The Crewe by-election looks like it just might be a bit of a watershed for the Conservatives. It's the first time the Tories have won a by-election in a Labour-held seat since 1978 - 30 years ago. If David Cameron becomes PM, will everyone look back at this moment as the point where he really began to take control? Anyway, Crewe is miles away - why should London care? Well, for one thing the......

The Gordon Brown statue saga has intrigued psephologists and, er, wax-ologists for months now: would our embattled PM be given his own waxwork at Madame Tussauds, or have the curators bargained that, with the odds of his removal ever-shortening, the task of crafting those craggy features into a lifelike visage isn't worth the effort? As we reported earlier this month, Tussauds turned the decision over to a public vote. The results are in: nearly......

Our lonely PM's glowering grimace doesn't lend itself easily to sympathy, but it would take a heart as hard as granite (or Granita, even) not to feel for Gordon Brown's plight. Having spent ten years waiting for the top job, in just ten months of Brownism Labour finds itself rudderless, mauled in the local elections and turfed out of City Hall. Yesterday was Brown's first appearance in Parliament since last week's calamities, and he......

The blink-or-you'll-miss-it honeymoon that Gordon Brown enjoyed last summer seems a lifetime ago. Amidst the Northern Rock fiasco, poll drubbings by the Tories and an economy on the turn, along comes another, devastating blow to the PM's authority: Madam Tussauds has declared that he is "too obscure" to merit a waxwork. The Marylebone tourist magnet has announced that they will not be making a waxwork of Brown for their World Leaders department, citing his......