict, the opening salvos fired in the Sundays.

The Telegraph reports moves among "old guard" Blairites, such as John Reid and Charles Clarke to promote David Miliband as a leadership contender. Clarke himself is:

thought to be ready to "go public" on his thoughts about the failures of Mr Brown's administration in a lecture this week for the pressure group Progress while No 10 insiders are nervously awaiting "follow-up" attacks from other Blairite critics, possibly including Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn, the former cabinet ministers, over the subsequent few days.

Meanwhile, Old Labour left-winger, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, is said to be preparing a "stalking horse" challenge to Brown, knowing that he has little or no chance of winning, but hoping that a vote will prove the catalyst that will hasten the Prime Minister's departure.

Ominously for Gordon, McDonnell's web address is http://www.john4leader.org.uk/. His Friday press release, displayed on the website, makes his disapproval of the Labour high command's "we are listening" line absolutely plain:

After the worse (sic) results in 40 years it is intellectually unsustainable for ministers to simply tell the electorate that the government is listening. Prevarication will only lead to a Tory government. What people want is decisive action to change the policies immediately.

Despite all the fevered talk, however, I don't think anyone will mount a serious challenge to Gordon, though McDonnell may well damage the PM further by forcing a leadership vote.

Cabinet ministers such as Miliband major, Alan Johnson and James Purnell know that Labour are in a dreadful hole. Macmillan's "events" may well intervene to rescue them, but short of that, they will limp on for another two years to a likely election defeat. If anyone is to be a lame duck Prime Minister, they would, on the whole, prefer it were Gordon. Leadership issues will be best postponed to the first few months of opposition.

So no, to answer the third question in the New Mills village hall, I don't think Gordon Brown will be toppled. We have got him until the next general election, whenever that may be.

Not a state of affairs that will, I fear, be good for his health. Nor, what is worse, good for the nation, either.

Andrew Marr's interview yesterday with Gordon Brown was a remarkable piece of broadcast journalism, not to say psychoanalysis. If you didn't see it, you really must. It's still available for a few days on BBC iPlayer.

The PM presented himself smartly in a new charcoal grey suit (a bit like the one David Cameron wears for PMQs) and a nice plain lilac tie. He looked as self-confident as a man can be when he has just presided over the worst electoral drubbing his party has sustained for forty years.

Marr's first question, or rather assertion, was the wholly expected: "You're in a hole."

Brown's response was reasonably assured, and certainly well-rehearsed. Leaders are tested by how they deal with adversity. I feel the hurt people feel. Rising prices of fuel, food and utilities. Uncertainty in economy. Need for clear direction. Economic downturn that started in America. We can come through this time of uncertainty.

Had he made mistakes? Yes, I've already admitted we made a mistake over the 10p band. And I let speculation about the general election go on too long. And maybe I've spent too little time thinking how we can get our arguments across to the public.

Marr was intruding on dangerous territory. He was getting personal. This didn't compute.

But Marr persisted.

Q. Isn't there a Gordon Brown problem that you should acknowledge and confront?

A. It's true I am a more private person in a public arena (back off, you're invading my personal space).

Q. Are you going to change anything about yourself, the way you approach the job, as a result of last week?

A. I'm going to get out around the country, I'll get out and about far more (but I really don't want to leave the bunker).

Q. Do you feel personally chastened about what's happened?

A. Of course, I feel responsible (that's what they said I should say, but I don't really).

Q. Are you physically tough enough for this? People have said you look very, very tired.

A. I don't think I look tired at all (nervous laughter). I do work very hard; I have young children (to be honest, I feel absolutely knackered).

Q. Do you work too hard?

A. (With dangerous look in eyes) I doubt if I work too hard (yes, I work round the clock; I have to, you see, I have to).

And then the devastating question and the extraordinary answer that will, without doubt, be played, replayed and minutely and painstakingly analysed by strategists at CCHQ.

Q. Do you think that when you are looked at by people - I'm going to put this gently - people say you're a bit strange, you're not, you're not like them, you are a workaholic, old-style politician who doesn't empathise in a sofa-television way that people now expect?

To which Brown might have been expected to reply, "Come off it, Andrew. I know I'm different from your mate Tony Blair. I'm sure he was a very entertaining and amusing host when you enjoyed his hospitality at Chequers. Yes, I'm a different sort of bloke, but people must take me for what I am. I don't pretend to be anything I'm not. And I'm sure most sensible people can accept that."

Instead, we got (verbatim):

A. Well, well, I come from a pretty ordinary background, I think, you know, the people I grew up with, the people that are still friends of mine and the people I was at school with, you know, I think that's the people that really represent the people of the whole of the country, and, you know, (laughs) when we're talking things, we're talking about sports, we're talking about everything that's going on in our country and I, I think, er, er, you know, the real me is someone who understands at root all the challenges that ordinary families face, and, you know, that's why I understand when people are hurting as a result of, er finance, finance, the household finances, the bills at the supermarket and everything else, and also I understand when people's worries about immigration and about crime, the need for neighbourhood policing, the need to have a points system on immigration, I think I do understand where people come from, because, you know, I come from that sort of background myself.

That's exactly what he said. God's honour. Word for word. Not so much a stream of consciousness as a desperate, floundering attempt to remember and regurgitate the buzz words he was told to repeat by the backroom boys at No. 10. Those were the buttons he was told to press and, by God, he was going to press them, even if he exploded in the process.

It was all, well, a bit strange, really.

Yesterday, a very sad occasion, when we attended the funeral of Tom, Sara's uncle and my friend, who had died at the cruelly early age of 66.

The funeral was held in the little village of Manafon, hidden away in the heart of a gentle, green Montgomeryshire valley. The small, pretty church was packed full, and scores of mourners had to stand outside and listen to the service relayed to them by loudspeakers. A lot of people had turned out to pay their respects to a kind, intelligent man who was universally liked.

After the service and the burial, we made our way in convoy to the funeral tea in the neighbouring village of New Mills. The village hall was a pre-war, corrugated iron construction, warm in the spring sunshine. Inside, there was tea, bara brith, scones, jam and oodles of cream.

There was also a lot of political talk. People could sense that something really big had happened in the local elections and in London. There had been what John Prescott called a shift of the tectonic plates.

What, they asked, did I think would happen? Would there be an early general election? Would Gordon Brown be toppled?

Well, I told them, I was looking forward to my return to Parliament on Tuesday. Labour MPs, already muttering discontentedly, would start fighting amongst themselves like ferrets in a sack.

And no, I said, I didn't think Gordon Brown would call an early general election. A turkey, after all, doesn't call for an early Christmas.

As it turns out, and rather as privately expected, the internecine squabbling within the Labour party has already developed into full-blown conflict, the opening salvos fired in the Sundays.

The Telegraph reports moves among "old guard" Blairites, such as John Reid and Charles Clarke to promote David Miliband as a leadership contender. Clarke himself is:

thought to be ready to "go public" on his thoughts about the failures of Mr Brown's administration in a lecture this week for the pressure group Progress while No 10 insiders are nervously awaiting "follow-up" attacks from other Blairite critics, possibly including Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn, the former cabinet ministers, over the subsequent few days.

Meanwhile, Old Labour left-winger, John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, is said to be preparing a "stalking horse" challenge to Brown, knowing that he has little or no chance of winning, but hoping that a vote will prove the catalyst that will hasten the Prime Minister's departure.

Ominously for Gordon, McDonnell's web address is http://www.john4leader.org.uk/. His Friday press release, displayed on the website, makes his disapproval of the Labour high command's "we are listening" line absolutely plain:

After the worse (sic) results in 40 years it is intellectually unsustainable for ministers to simply tell the electorate that the government is listening. Prevarication will only lead to a Tory government. What people want is decisive action to change the policies immediately.

Despite all the fevered talk, however, I don't think anyone will mount a serious challenge to Gordon, though McDonnell may well damage the PM further by forcing a leadership vote.

Cabinet ministers such as Miliband major, Alan Johnson and James Purnell know that Labour are in a dreadful hole. Macmillan's "events" may well intervene to rescue them, but short of that, they will limp on for another two years to a likely election defeat. If anyone is to be a lame duck Prime Minister, they would, on the whole, prefer it were Gordon. Leadership issues will be best postponed to the first few months of opposition.

So no, to answer the third question in the New Mills village hall, I don't think Gordon Brown will be toppled. We have got him until the next general election, whenever that may be.

Not a state of affairs that will, I fear, be good for his health. Nor, what is worse, good for the nation, either.

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Yesterday, after attending the count in the Llandudno conference centre, I drove to the village of Rhos, near Wrexham, where I had been invited to speak to the children of my old primary school, Wern. After 164 years of serving the community, the school is to close, a victim of the "big is better" approach which is leading to the demise of so many schools around Wales.

It was good to be back. It is a church controlled school, and I owe much of whatever I have achieved in life to the ethos it promoted. I was happy, by visiting it, to do what I could to return a little of what it gave me all those decades ago.

The children were very good value, attentive and polite. I was interviewed by a panel of three senior pupils. One of their questions was: "What single piece of advice would you give us?"

The answer I gave would come naturally to almost any politician. It was: "Never give up. Whatever life throws at you, never give up."

Most politicians would give such an answer, because most of them are used to reverses in their profession. You won't be long on the political ladder before you realise that it is not a smooth career progression. You will suffer losses and disappointments, many of them deep and wounding. But you will pick yourself up and carry on. If you are disposed to be a quitter, you should avoid a career in politics.

Consider, then, the advice that Labour MPs have today received from the peerless Matthew Parris in the Times. Parris's considered view, having weighed the options available to those honourable Members in the wake of the local elections, is that they now have only one course of action open to them: they should give up.

Parris puts it quite bluntly:

It's over. There was nothing constructive in the voters' message. These elections were not an invitation to change. They were a big two-fingered salute, a raspberry, a pressing of the de-trousered national buttocks to the window of the polling station. The voters are bored, tired, disillusioned and out of love. The affair, which in 1997 was (for the British people) uncharacteristically intense, is over, and the falling out is correspondingly bitter. Such flames are not rekindled - and certainly not by Mr Brown, whose personal stamp characterises this administration.

Regular readers will know that I yield to no one in my admiration for Matthew Parris. Of all political commentators, he is the one I turn to first on a Saturday morning. He it is who gives the coffee its aroma, the toast its crunch and the muesli its sweetness. He is simply the best.

But, on this occasion, I fear that Mr Parris's advice will, and should, go unheeded. No politician, Labour or otherwise, should just give up. While there is breath in his body or blood in his veins, he should fight, fight, fight. Politics has no room to accommodate the thrown-in towel.

And anyway, it won't happen. No politician of any party is going to yield while there is still the ghost of a chance, however illusory, of succeeding.

I know, from my conversations with them, that many of my Labour colleagues were more than a tad depressed last week. They were expecting the worst on Thursday, and their fears were not unfounded. They will be bitterly unhappy with the local election results; for many of them, they point to the loss of their jobs at the next general election.

But they won't give up. They will carry on fighting over the next two years. And when the election comes in 2010, they will give it their all.

Because that is what politicians do. They fight. It comes naturally to them, however hopeless the cause may seem. That is how most of them got to be MPs in the first place.

As Stephen Fry's General Melchett so memorably put it in Blackadder Goes Forth:

That's the spirit, George! If nothing else works, then a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through!

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Boris's victory in London was the icing on the cake for the Conservatives last night. It was, in fact, a double-thick layer of icing, with hundreds and thousands and a cherry on the top.

A major world city, the capital of our country, with a population of 8 million and an economy bigger than most countries', is now Conservative-controlled. And if that isn't something to be pretty damn pleased about, I don't know what is.

But don't forget Wales. Wales was very good indeed for the Tories. We took outright control of another council, Vale of Glamorgan, and made headway in every part of the principality.

In both Conwy and Denbighshire, in which I have an understandable personal interest, we are now the biggest single party, with 22 and 18 seats respectively. In both counties, Labour are reduced to a rump of 7 seats.

And consider this, also: of the 256 seats gained by the Conservatives across the country, 62, or almost 25%, were in Wales. That's something of which all Welsh Tories can feel pretty proud.

I remember all too bitterly the night of 1 May, 1997, when the Conservatives lost all their Parliamentary seats in Wales. It's an experience I don't want to repeat. It's been a long and difficult haul clawing our way back.

Yesterday's results show beyond challenge that the Conservatives are once again an important force in Welsh politics. We must now work even harder, build on our success, and ensure that many more Conservatives are returned to Westminster whenever Gordon Brown decides to go to the country.

So far, so good. So very good. It's been an excellent night for the Conservatives and a bad one for Labour. We have 44 per cent of the vote so far, and Labour are on 24 per cent, behind the Lib Dems.

Most of the interesting Welsh results will be declared later today, but I'm hoping to see good gains in Denbighshire and Conwy. Given the national trends, we stand a very good chance of being the biggest group in the latter.

Highlight of the night is the win for my friend Alison Halford in Flintshire, where Labour have lost control. And it also looks like Plaid Cymru will lose Gwynedd and fail to take Ceredigion.

But the biggie is still London, where the results won't be known until late evening. ConservativeHome is firmly predicting a win for Boris. If that does happen, it's trebles all round. And, no doubt, a wee consolatory dram in the Downing Street bunker.

Coinciding with election day in Wales, London and a lot of England comes Electoral Calculus's latest prediction, which is for an overall Conservative majority of 56 seats.

It will be interesting to see if the real polls tend to bear the prediction out. If so, a lot of Labour MPs, the prospect of the dole queue beckoning, will begin to turn their wrath on Brown.

Bad news for Clwyd West in today's Telegraph. The Government is setting up a chain of bail hostels in residential areas throughout the country, including Colwyn Bay. At least one hostel is planned for the town, but my informants tell me that two may be set up very soon.

The hostels will be managed by a private company, ClearSprings Management Limited. The really devious aspect of the scheme is that, because of a lacuna in the Town and Country Planning Act, the proposed use is deemed to be residential, and there is consequently no need to apply for planning permission or to consult with local residents.

Furthermore, unlike state-run facilities, the hostels will probably not be continuously manned, leaving offenders unsupervised for much of the day.

The reason the Government is resorting to such a sneaky, underhand stratagem is that it has failed to ensure that the prison estate is maintained at a sufficient level to accommodate all the offenders who should be held there. I have blogged previously about the despair expressed by judges over their inability to sentence offenders to imprisonment because of the accommodation crisis. The establishment of the bail hostels is another manifestation of the same problem caused by the same Labour incompetence.

The residents of Colwyn Bay will be understandably appalled that this Government has so little concern for them or their wellbeing that it is happy to use their town as a dumping ground for criminals, and is not even prepared to ensure that those criminals are properly supervised.

I can't recall any issue that has made me so angry since I became MP for this constituency. I have written to the Prisons Minister, David Hanson, asking what he is playing at and I trust that I will receive an early and comprehensive reply.

At last, a U-turn by Gordon Brown that is unlikely to have any adverse electoral consequences.

As from tomorrow, prisoners were to receive a £1.50 per week pay increase, the first since the mid-1990s. However, with London and local elections tomorrow, the Government, no doubt anticipating the likely affront to already-aggrieved taxpayers whose net income has been reduced by the abolition of the 10p tax band, hastily scrapped the increase.

Equal, if not greater, affront has doubtless been caused to the prison inmates themselves, but, given that they are precluded from voting, the Government is nicely insulated from their wrath.

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Yesterday I spent half an hour at Stafford railway station. I won't bore you with the details of how this came to pass. Suffice it to say that it was part of the routinely depressing experience that is the Sunday commute to London. I've come to expect a bad journey at the hands of Virgin Trains and Network Rail, and yesterday was no exception.

Anyway, the scheduled ten minute wait at Stafford turned, predictably enough, into a 30 minute sojourn. I attempted to kill time by buying, at the station café, a £1.50 paper cup of what was described as an "Americano", but was in fact a quarter litre of undrinkable, brown-coloured, boiled water.

The reason I mention Stafford station, rather than try to obliterate the "coffee" from my memory, is that I had sufficient time, courtesy of Sir Richard Branson, to examine my surroundings. They were pretty repellent, as the photograph above reveals.

Last week, as a foreigner in Spain, I also had the chance to examine my surroundings. I was more than a little impressed with them. Both Barcelona, a major European city, and Bilbao, an industrial seaport, were extremely well kept. Both radiated an air of civic pride. Above all, both were very clean indeed.

At all hours of the day, and well into the night, men were fastidiously sweeping the streets. There was very little litter and the pavements were not pockmarked with dried-up, discarded chewing gum. It was a clean, cared-for, environment and, consequently, enjoyable.

I could not help compare the condition of the Spanish cities with that of what is now my second home town, London. I've blogged previously about the condition of London's pavements, with their glutinous mini-minefields of chewing gum and their cigarette butts. London is not, at least in many parts, a clean city. Bits of it are positively nasty.

I mentally made excuses for London. It is, after all, an enormous city, thronged with humanity, and hard to keep clean. The waste bins have been removed from the streets because of the terrorist threat. Places like Victoria Street - one of the dirtiest in the capital - are particularly windy, and litter tends to drift.

But none of this is really an excuse. Barcelona is a pretty big city, too. And Spain, particularly the Basque country, has had more than its own fair share of terrorism.

So I'm driven to the unavoidable conclusion that what we see in London and in Stafford is a reflection of what we ourselves have become. We spit our chewing gum onto Victoria Street because we don't respect our surroundings. In Stafford station, we throw our detritus onto the tracks because we can see that someone else has done so before us, and whoever runs the station can't be bothered to clear it up, but just lets it accumulate.

We need a radical change of attitude. We need to take more pride in, and care for, our surroundings. We need to take more pride in ourselves. In short, we need to be more Spanish.

Today's YouGov poll shows Boris Johnson leading Ken Livingstone by 11 percentage points. I fervently hope that it is right. The capital needs cleaning up, and Boris could be just the man to do it. Ken certainly hasn't.

London, with a bit of effort and a change in attitude from all of us, could be just as clean as Barcelona. And, where London leads, let's hope Stafford will follow.

Listening to John Humphrys's interview with Nick Clegg on the Today programme was horribly fascinating. Humphrys played the Lib Dem leader as a cat plays with a mouse, starting with a series of questions about the Lib Dem leader's impressive record of premarital dalliance.

The more Clegg attempted to avoid the question, the more Humphrys returned to it. When Clegg said the confession had been made in a split second, Humphrys observed that people expected split second judgment from their leaders. Clegg spluttered a bit.

Humphrys then mischievously suggested that Clegg compared poorly with his stopgap predecessor, Vince Cable. Clegg was not only irked, but clearly so.

It was a bad-tempered, chippy, brittle performance by Clegg. He came over badly and will have to do better.

Humphrys was wonderful.

Morning surgery in Abergele, followed by an afternoon of campaigning in Rhos on Sea.

Today, we concentrated on the Bryn Eglwys housing estate, which is one of the nicest I know. Built in the early 1950s around large greens, it is a model of town planning that would delight even Prince Charles, and has a tranquil feel.

The estate is the work of the celebrated local architect, Colwyn Foulkes, and is famous for its porches, featuring characters from the works of Lewis Carroll (one of my absolute favourite writers) and Edward Lear.

Shown above, complete with a jar of honey and perched in a pea-green boat, is the Pussycat from The Owl and the Pussycat.