So far the leader of the Labour Party has been a chrysalis. Today he emerged, arguing the best way to solve problems is centralised control.
By Mark WallaceFollow Mark on Twitter. Back row: David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman. Standing in middle: Hillary Benn, Chuka Umunna. Front row: Fiona McTaggart, Tristram Hunt, Tessa Jowell. It's become a regular refrain from Labour ranks that the Tories are posh. The infamous Bullingdon photo, which Carla Millar today mimics above, is used as […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter For any Kremlinologists among us, Lord Adonis’s new book and his interview with today’s Guardian are sure to be fruitful reads. Not only are they about the Kremlinology of days past: about how the absence of any relationship between Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown helped scupper a LibLab Coalition after […]
Earlier in the week, I wrote about Len McCluskey's development of a "party within a party" of Unite MPs on the Labour benches. Now, further concerns are mounting about the extent of the unions' power over the Labour Party's selection procedures. Jim Pickard of the Financial Times has carried out research which shows that 16 […]
by Paul Goodman It's worth reproducing it on the site, and here it is from Labour List. You will see from the illustration on the right that most are Conservative-held. There are only eight Liberal Democrat ones in the top tranche, which I have marked in gold. 1 North Warwickshire 2 Thurrock 3 Hendon 4 […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter One of the alliances that Number 10 has most feared is between Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers and the Labour Party. It feared it on the IMF bailout and it fears it on the EU budget. In an important intervention in tomorrow's Times (£) Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander make the […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Over recent weeks I've been arguing that there aren't a class of voters on the Right of the centre ground and another class to the Left. I have argued that the very idea of the centre ground is a nonsense. Voters, instead, occupy the common ground. They simultaneously want […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter This time last week it was the Tories launching a poster against Labour. Labour hit back tonight with a poster of their own… It's quite clever.
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. Gordon Brown has made another of his occasional appearances in British public life. The former Prime Minister appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, to give the Donald Dewar lecture. Brown used his speech to make a three-headed argument: Team GB's "pooled resources" achieved exceptional results, whereas an independent […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. The results of the recent elections to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC), the Party's governing body, were announced yesterday. While the results cannot reasonably be said to represent a "lurch to the left", since five out of six of the NEC members were simply re-elected, and the sixth, a […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter The BBC's Jeremy Vine has a new book out and it's being serialised in the Daily Mail. "It's All News To Me" includes his reflections on New Labour's bullying and manipulative management of the press when Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were at the height of their powers: "At any […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter The five pledges are: Stop the Government’s raid on pensioners and block its £40,000 tax cut to 14,000 millionaires End rail rip-offs by capping fares increases on every route Force the energy firms to cut gas and electricity bills for 4 million over-75s Stop excessive fees charged by banks and […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter John Prescott took to Twitter yesterday to question whether David Miliband (last week) and Yvette Cooper (this week) should be writing for Rupert Murdoch's Sun on Sunday. Perhaps the Labour grown-ups want to reach The Sun's five million readers? Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wins a big spread (right) in […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter. Ed Miliband and his supporters boast of his willingness to stand up to the big, vested interests, the corporate behemoths who delight in victimising hard-working people. However, his attacks on rail companies for increasing fares, on energy companies for high fuel prices, or on Fred Goodwin's knighthood don't quite […]
A series of tactical rather than strategic decisions on the economy have left Miliband and Balls in a bad place.