Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson and Gordon Brown's leadership

I have to say it is fascinating watching the machinations of a party on self destruct, with a leader as Stalinesque as Gordon Brown.

On Sunday the Sunday Telegraph published a story claiming Harriet Harman would contest the Labour leadership, if it became available, as it were. The theme being a stop Alan Johnson candidate, but without suggesting that Alan Johnson wanted to be a candidate.

This led to a fairly unequivocal like ruling out of leadership ambitions by Harriet Harman on Monday morning.

This is followed in today's Telegraph that the way is now clear for Alan Johnson, whose leadership ambitions appear to be not unequivocal enough.

Bearing in mind Guido's suspicions that the Telegraph is morphing into the Labourgraph, taking copy from Number 10's spin machine, you do have to wonder who is feeding the Telegraph the briefings, and why.

Are they Brown insiders looking to get a clearly unequivocal ruling out by Alan Johnson so that he could not stand for the leadership? Or is it Ed Balls using the same machine to clear his way.

The only thing you can be certain of is that nothing is what it seems.