Gordon Brown will not call a general election this autumn, Cameron must be kicking himself after the effort he put into that speech! Brown has decided that the election would be too soon after the departure of Tony Blair and he wants to develop housing, health and education further. To be honest I think David Cameron’s speech shocked him a bit, he gave a well presented talk about his plans for the country and I think many people would have been quite taken back with him.

Since Blair left, Brown has had a lot to live up to, we have recently seen foot-and-mouth disease in the UK, floods and a financial crises. What will Brown have to come up against next?

Today England’s public buildings, pubs, restaurants and clubs will all be smoke free under the new smoking ban legislation. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be finally writing this article, after watching it happen in Scotland, Ireland and Wales I thought England’s day would never come but it has and that day is today!

Smokers who believe the new law is ridiculous clearly only care about themselves, consider us non-smokers that shy away from certain locations such as pubs and clubs to stay away from the smoke. Think of our health as well as your own.

Read more on Labour’s website.

So Gordon Brown has taken over from Tony Blair as the PM and he has announced his list of Cabinet Ministers. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer is Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is now David Miliband, the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor is Jack Straw and the Secretary of State for the Home Department is Jacqui Smith.

For a full list of the cabinet visit the Labour Website.

Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went to Downing Street today to visit Tony Blair on his last full day as Prime Minister. The two politicians made a deal last year related to lowering carbon emissions and Schwarzenegger thanked Blair for his “great leadership and great friendship”.

Blair will step down as the PM tomorrow lunch time and Gordon Brown will take over his roles.

After an intense seven week competition Harriet Harman has won the position of Labour’s deputy leader replacing John Prescott. The 56 year old won by just less than 1%, pipping favourite Alan Johnson at the post. Johnson received 49.6% of the votes and Harman secured 50.4% after the four other contestants second choices were redistributed.

Concerns over Gordon Brown’s intentions as Prime Minister are continuing to surface in the news. An article on the BBC News Website discusses why the Conservatives are the best party to carry on Mr. Blair’s public service work.

Shadow Counsellor George Osborne stated “The fact that Gordon Brown has abandoned the centre ground of public service reform to the Conservative Party is a great opportunity for us to improve life… for the many not the few”.

Read more over at BBC News.

It has been confirmed that Gordon Brown will be the next Labour Party leader and therefore our new Prime minister. Mr. Brown received backing from a huge majority of Labour MP’s acquiring 88% of the votes. Poor MP John McDonnell only received 29 nominations; not even enough to participate in a democratic election.

Is anybody really surprised? I sense not. I think it’s a shame that they didn’t give Mr. McDonnell a chance, I thought he was quite a nice guy! Anyway, Gordon Brown is expected to take over Tony Blair’s role on Wednesday 27th June.

Deputy leadership contenders will now compete to take the deputy role from John Prescott and to work alongside Mr. Brown. Alan Johnson received the most nominations out of the six and Hilary Benn just scraped through with 47 votes (45 is the minimum).

Tony Blair has announced that as of 27th June he is standing down as leader of the Labour Party. He will therefore no longer be Prime Minister and a new candidate will take over his role (I wonder who!). It’s about time he finally gave us a date, a part of me thought it would never happen. I think it would be best for Tony to just leave on the 27th and have a nice long holiday in the Caribbean to recover from the 10 years of stress in his role as Prime Minister, but no, he has decided to stay on for a further 6 weeks until the new Labour Party leader is elected.

The country is now almost certain that Chancellor Gordon Brown will be elected as the new Labour leader and therefore will take over Tony Blair’s role as the PM.

Today has been nicknamed ‘Super Thursday’ – the day voters rush about to make sure they have an input in election results.

Voting in England, Scotland and Wales is all taking place today and with up to 39 million people allowed to place a vote, it’s surprising anything gets done anywhere else! Polling stations will be open until 22.00 so make sure your vote counts.

Due to the new postal voting system – many of the counts in England will be delayed until Friday so it wont be until Friday afternoon that results will be available.

More information at BBC News.

Inflation has hit 3.1% forcing the bank’s governor, Mervyn King to write a letter to the chancellor explaining why inflation has broken through the 3% level. I suppose the next question is – how high will interest rates go? With the rise in inflation it is likely that interest rates will increase further in order to discourage consumer spending and to decrease the rate of inflation. The base rate is currently set at 5.25% but it is forecasted to rise to 5.5% on 10th May when the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee is due to meet.

However, if interest rates increase by more than this there will be some unfortunate consequences; those who have taken out interest-only mortgages will be hit hard as their repayments will seem more and more unmanageable. The many buyers who opted for a fixed-rate loan may not notice a difference however if they have a short-term contract they could also face steep rises in interest repayments.

Investment bank ABN Amro predict that the base rate will in fact rise to 6% by the Autumn, they are also preparing for a possible house price crash, however many other large banks disagree.

As these minor changes occur in the economy, I also wonder if it’s all heading towards a crash. Although I know this will dampen economic growth, it may also mean I can finally buy a house .

Further information at The Guardian.