Government ministers have said that Britain supports greater efforts to talk to hardline insurgents fighting in Afghanistan.

International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said that those who turn away from violence should be offered a chance to become part of the political process, while Foreign Secretary David Miliband said that “conservative Pashtuns” should be brought in and separated from “the hardline Taliban, who must be pursued relentlessly.”

“The reintegration of former Taliban requires offering bigger incentives to switch sides and stay out of trouble, alongside tougher action against those who refuse,” wrote Miliband in the Financial Times.

Alexander made his comments while visiting the Afghan province of Helmand, where most of the British troops are fighting. The total number of UK fatalities since operations in Afghanistan began in 2001 has now risen to 191.

He told BBC radio: “It is a difficult message for politicians — to talk about the issues of reconciliation and reintegration when British troops are fighting the Taliban. It is necessary to put military pressure on the Taliban while at the same time holding out the prospect that there can be a political process… whereby those who are wiling to renounce violence can find a different path.”

What do you think? Should entering into dialogue with the Taliban be part of our strategy in Afghanistan, or would it be wrong to give their leaders a place at the negotiating table?

Right-wing Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who is being prosecuted at home for anti-Islam remarks, has been barred from entering Britain.

He had been invited to show the House of Lords his film “Fitna,” which argues that the Koran incites violence, but was told his opinions could “threaten community harmony and therefore public safety” and sent back home again when he arrived at Heathrow.

Defending the decision to bar him, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said: ”A hate-filled film designed to stir up religious and racial hatred in this country is contrary to our laws.”

But Wilders called Gordon Brown the biggest coward in Europe and added: ”I think a discussion is always better than barring people or turning people away.”

Do you think he should have been allowed in to show his film?

Memories seem to be short in the British government when it comes to Kashmir. Foreign Secretary David Miliband stirred up a diplomatic row over the region during his visit to India earlier this month. As this piece in The Times says, Miliband angered Indian officials by giving what they described as "unsolicited advice" on Kashmir, over which India has three times gone to war with Pakistan since independence from Britain in 1947 and over which it is in no mood to be lectured by outsiders, let alone the former colonial power.
It was on a visit to Pakistan and India in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of those two countries' independence that the then British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, also got into trouble over Kashmir. Cook, who also served the Labour government, was forced to row back from suggestions that Britain might help resolve the long-running dispute. His intervention cast a serious shadow over the visit by Queen Elizabeth, who was at one point forced to cancel a long-planned speech.
The visit, during which the queen was accompanied by Cook, went downhill after that, and at one point a senior British diplomat was seen sitting, head in hands in despair, on the pavement outside Chennai airport. There were even suggestions, denied of course, that the British High Commissioner might be recalled. Tony Blair, then prime minister, had to patch up ties by assuring his Indian counterpart, Inder Kumar Gujral, that London would not meddle in Delhi's dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.
One wonders whether Miliband was reminded of all this before he went to India, and if he was, why did he walk into the Kashmir minefield once again. Or maybe he wasn't, which poses a different set of questions about competence and institutional memory at the Foreign Office.

David Miliband was photographed clutching a banana at the Labour conference last week in Manchester, much to the delight of his political opponents, inside and outside his party.

Life-size cardboard cut-outs of the grinning Foreign Secretary committing his fruity faux-pas have now appeared all around the Conservative conference at Birmingham’s International Convention Centre.

At his feet, Tory organisers generously piled carboard boxes of bananas, each labelled with a special Miliband badge.

The great American comedian W.C. Fields famously warned “never work with children and animals”. And avoid fruit with comic overtones,  Miliband might add.

Labour was destined for defeat at the next election and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he wasn’t going to step down.

The Labour Party conference in Manchester had been predictably subdued.

The only story in town had been who was going to have the guts to turn Judas.

And to cap it all off, there was to be a speech from a man renowned for repeating anodyne phrases like “long-term decisions” and “sustainable future” ad infinitum.

But then something changed. In walked New Brown.

New Brown somehow convinced the party faithful in the hall — at least for today — that they can win the next election under his leadership.

And then there was the “human touch” of New Brown.

We’ve all heard how awkward and dour Old Brown used to be, how out of touch with normal people he was, how unlike that charming Tony Blair…

But today New Brown skipped on to the stage, cracked funny gags and had not one, but two kisses on the lips for his wife Sarah as the lengthy standing ovation reverberated around the hall.

The audience had obviously got wind of New Brown, because they were sold long before he strolled in.

Groups of ladies disco-danced to M People and T-Rex in their chairs as the hall filled up. There were whistles and whoops when New Brown strolled in.

They all clapped along dutifully to a short film of Labour’s achievements in power as Jackie Wilson’s Higher And Higher blared out.

It was all a little bit Baptist church, a little bit Butlins — maybe even a little bit Blair.

There will be much celebration and self-congratulating in the trendy bars of Manchester as Labourites raise their glasses to New Brown tonight.

But when the hangovers ease and the Labour Party spaceship relocates to London, will the plotters really stop plotting? And will the opinion polls turn around?

The Labour faithful believes in New Brown today. Do you?

Britain’s foreign minister David Miliband says he does not want a leadership fight.

But his speech to the Labour party conference in Manchester on Monday was hardly rammed full of ringing endorsements for his Prime Minister either and it won’t end the whispering.

On the surface, it was supportive and brimming with the collective nouns of unity. He made an honest crack at convincing the party they can beat the Conservatives in the next election, due by May 2010, regardless of what the polls say.

And there were some drippings of praise for Gordon Brown. Well, to be precise, two examples where Brown had made a difference as Britain’s leader on the global stage — breaking a diplomatic deadlock on cluster bombs and his efforts in the fight against poverty.

But the cynics out there could be forgiven for reading that as the embryonic rustlings of a political obituary.

“You,” Miliband said to Brown as he addressed an attentive full house, “have transformed the political debate about international development in this country in the last 11 years and we should take inspiration from that as we move forward.”

Now, was that “we” the royal “we” of the heir to the throne?

As delegates rose to their feet and clapped long enough to show they like Miliband but not so long as to upset Gordon, the two men joked and shook hands.

But not everyone was convinced.

“I don’t think he’s (Brown) going to make it. But the conference is a bit frightened of giving Miliband too much of an ovation,” said Carolyn Loveday, a Party member from Morecambe. “We’re a bit like lemmings.”

Do you think Labour needs a new leader?

Gordon Brown’s brief visit to Afghanistan brought sympathy for his political plight from President Hamid Karzai but his attempts to evoke the Olympic spirit with British troops drew a decidedly cool response from the ranks.

For the travelling pack of reporters, he only had one stock answer bu that didn’t stop them from hounding him with the same question.

Thousands of miles from home, at a press conference in the Afghan capital, Brown was repeatedly probed by reporters about his leadership, or lack of it as his enemies might say.

“We are getting on with the job,” Brown said, when asked about rumoured plots against him.

“It’s a good relationship,” he answered, when quizzed on the supposed aspirations of Foreign Secretary David Miliband. “We get on with the job.”

The journalists even had Afghan President Hamid Karzai discussing the topic.

“Cabinet ministers plotting is nothing new. We have it in Afghanistan too,” he said, smiling.

Brown will be hoping announcements he will make in September of economic measures to give Britons more money in their pockets will ease some of the doubts about his role as party leader.

In the meantime: “I am getting on with the job and that is what people would expect me to do,” he said.

He was in more expansive mood with the troops.

Wearing a dark suit and a purple tie, minus the jacket, told them they were “truly heroes”.

Stood against a backdrop of armoured tanks and trucks, he likened them to Britain’s medal-winning Olympic team in Beijing — only the soldiers made the country proud “every day of the week, every week of the year,” he said.

But the gathering of 300 or so men and women who listened to Brown at the British army headquarters in Camp Bastion, Helmand province, did not respond in kind.

They stood in silence amid the heat and dust. There were no cheers or applause after he wrapped up his patriotic address.

Some, largely those of higher rank, said the high-profile visit did make a difference to troop morale.

Captain Phil Hobbs said: “It shows support. It’s getting leadership involved at every level.”

But the more junior soldiers did not seem overly impressed and had little to say about their drop-in guest.

One said he had preferred the recent entertainment laid on at Bastion of comedy, dancing and a live band. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brown is no match for a knees-up, especially after a few months in a tent in the desert.

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 A Daily Telegraph poll coming on the heels of all the speculation about David Miliband’s leadership intentions suggests that even if Labour did ditch Gordon Brown, they would still be thrashed in the next general election.

It predicted that with Miliband at the helm, Labour would still only win 24 percent of the vote, against 47 percent for the Conservatives.

The only man, it said, who could make much difference is — Tony Blair.

Do you agree? Is Labour now so unpopular that it cannot win no matter who leads it?

Gordon Brown returns to Westminster today facing a host of negative headlines describing him as a ditherer who has failed to make his mark as prime minister.

The Telegraph reckons Brown’s “failure to define what he stands for is provoking despair even among his loyal supporters” and charts his evolution from a dominant figure in politics under Tony Blair to “Incapability Gordon Brown”.

While Foreign Secretary David Miliband asserts that Brown has “strong values and convictions”, bets are already on for who would be odds-on favourite to take over.

Brown’s cut in the basic tax rate, announced in the 2007 budget, was to be paid for, at least in part, by the abolition of the 10 percent tax rate, but the plan has now turned into a “calculated tax ploy that mutated into a monster”, according to the Independent.

The olive branch offered by Chancellor Alistair Darling to quell the rebellion has prompted outrage, the paper says. It quotes Frank Field, the former minister leading demands for a package of social help for the poorest earners, as saying the measures offered were insufficient. “The talk about bringing forward a package this year or maybe next year just will not do,” Field said.

“If the rebels prevail, Brown could be ousted in days” is The Guardian’s take on Brown’s woes. “For Labour to have scheduled the vote on the 10p tax rate days ahead of the local elections, and with London on a knife edge, seems an act of incompetence so breathtaking that I’m left wondering whether it’s a Baldrick-like cunning plan,” columnist Jackie Ashley writes.

But there is some caution against rushing into finding a new leader. Tribune’s Joan Smith draws parallels to hapless former Prime Minister Anthony Eden: “As the Tories discovered in 1955, some people are not temperamentally suited to the top job and that will almost certainly be posterity’s verdict on Gordon Brown,” she writes. “And while it’s amusing to watch all the people who used to talk up the PM-in-waiting as they scramble to explain their man’s failures, it does leave Labour with a very big problem” — who would be best to replace him?