Manchester City’s Brazilian star Robinho is not a happy bunny.

The Guardian newspaper reports that England’s most expensive footballer is reported as saying  he does “not want another day in Manchester.”

He hates the climate, he hated the neighbours who objected to his playing of Brazilian music and he misses his mates.

Like Ronaldo before he left Manchester United, he talks about his “dream” of getting away.

Nemanja Vidic was another United player who couldn’t wait to leave. ”I will never stay to live in England, that’s for sure,” he was quoted as saying last year.  “You get only a brief glimpse of sunlight before it’s all cloudy again. The winters are mild, but in summer the temperatures seldom go higher than 20C. And it rains, rains, rains.”

These people are being paid huge amounts to be there but even that can’t tempt them to stay.

Is Manchester really all that bad?

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?

    One thing looks certain after Alistair Darling’s speech to
the Labour Party conference on Monday — he’ll be Chancellor of
the Exchequer for a while yet.

    Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to reshuffle his
ministerial team next week and there’s been a lot of speculation
that Darling could lose his job and be moved to another
department.

    The silver-haired finance minister has had a rough ride
lately. The economy is on the brink of recession and his
comments in a magazine interview saying the economic challenges
were the greatest in 60 years caused a furore and were blamed
for sinking the pound.

    But delegates at the Labour conference today just loved him.
They stood and clapped and then they clapped some more after
Darling hit out at unfettered capitalism and the huge payouts
given to bankers that he said helped cause the credit crunch.

    Darling looked genuinely embarrassed. He called for them to
stop but the delegates just went on. Besides modesty, the
finance minister had another reason for wanting them to stop.

    He had another type of conference call to attend to. A G7
one. The finance ministers and central bankers of the rich
nations club were having a hastily-arranged telephone chat at
1230 London time to discuss the latest bout of market turmoil.

    Given London’s position as one of the world’s top financial
centres, Darling could hardly miss out and he rushed off the
stage to get on with his G7 buddies.

    The crisis also looks to have cemented Darling’s position.
It would seem odd to remove the finance minister when the whole
world financial system is in the middle of the biggest upheaval
in a generation.

    With Brown making his economic experience a key selling
point, he needs Darling on side.

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?

  Unsurprisingly, it’s a totally different mood at this year’s Labour Party conference in Manchester.Last year in Bournemouth, they talked about crushing the opposition Conservatives for a generation as the party celebrated a 10 point lead in the polls under their new leader Gordon Brown.

Many were urging Brown to make the most of it and call an early election before the economy turned down. He really must be wishing he had.

A year on, Labour is facing the prospect of a total wipeout at the next election and Brown is the most unpopular prime minister in 70 years.

“Low key” - is how the wife of one Cabinet minister described the atmosphere so far. That’s an understatement. The normally raucous conference hotel bars had scant few faces in them even at 9pm as the lobbyists and politicos who usually pack them out decided to give the first day a miss.

Delegates will have woken up Sunday morning to an Observer newspaper predicting eight Cabinet members would lose their parliamentary seats at the next election and David Cameron’s Conservatives winning a landslide victory.

Cabinet members have been putting on a united front, saying it wasn’t the right time to be thinking about changing leader but a lot of people here are wondering whether Brown can hold on.

“He’ll go by July,” one former minister predicted to Reuters.

The prime minister’s aides, however, said that was just plain rubbish. “Who do you want dealing with an economic crisis? Gordon’s got the knowledge, Gordon’s got the relationships,” said one.

They might have a point. A poll for the Independent on Sunday newspaper showed the Conservative lead over Labour halved in the last week.

It’s still 12 points though. Until that changes, the leadership question will not go away.