Can Team GB win Westminster games?

Gordon Brown welcomed home the successful Beijing sportspeople

By Ben Wright
BBC News political correspondent

Team GB has seen better days. In its prime it was unbeatable; a disciplined, finely-tuned squad of winners. Along with team TB it dominated the field for a decade.

But now it's creaking, struggling to compete against fresher opponents and may slide down the medals table next time round.

But maybe the mood in Gordon Brown's team is a little brighter than it was at the beginning of the month.

For a start Labour MPs seem to have taken a proper holiday in recent weeks. A holiday from the briefing, the soul-searching and the newspaper column-writing that helped trigger all the talk of a leadership crisis earlier in the summer.

Then there's the triumph of the other Team GB. Their medal haul turned a grey summer gold.

Even the most curmudgeonly British grumps probably felt a pang of pride at their achievement.

And Beijing was good for Gordon Brown. He looked relaxed, was obviously delighted by the team's unexpected success and must have enjoyed hearing Boris Johnson describe his own party's view that Britain is broken as "piffle".

So will British success in Beijing and the attendant national grin give Brown an Olympic bounce?

Will the sporting success result in an Olympic bounce for Brown?

Well, the England win in 1966 didn't help Labour net the general election that year because the poll happened before a ball had been kicked.

But England's quarter-final defeat by West Germany in the 1970 tournament did produce a national gloom that may have nailed Harold Wilson's fate in the general election four days later.

Then there's Euro '96. England lost to Germany again in the semi-final but the performance produced a national high that seeped into politics.

Unfortunately for the disintegrating Conservative government it was Labour that captured the mood, with Tony Blair declaring at conference that "Labour's coming home".

All of which shows nothing, other than that sporting success (or failure) can bounce unpredictably into politics.

Gordon Brown has decided not to do a lap of honour with the medal winners. Instead he's spending the week working in Scotland.

There had been speculation that this week would see a flurry of departmental announcements and events.

In fact, the diary doesn't get any more exciting than a new code of practice on car servicing, due for release on Friday.

So for now, the waters are still.

MPs call for windfall tax

But news that around 80 Labour MPs are now agitating for a windfall tax on energy company profits is a reminder that there are hard economic and political choices looming for the government this autumn.

Officials in Whitehall have been working away on a package of measures to help people struggling with fuel and housing costs.

Many people are now feeling an economic chill for the first time in years and the government is expected to outline a plan sometime in September.

There's pressure on it to deliver, but at a time when there's no new money to spend and it's 20 points behind in the polls.

Reflected gold?

Labour MPs talking up a windfall tax say it's a perfectly fair way of taking money from profit-rich energy companies to compensate hard-pressed consumers.

Some talk nostalgically of Labour's 1997 windfall tax on privatised utility companies to pay for the New Deal, a time they say, of clear, gutsy policies.

And while the government examines whether a windfall tax would work and what the effect on the energy sector and future innovation might be, that desire for easy-to-understand boldness from its backbenchers and trade union colleagues may grow.

With a difficult party conference and by-election looming, it's going to take more than the reflected glow of 19 gold medals to get Team GB back on track.