Morning all, and welcome to LDV’s ‘Back-to-Work’* edition of the Daily View, on the day in 1642 King Charles I sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, and Rose Heilbron became the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey in London, in 1972. And a very happy birthday to Sir Isaac Newton, born 367 years ago today, and chef Rick Stein, 62 today.

* For those of us with cushy office-based jobs.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that caught my eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

• Labour MP calls on Gordon Brown to resign (Jonathan Calder)

It is a sign of how low Brown’s stock has fallen that Greg Pope’s blog post – “Gordon loves the Labour party but the best thing that he could do now to help it stay in office would be to leave its leadership” – has received so little attention.

• Oh no, not the cut vs investment line again Brown! (Jane Watkinson)

Whilst the Liberal Democrats cannot rule out a pact with Labour if a hung parliament occurred, it is important to make sure that at the moment we distance ourself from the courting that is currently taking place by both Labour and the Tories.

2 Big Stories

Labour and Tories play footsie with the Lib Dems – at least for the cameras

A new year dawns, and with it the realisation this really is a general election year. Politicians and journalists are both falling over themselves to declare the campaign started – and with neither Labour nor the Tories looking like sure-fire winners, suddenly everyone’s eager to be the Lib Dems’ friends. Here’s Jackie Ashley in today’s Guardian:

… the Lib Dem leader must feel that he’s gone from wallflower to hot date. In truth, these are dangerous waters for the three main parties. Clegg has already suggested he would feel obliged to support whichever party “won” an indecisive election. It’s unclear (and could matter) whether he meant won the most votes or the most Commons seats, but this seemed to make him a potential Tory partner. His own party loathes that idea and, privately, Clegg himself much prefers a Labour deal. Yet could he possibly prop up an unpopular, tired-looking Labour prime minister who had failed to win a clear mandate? That seems unlikely.

Jackie’s conclusion? A minority Tory administration is the likeliest bet: “This is intriguing because it would confront Cameron with a potentially difficult position. As prime minister, he would be obliged to try to make his cuts, and raise taxes, and deal with Eurosceptics, while the other parties quietly prepared to bring him down.”

I’ve heard worse predictions so far this year.

GQ names Gordon Brown Britain’s worst-dressed man

As The Times reports:

Perhaps more wounding is who is deemed slightly less atrociously dressed than him. Peter Stringfellow is only the tenth most unattractively clad man in Britain, while the presenters of Top Gear come in at No 5 and Boris Johnson at No 4.

Ouch.