The British press are running around the Westminster Village as hyper as alley cats on viagra. When will Gordon Brown go? Will new home secretary Alan Johnson deliver the killer blow? (By all accounts, he delivered the post extremely well) Will David Miliband emerge as the new wunderkind? Will Jack Straw make a last ditch bid for the crown before he gets put out to pasture? Will Brown still be in Number Ten by the time I finish writing this blog? Wait a minute, I can't wait...I'm going to check right now...

I jest. I can never get excited about leadership contests. I find the process enervating because I don't see politics as a contest of preferment between personalities, as some people evidently do, but as a battle of ideas. That's not to say personalities don't make a difference. Of course they do. But within the same party the difference is negligible. It's fun to speculate but I suspect for the British equivalent of Joe the Plumber it's not very relevant. It may captivate the likes of Matthew Parris but not me. You see, in the end, policies triumph over personalities.

Examples: When Ted Heath first became opposition leader back in 1965, the media was full of perennial speculation that he simply wasn't popular enough to be prime minister. In those days there was a subliminal message that the press wouldn't have dared articulate in the way they might now. Fundamentally - can a lifelong bachelor ever win over ordinary voters? Was he a closet homosexual? That lay behind the whispering campaign against Heath. Yet he defeated Harold Wilson by a wide margin in 1970.

Wilson had no such problems. He was popular with the public even when Britain was ravaged by strikes and industrial unrest. In the later days of his premiership the tongues wagged a bit about his intake of brandy but the comments were muted.

Margaret Thatcher endured several years of speculation that the electorate simply wouldn't vote in a suburban housewife - the Finchley fishwife - with a cut glass accent. When Thatcher was elected leader of the opposition in 1975 Jim Callaghan (then foreign secretary) said "we've just won the next election" Talking of 'Sunny Jim', many observers also assumed that because he was a popular leader he would defeat Thatcher in 1979. You know the rest.

I refer to this history because at the end of the day Labour can't assume that a rapid execution will solve its problems. I have said before that I believe the establishment is dangerously out of touch with the public mood. It's the policies that need to change.  And here is the beginning of my manifesto:

1. The immediate return of capital punishment for premeditated murder and other, particularly violent, offences.

2. Give people the right to bear arms and weapons. When weapons are outlawed, only the outlaws carry them.

3. Class sizes reduced to a maximum of 20 places. Spending shortfalls to be funded by increased taxes on city fatcats.

4. Non-violent offences served in the community. Prisons are overcrowded anyway. Note that this would NOT be a soft option but involve supervised hard labour.

5. Abolition of the royal family and hereditary privilege. Deference and servility breed ridiculous snobbery and envy. That's part of the British disease.

6. University degrees to be marked by percentage attainment. 2:1s or 2:2s are now so widepsread as to be meaningless. We are breeding graduates who think that Churchill is an advert for car insurance. Employers need to be able to distinguish between the mediocre and the talented. The only way is to present a detailed breakdown of examination results.

7. Abolition of Eastenders. This coarse and filthy sensationalised soap has done more damage to viewers' brains than any other programme I can think of. Substitute this garbage with intelligent drama.

Now, which politician is willing to champion this agenda. He or she will get my vote... Can you deliver this message to Gordon, Alan? You are the postman, after all.