The wording of the proposed question for next year's referendum on further Welsh Assembly powers should be redrafted to be more intelligible, according to the Electoral Commission.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

A massive day in the leadership contest today, as ballot papers begin to drop on doormats across the country, the candidates face each other in a live televised debate on Channel 4, and someone called Tony Blair has released a book that may be of some interest...

DAVID MILIBAND received a significant endorsement today, as the Daily Mirror backed him on their front page. The paper said:

"We believe he has the intellect, talent and experience to take on the Tories - and eventually become PM."

"And we urge all those with a vote in the contest to rally behind him."

"Backing Mr Miliband has not been an easy decision. All five candidates have something to offer."

"But all Labour supporters agree on onething: the party must reconnect with the people. The Mirror firmlybelieves David Miliband is the man to steer Labour to this recovery."

This afternoon, David Miliband's campaign released a video from Sir Patrick Stewart (best known as Star Trek's Captain Picard):

David Miliband also emailed supporters to follow up on his "Movement for Change" speech at the weekend, and ask supporters to contact five friends:

"Bank Holiday Monday was a milestone in my 'Movement for Change' - a huge rally of the hundreds of people who have been trained in the skills of community organising, coming together to share testimonies of their experiences and the action they've taken to make change in their local communities."

"I asked everyone present to contact just 5 fellow members of the Party to ask them to support me in the leadership contest so the Movement for Change can continue. With ballot papers now being sent out, I'm emailing you to ask if you can do the same."

After attending hustings tonight, David will be at an LGBT for David Miliband event.

ED MILIBAND's campaign today unleashed a flurry of online activity, building on the "call for change" events last night, with an email to supporters and an accompanying video. The email said:

"This campaign has always been about change - about changing our Labour Party, moving on from the mistakes of the past, and remaking our movement as the new force in British politics. That's why I'm so proud and humbled that last night, hundreds of volunteers joined a massive call for change - making thousands of calls to Labour Party, trade union and affiliated society members and urging them to vote."

The accompanying video features Sadiq Khan, as well as a speech from Ed supporter Neil Kinnock (who is becoming increasingly prominent as the campaign moves into its final stages):

Neil and Glenys Kinnock played an even more significant role for Ed today, emailing all Labour members on his behalf, saying:

"For the Labour Party, getting the right combination of relevance and radicalism is essential. It's also vital to our task of making the broad and convincing appeal to voters that is crucial for victories at the next General Election and the local, Welsh and Scottish and European Parliament contests that will come before then."

"Ed Miliband is the candidate who is most ready and most able to get that mixture of realism and new thinking."

Last (but by no means least) emails were sent to both GMB and Unite members from their respective General Secretaries today urging support for Ed as their chosen candidate. Ed has a unique advantage in terms of reaching trade union members - and it's this final third of the electoral college that is the most unpredictable, and provides the younger Miliband with some real institutional advantages.

What is interesting about Ed's online campaign is the way in which they break up their email messaging, and target different groups/lists with different emails and messaging - alongside the effort they're putting into getting out the vote through phone banks, this could pay a real dividend when the final votes are tallied.

DIANE ABBOTT has had a busy day today. This morning she was on 5 Live, before interviews on BBC news and ITN this afternoon, responding to Tony Blair’s book.

Abbott blasted Blair today, accusing him of ‘poisonous jibes aimed at derailing Labour Leadership contest’ and sought to distance herself from the episode. Diane said:

"I regret that Tony Blair could not wait a decent interval before knifing Gordon Brown. They were both great servants of the party. But this bitter personal animosity poisoned the last days of the Labour project."

"I disagreed profoundly with Tony Blair over Iraq but I had credited him with more dignity in retirement than this."

"I want to distance myself and our party from this nonsense and call on my fellow leadership candidates to do the same."

Diane also contacted party members by text today urging them to tune in to tonight’s Channel 4 news debate, saying:

"Let’s leave the Blair/Brown years behind.  Watch Channel 4 News tonight at 7pm and see why I am the only real change candidate, Diane. www.diane4leader.co.uk"

Abbott  also ruled out any naming a second preference, saying:

"Many people have asked me to state which of the other candidates I am backing as my second preference. They are all very good candidates, and would all make good leaders of the Party. But this contest is still wide open. Too many people have written this off as a two horse race. I think there will be some surprises when the results are announced at the end of the month. I believe I am the best candidate for the job, so it would be wrong to back anyone else."

She was also interviewed by website "The Third Estate" today, and laid out her vision for the Labour Party, saying:

"I want to build on the best of the New Labour years, but I am the only candidate offering a fresh vision for the party."

Tomorrow, Diane will make a keynote address at Policy Exchange, in which she will critique David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ and speak about how Labour can strengthen civic society.

ANDY BURNHAM attacked Tony Blair today over the timing of his memoirs, saying:

"I have huge respect for Tony Blair and everything he achieved for Labour. But I am saddened that he has chosen this day of all days to publish his book. As ballot papers land, Labour should be looking to the future. Instead, senior figures in our party are re-running the battles of the past through this leadership campaign."

Speaking to the BBC later, Burnham said that New Labour had been "frightened from its own shadow":

"I disagree with Tony Blair when he says we couldn't even move one millimetre away [from New Labour] because I think he has failed to see how New Labour became seen as hollow and disconnected from ordinary people."

"My critique is that New Labour was at time frightened from its own shadow, they were unable to bring forward big, bold reforms for fear of what some of the right wing newspapers might do."

Andy has also released a video today to co-incide with the start of voting in the leadership contest:

By Richard Watts / @richardwatts01

Thirty two. That’s the total number of new academies opening today under the government’s so-called "school’s revolution".

There are around 20,000 schools in the country so a massive 0.0016% of schools have joined Mr Gove’s brave new world.

It is an understatement to say that this paltry number will be a disappointment to hapless Education Secretary Michael Gove, who has said that he wants to see academies become “the norm” for every school in England.

Gove has staked his reputation on establishing a market in school places before spending cuts mean that the surplus capacity in the system necessary to give parents to kind of open choice of school place he wants is removed.

I’ve written before about why Gove is being given the bums rush by schools. And the more evidence that is published about the Swedish Free school and American Charter school system that he is trying to emulate, the crazier his plan seems.

It was clear there was going to be disappointing news for the Tory-Liberal government as soon as Gove cheerleaders in the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph started a blame game about why the policy was failing.

Apparently "trade union militants", troglodyte local authorities and "useless officials" are to blame. There is even raging against the fact that schools have to consult parents before becoming an academy, despite the new system being intended to boost parental choice.

You can tell things are really going wrong when a minister’s "sources" start briefing against his own department’s civil servants. I can’t imagine officials at the Department for Education are that keen to bust a gut for a minister who is reported to think that they are "completely useless" and Labour minsters like John Reid and Stephen Byers found out that there can only be one winner when politicians go to war with their own department. After all there are thousands of civil servants in a department, many of whom have access to sensitive information, and only a few minsters and special advisors.

This fiasco comes at the same time as the publication of this year’s GCSE results show just how quickly the educations system the Tory-Liberals inherited from Labour is improving. Record results, which Tory minsters confirm aren’t caused by exams getting easier, are the result of hard work by staff and students, supported by record levels of school funding and new buildings provided by the Labour government.

I must give a special plug for Islington’s secondary schools. A few years ago our results were amongst the worst in the country. Last year our results were the most improved in all England. It’s too early to know whether we’ve kept that up this year, early indications are that 72 per cent of children in Islington schools got at least 5 good GCSEs, the majority of those including English and Maths. At the Islington Arts and Media School, which has one of the most deprived intakes in the whole country, 95 per cent of children got the equivalent of 5 A* - C GCSE passes.

This massive improvement in results is great credit to students and staff at the schools but does also show that structural changes aren’t necessarily vital to improving standards. Of the nine Islington schools entering GCSE candidates only one is an academy (Islington’s second academy is new and so doesn’t have year 11 children yet) but all show that strong leadership supported by high levels of funding and support is what really delivers for children.

Islington's schools improved enormously in the Labour years. The Tory-Liberals seem determined to discard many of the things that drove that success – motivated staff, generous funding, new buildings – in order to force the introduction of a system that has categorically been shown to fail where it has been tried. It’s no wonder people call this government more ideological than Thatcher’s.

Yoosk have been collating questions for the leadership candidates over the past few weeks. Ed Balls is the fourth candidate to face the Yoosk team, and answers questions on his biggest weakness, his popularity (or otherwise), and university places.

By Carl Rowlands

A recent article in the Guardian has vividly illustrated the extent that the British workers movement became entwined in Cold War machinations during the post-war period. We're talking about millions of dollars, much of which would have gone to the families of striking miners. The Thatcher government desperately wanted to stop the money arriving in the UK. Both they and the NUM knew that in the final analysis, only the Soviets could provide this kind of financial backing to enable the organisation and continuation of the miners strike.

In this specific instance, the government had of course already frozen the NUM's funds and sequestrated its assets. The miners' resulting dependence on external help reflects that they had been effectively outmanoeuvred at every stage, by a government determined to wage a fight to the bitter end. It also illustrates that when thrown back on its own resources, the labour movement was not as strong, or as well-resourced, as appearances might suggest.

Yet questions still linger in the air. To what extent had mainstream labour organisations, such as the NUM, been effectively penetrated by the Soviet security service? The recent book 'The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5' by Christopher Andrew named a number of unlikely people, mainstream Labour MPs and trade unionists, who were regarded as potentially compromised by association with KGB agents. Of course, the NUM also contained openly communist officials.

To put this into context, we now know that by the late 1960s, the British security services had been almost totally compromised, leading to the widespread dissemination of UK military information and other top secret material. Only gradually recovering a degree of integrity during the 1970s, it was barely surprising that the intelligence agencies were suspicious of links between the labour movement and Soviet agents.

The Communist Party of Great Britain had already been sidelined as an active parliamentary force, in no small part to the divisions resulting from the Soviet actions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. It appears that the trade unions may have represented the last links between the Bolsheviks and the British workers movement, which had originally been so enthusiastic back in 1919. In practice, the Communist Party often acted as a bulwark, providing people and resources to help strikers and those engaged in workplace disputes.

In his seminal essay, 'The Lost World of Communism', Raphael Samuel charts the disintegration of the Communist Party, a process which accelerated after the collapse of the miners strike. Samuel highlighted that communists continued their activism, beyond the point where a Revolution was considered either possible or desirable. In many ways, this activism took on its own relevance, independent of Moscow, as individual communists increasingly identified themselves with the more prosaic and practical demands of solidarity.

I expect many of you reading this may be wondering why this is relevant now, in the strange summer of 2010. There are two aspects of this which are directly relevant. Firstly, since the collapse of communism, the labour movement in the UK, at a grassroots level, has not looked anything other than a busted flush, incapable of mounting a defence of workers increasingly casualised conditions and rights, and unable to reverse the Thatcher settlement which shifted the balance decisively in favour of capital over labour. The rank-and-file labour movement has had very little influence over the party that bears its name, the Labour Party. It might now be possible to find more socialists outside the Labour Party than within.

It makes one wonder whether those battles which were fought in the post-war decades, and won, such as 1972's 'Battle of Saltley Gate,' were all underpinned by the presence of communists - not so much the Muscovites which caused the security services so many headaches, but rank-and-file activists who were prepared to dedicate their time selflessly organising and agitating, at no personal gain to themselves. Maybe these communist activists were always the real heart and soul of the labour movement. With the destruction of the Communist Party, democratic socialism was left to the meek and timid bureaucrats, and beleaguered, scattered handfuls of Labour members meeting in draughty church halls on Tuesday evenings. I admit, it's a historicist argument, only apparent after the passing of time. But it appears that in many ways, nothing has yet replaced communism's ability to motivate and organise the British labour movement.

The other significant aspect, and far more positive, is that the political generation which emerged from this period of the late Cold War is now moving off the stage. Peter Mandelson is in many ways the embodiment of a Cold War approach, having spent his youth as a member of the Young Communist League. John Reid, an ex-communist and notably illiberal minister in the late Blair era, has retired from politics. Of the ex-Trotskyists, Alan Milburn is near the completion of his political journey, by working with a Conservative government, whilst Stephen Byers is in disgrace as one of those named and shamed by the 'lobbygate' investigation. The era that defined the careers and perspectives of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both terrified of any association with the word 'socialism', is drawing to a close.

Not only does this provide an opportunity for a new generation of politicians, unencumbered by the baggage - and rejected baggage - of the past. It also allows academics to begin a re-assessment of the ideas of Marxism, maybe even to move these interpretations of Marxism into the public domain, as David Harvey has done. The last few years have seemed to further illustrate capitalism's weaknesses and the need for radical solutions to what are often global problems. Maybe for the first time, the conditions for a genuine social revival exist. It remains to be seen whether a leadership emerges which can step up and offer an appealing and substantial version of socialism for the 21st century.

By Brian Barder / @brianlb

This is about making your vote in the Labour party leadership election this week do what you want it to do, and how not to make it self-defeating. It's not about who I think you should vote for. So in the examples I give, I have given the five candidates pseudonyms: A, B, C, D and E. For the purposes of this article, I am taking the view that the only two candidates for the Labour leadership who possess the basic qualities required in a party and national leader are "C" and "B"; and that of those two, "C" seems to me to have the edge over "B" on policy and values, and moreover to look reasonably 'papabile'. However, of the five candidates, only "A’s" views on almost all major issues chime with mine – on the UK nuclear deterrent, Iraq and Afghanistan, other foreign wars, prisons, terrorism, civil rights, taxation, the economy, and more.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that A has the personality or skills to be an effective party leader or a credible candidate for election as prime minister (sorry, A). Moreover, I don’t think A can win enough first or second preferences in the parliamentary or union sections of the electoral college to stand a realistic chance of winning the Labour Party leadership election itself, despite being likely to do well in the members section – although it’s never safe to base one’s votes on assumptions about how everyone else will vote . And I'm appalled by the thought of "D" becoming leader: indeed, were "D" to win this election, I would leave the party. So I don't want to use my preferences in any way that could possibly help to bring that about. Those, then, are my views of the principal candidates. How should I translate them into voting preferences?

I was originally going to vote in the Labour leadership elections for 1. A, as having the right principles and policies but very little chance of winning; 2. C, as possessing the best leadership qualities and a good chance of winning; 3. B, also with excellent leadership qualities but marginally less attractive on policies than C; 4. E, about whom I have no opinion; and 5. D, who I think would be a disaster as leader. But I have been persuaded by an expert’s analysis of the voting system for the leadership election that this order of preferences would be risky, and possibly even self-defeating. I now plan to vote 1. C, 2. B, 3 E, 4. A, 5. D. Here's why.

I had intended to give A my first preference, even though I don't think A can win, on the basis that if A gets a respectable number of votes, that will oblige the new leader to take A and A's supporters’ views seriously, thus moving the party as a whole in the right, or rather left, direction. It seemed reasonable to give my first preference to A, in the confidence that at some stage in the rounds of counting and reallocating losers' second preferences, A will come bottom of the poll and so be eliminated, and that my second preference, will thereupon be reallocated to C. Mission accomplished. But is it? Now read on….

My original plan seemed to be confirmed by the advice in a letter in the Guardian of 27 August which advocated exactly what I was proposing to do (the names changed once again -- this is about how to vote effectively, not who to vote for, remember?):

"Seumas Milne is absolutely right that those who want to return the Labour Party to its correct place within the political spectrum should ensure C beats B. However C is young and untested, and his leadership will not just be determined by his platform; it will be shaped by context. The first context will be the dynamic within the party following the result. A radical confident leadership from C will most likely emerge if the starting point is a strong A vote that transfers to him. It is therefore imperative that A supporters hold firm in their first preferences, determined, as Milne describes, “to see a voice for the left in the country’s main party of reform”. Vote A 1, C 2.
Basildon, Essex"

However, I had a nagging suspicion that the writer of that letter - and I - might be missing something here. So I sought the advice of a Labour supporter who understands the electoral system better than I do (no, not my wife, although no doubt she does, too). Here is what she said in reply:

"Let’s start with the simple case, in which your only interest is who gets elected (that is, ignore for a moment your desire to use your vote for the additional purpose of “sending a signal” as well).

Then it is all simple. One of the principal merits of AV (some would say the only merit) is that it is simple for the voter to know what to do, even if it is not simple to explain how the system works. The voter should simply number the candidates according to her ranking of them. There is no way to vote tactically. Even if a voter knew exactly how everyone else was going to vote (which of course she doesn’t) there would not be a reason to do anything other than number the candidates in order.

To answer specific questions that have been raised:

- In an election with five candidates, putting preferences by four of them, and leaving the fifth blank is identical to ranking the last candidate fifth. (Your last preference votes won’t ever be counted because it is not possible for four candidates to be eliminated and their second or lower preferences re-allocated in a five-candidate election.)

- If you want “anyone but D”, your best strategy is not to put a number next to D. Putting a number next to a candidate can’t harm them. If it is the lowest possible number (5 in a five-candidate election) it won’t help them either (see above). If it is any number other than last, it might help them. If you don’t want them, don’t vote for them.

- Your votes have to start with 1 and go down as far as you have preferences. In some elections a minority of voters put a “1″ next to the candidate they want and “5″ next to someone they detest, without putting the numbers 2, 3 and 4 in between. Some electoral officers will count this first preference; most will just declare the paper spoiled.

Now we make it more complicated, by acknowledging that some voters want to use the election not only to choose a winner but also for the secondary purpose of sending a signal. In the normal case, the signal a voter wants to send is aligned with her preferences in the election (that is, if a voter wants to send the signal that she likes what D has to say, she is also likely to think that D would make the best leader). In that case, we are back to the simple case – the voter should simply number the candidates according to her preferences.

It is more complicated for a voter who wants to send a signal that is not aligned with her actual preferences for leader. Say a voter prefers C to be leader, but wants to send the signal that she prefers A's policies and views to C's. If the voter is trying to pursue these two objectives simultaneously, that reintroduces the possibility of tactical voting. The optimum strategy for the voter in this special case depends on (a) the relative weight the voter attaches to these objectives; and (b) what the voter thinks other voters will do.

In the actual case at hand, in which the voter reasonably expects that A has almost no chance of winning, she might put A first and her actual preference for leader (in this case, C) second. This would achieve the secondary objective (sending a signal) but there are two ways in which it might backfire on the first objective (choose C to be leader):

*first, there is a possibility (probably small in this case) that A might actually win, which is not what the voter intends;

*second, if enough people who want C as leader nevertheless put someone else first for the purpose of sending a signal, then there is a chance that C could be eliminated early on. Suppose E goes out first, and most of his second preferences go to A. Then C might conceivably still come below A in the next round, and he’d go out before A does. A would go out next, and then it would be a straight race between B and D. So in this story, the voter who has put A ahead of C to send a signal would have inadvertently made it more likely that D gets elected leader, even though she has correctly anticipated that A actually has no chance of success -- and has tried to do nothing that might help D to win by putting them bottom of her preferences.

Whether the voter regards this as a risk worth taking depends on (a) the relative weight she attaches to the two objectives of electing the right leader and sending the signal; and (b) her view of the probability that C might be eliminated ahead of A. (Note that this is not the same question as whether A might get more first preferences than C).

I have to say, my guess is that it is probably quite rare for a voter to prefer one candidate but want to send a (misleading) signal implying wrongly that she prefers another. So in general, the aphorism that there is no tactical voting in AV is correct.

By James Valentine

A first major test for the coalition arrives on September 9th in terms of the council by-elections in Norwich. Based on my experience, there are some encouraging signs for Labour. I haven’t been able to get up there so I’ve been phoning electors. Although phoning people is not a method I prefer, you don’t get the "false positives" that occur on the doorstep, when if you smile at people (and especially if you’re wearing a suit) Tories will sometimes say that they support you. On the phone, they can just tell you to go away.

In the ward that I’ve been working, it’s been like pushing at an open door. Although I have been adopting the recommended neutral approach, Labour voters have been falling over themselves to tell me how loyal they are to Labour and how much they dislike the coalition. The cuts to elderly peoples’ benefits have clearly got under the electors’ skins and are mentioned most often as an issue. I have come across just one Green in the entire ward, even though the Greens infested Norwich during the European elections and at one point we risked losing our candidate.

The poll is a consequence of the ConDem government's dismantling of the new Norwich Unitary authority, bringing about thirteen ward by-elections. Norwich has been forced to hold these elections following a judicial review instigated by Norfolk County Council. Exactly the same situation arises in Exeter where by-elections are being held for the same reason. Those of us living and campaigning in the East of England are still reeling from the atrocious general election result which means we have just two MPs left. These elections will hopefully strengthen the minority Labour administration in Norwich City Council but there’re also an opportunity for East of England activists generally to “get even” with the Tories.

One must sound a note of caution. Recent by-elections held across the East have not, so far, shown a clear trend to Labour. Some of the people who are now declaring themselves to be strongly Labour appeared to have voted against Labour in the general election, so if we are to win back parliamentary seats we have to ask ourselves why this is the case. Could it merely be that another government is responsible for difficult issues like immigration, for example? If this is the case, the task still remains for Labour in how to work these issues out and promulgate them effectively.

And declaring an identification with Labour is not the same as turning out to vote. Political activists get very excited by council by-elections but for most of the electorate they are a bore; it could all fail on the back of a low turnout. That’s why more effort is needed as we approach polling day to get out the vote and why I’ll be up in Norwich all day on polling day.

Please contact Norwich Labour Party on 01603 622107 or visit Membersnet to get more details about the campaign.

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter

History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes. So said Mark Twain and in immediate defiance of this dictum, the quote has been repeated over and over. So one more time is neither here nor there. It is not too extravagant a guess to suppose that this sentiment is applicable to economic history.

And there are two predominant versions of economic history out there in the political market place. One is articulated by George Osborne and the other by Ed Balls. If the latter wins the Labour leadership then it will be an economic and political death match between the two visions. Only one can win and if you win, you win big and if you lose, you’re broke.

The first is George Osborne’s. For him, we are in the 1990s again. He is looking at the economic aftermath of Black Wednesday where fiscal consolidation and (steady) exchange rate depreciation led to a recovery in export growth and private sector investment alongside a growth in consumer spending.

Here is a George Osborne speech from last year in which he articulates his basic approach :

"But what about the argument that cutting spending risks undermining the recovery by reducing demand in the economy?

Not only does this argument ignore the risks of a loss of confidence and higher interest rates, it is also too simplistic.

It ignores the impact of fiscal policy on the exchange rate in an open economy like the UK.

…In other words, what you lose in government spending, you gain in exports."

There are two drawbacks to this. It relies on the UK seeing growth in its main trading partners. But growth in the eurozone is anaemic and given fiscal and financial insecurity the UK is becoming a safe haven so the pound is rising against the euro - there is little sign of the depreciation that George Osborne expects (though he would never admit this in public.) It may come but for now the strategy looks extremely shaky - and in fact, the Budget Red Book shows that export growth and capital investment would have to be higher in each of the next three years than any time in almost fifty years for his growth expectations to be met.

Even worse, there is no Plan B - drawback number 2. This is Russian roulette economics. He may get lucky and if he’s not then it is people’s jobs, businesses, homes, well-being and public services that are at stake.

In a forthright and robust speech at Bloomberg last Friday, Ed Balls presented us with an alternative economic history. Again, it is worth looking for the rhyme rather than the repetition.

He gave a series of historical examples when classical economic orthodoxy or the ‘Treasury view’ was prioritised over public investment and expenditure - 1925, 1930, 1949, 1967, 1981, and 1990. And then he pointed to the 1945 Labour government which chose to invest the ‘peace dividend’ in the NHS and an expanded welfare state.

The problem with these examples is that the economic worlds of the Gold Standard, the IMF, stagflation, capital controls, and the ERM are different to ours so they are not a clear guide. Moreover, the post-war Labour government didn’t create the NHS and the welfare state by running up a budget deficit. In fact, by 1947 it was running a surplus. It did so by deciding not to return taxation to much lower pre-war levels. In other words, the historical examples provide a warning but unfortunately don’t give us a clear pathway to action in the context of the modern British economy.

This is not just an academic issue. While the UK is currently a safe haven from choppy eurozone waters, it does not mean that it will always be so. Ed Balls is right that markets are concerned with growth. The problem is what happens if a high and continuing deficit came to be seen as an impediment to growth and there are numerous scenarios where it would be such as where confidence in the UK economy collapses so private sector investment dries up. In such a circumstance, the UK could be left with a terrifying deficit to finance and a potential downward spiral. That is not good news at all. So it’s wise to look serious about reducing the deficit - as soon as growth is more established.

So both these historically driven approaches carry significant risks. And that’s the problem. The economic future is so uncertain that any inflexibility of approach could end in disaster. In a weekend review of Ha-Joon Chang’s new book on the limits of capitalism, John Gray wrote:

"After an intellectual failure on this scale, what could economists have to say today that would be of interest to anyone?"

That is what politicians have to contend with. Economists of a more Keynesian hue are the loudest currently though their intellectual opponents hold sway everywhere but in the US. That doesn’t mean that advice given by Keynesian economists will always be right. History certainly provides us with warnings. For every 1930s Britain there is a 1970s Britain and for every 1990s Japan there is a 1990s Canada or 2000s Brazil. The applicability or not of these cases can be argued either way - and has been.

George Osborne has chosen a high risk economic strategy with no obvious back up plan. Should Labour take the opposite risk and turn the next parliament into an economic death match? That could leave Labour relying on economic collapse in order to maintain economic and political credibility. That’s George Osborne’s gambit and Labour should resist - it is a nightmare political scenario for Labour and one to which the public would not extend much patience. It is far better to retain a degree of flexibility and respond to the economic situation as it develops rather than over-relying on history or economic theory.

And then Labour could focus on arguments for creating a new and rebalanced economy. It would take on board the arguments of Ha-Joon Chang and Raghuram Rajan about the link between greater equality, financial stability and growth. It would further develop policies to invest in science, manufacturing, the creative industries and a world-class service economy. It would further take up the developmental challenge of the green economy. Alongside this, it would consider the economic destinies of those who are not able to benefit from new economic opportunities. That is a growth plan. It is social justice. It is about building an exciting and high opportunity future for Britain.

The alternative long-term plan is to carry on as we are and hope to blunder through - an economy balanced precariously on financial services and consumer muscle powered by house equity. After all, as Mark Twain also observed, it is wise to buy land as they are not making it anymore. But that’s no way to run a modern economy.

Anthony Painter blogs at anthonypainter.co.uk

By Ken Livingstone / @ken4london

Today I’m setting out the details of what we understand the scale of the cuts in London is shaping up to be. Our argument is simple – London can’t afford the cuts.

We have both a responsibility explain why it is wrong not just from the point of view of the human cost but the cost to future growth and prosperity to take an axe to jobs, services and pay. And the first opportunity to send a message by removing a powerful incumbent Conservative politician will be in London in 2012.

Reports tend to focus on individual years of the budget cuts. But taken across the period set out in George Osborne’s budget earlier this year the figures are breathtaking.

If we assume only that the cuts were applied in line with current regional allocation of expenditure, then London would account for 14 per cent of the spending cuts. In total of the £315bn spending cuts planned by the end of 2015-16 that would mean cuts of £45bn in London.

That’s £5,625 for every Londoner.

From January 2011-12, up to 126,000 newly born London children will miss out on the Child Trust Fund and the £190 Health in Pregnancy grant will be abolished next year with an estimated 100,000-plus mothers-to-be in London missing out. Over 100,000 London children are set to miss out on Free School Meals. The Future Jobs Fund, now cut, has helped over 5,000 Londoners train and find work. 170 secondary schools in London were hit by cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme. The real-terms cut in Child Benefit will hit over one million families with children in London. Tax credits are to be cut, and in total 737,000 families in London receive Child or Working Tax Credit.  Sure Start Maternity Grant has been cut affecting over 20,000 families. Changes to housing benefit pose a particular problem in London.

We know from the past what cuts did to the quality of life in London - leaving it to the market and slashing vital public services harms everyone and does not work.

Boris Johnson will do everything humanly possible to avoid the blame. But the government’s cuts are his cuts.

Boris Johnson began taking his axe to services in London even before the government was elected: cutting police numbers, failing to guarantee the future of safer neighbourhood police teams, reducing financial backing to the police service, gutting the Transport for London investment programme including key outer London transport links, hiking up fares. Moreover Boris Johnson vigorously campaigned for his Tory colleagues to win the general election, knowing full well the economic policy they would deliver.

Indeed, during the period in the run-up the election Boris Johnson’s batted away fears of cuts to key transport projects like Crossrail under the Tories, saying there was ‘no need to worry.’

We need a mayor who is on the side of hard working Londoners and will stand up for people in the face of this extraordinary onslaught. A Labour mayor will need the know-how to use every lever to get the best from public services and budgets and who will speak up vigorously on the side of London before and after the Mayoral election.

We should not allow the Tories and LibDems to lead the debate about the debt. We need a blast of reality into the debate about our country’s economic priorities. The idea that slashing spending is somehow more important than the needs of the public – more important than the schools our children go to, the NHS or a decent transport system, is false. Our debt is smaller than when Labour built the NHS.

Winning in London gives us the chance to prepare the ground for the next Labour government, confident about our beliefs and showing we will engage with the voters who lost their trust in Labour over council housing, jobs, privatisation, war and student fees.

My priority is to do everything in my power to seek to protect Londoners from the effects of economic uncertainty and the cuts now planned.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

* In his autobiography, released today, Tony Blair labels Brown "strange" and gives backing to Cameron.

* The Guardian has a world-exclusive interview with Blair.

* The Sun covers the revelations that Blair feared he was drinking too much.

* In the Independent, Andy McSmith says Blair's book reads more like a memo to his staff than an autobiography.

* Next Left disputes Blair's analysis that Labour lost the election because they ceased to be New Labour.

* David Miliband has been backed by the Daily Mirror.

* Matthew Norman says that Ed Miliband is the only real man in the leadership election.

* And Robert Peston takes a look at party political donations...

William Hague's special adviser Christopher Meyers has resigned, citing "untrue and malicious" allegations made about his relationship with the foreign secretary.

William Hauge's special adviser Christopher Meyers has resigned, citing "untrue and malicious" allegations made about his relationship with the foreign secretary.

There will be 32 schools reopening as academies this month after taking up Michael Gove's offer to apply for academy status, government figures have revealed.

Voting begins in the Labour leadership election today, as the publication of former prime minister Tony Blair's memoirs dominates the agenda.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As Tony Blair's long awaited autobiography comes on sale, the first extracts from the book have been released on his website. The Guardian also have extracts, and an interview with Blair.

On Gordon Brown:

"I came to the conclusion that having him inside and constrained was better than outside and let loose or, worse, becoming the figurehead of a far more damaging force well to the left."

"So was he difficult, at times maddening? Yes. But he was also strong, capable and brilliant, and those were qualities for which I never lost respect."

On Iraq:

"On the basis of what we do know now, I still believe that leaving Saddam in power was a bigger risk to our security than removing him, and that terrible though the aftermath was, the reality of Saddam and his sons in charge of Iraq would at least arguably be much worse. None of this in any way dismisses the force of the criticism that we failed to foresee the nature of what would follow once Saddam was gone."

On Northern Ireland:

"Every time we set foot in Northern Ireland there were protests – large, small, peaceful, violent, some Unionist, some Republican – always showing how divided the politics of Northern Ireland was from that anywhere else. That day for the first time there was a protest not about Northern Ireland, but about Iraq. When I saw it, I felt that Northern Ireland had just rejoined the rest of the world."

On the Labour Party:

"I wanted to modernise the Labour Party so it was capable, not intermittently but continuously, of offering a progressive alternative to Conservative rule."

"In particular, as I always used to say, I owe the Labour Party, its members, supporters and activists, a huge debt of gratitude. I put them through a lot! They took it, most of the time, with quite extraordinary dignity and loyalty. It is true that my head can sometimes think conservatively especially on economics and security; but my heart always beats progressive, and my soul is and always will be that of a rebel."

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

The aftermath of Peter Mandelson's intervention in the leadership race continued today, with Ed Balls using a LabourList article to criticise the "Miliband soap opera" that has begun to unfold and dominate the media narrative as the race comes to its conclusion.

Writing for LabourList ED BALLS was critical of what he called the "Miliband soap opera" and suggested that it was beneficial to the front runners:

"The now daily episodes of the Miliband soap opera suit those who want to keep this a two-horse race, but do not do justice to the issues at stake in this election."

"It is wearily familiar of the general election campaign when serious questions went unasked or unanswered as the media obsession with personalities dominated all discussion."

"As we have seen since the election, politics – for good or bad – is in the end about practical decision making that affects people’s lives. It is about having the strength and belief to turn ideas into reality, and take a stand on the issues that matter."

The main thrust of Ed's article however, was on housing, and his plan to build 100,000 extra affordable homes for £6 billion:

"I think that at a time when the economy is still so fragile and other countries are already tipping back into recession, we should instead use that money to boost construction jobs and build new homes."

"By using half of that £12 billion, a £6 billion investment this year and next, we could build 100,000 extra affordable homes which it’s been estimated would create up to 750,000 new jobs, directly in the construction industry and indirectly in the supply chain including thousands of apprenticeships for young people."

"And rather than raising VAT on the repair, maintenance and improvement of housing to 20% from January, we should create a temporary rate of 5%, cutting the costs for households investing in the value of their home, and creating thousands more jobs. In the short term this could be paid for by part of the remaining £6 billion windfall, but the evidence from when this has been tried in other countries is that the actual tax take increases as a result."

After a day of media interviews, and visits to Bermondsey and Croydon, he held an event in central London on housing, as he makes his final push in the leadership contest.

ED MILIBAND as holding his "Call for change" events across the country today, focussing on getting volunteers to call as many Labour Party members as possible ahead of ballot papers dropping on doormats tomorrow. His team tweeted the following picture of what looks like a packed event in London:

In a wide-ranging interview with the Evening Standard published today, Ed suggested that he might be willing to reconsider the status of Grammar Schools, and how their status is decided, saying:

"I think that an issue has been raised about the system of ballots for grammar schools and whether the right people get a chance to vote in the ballots. I'm not giving you a definitive answer, I'm saying it is an issue to be looked at."

Meanwhile Ed was in the North West today, visiting the Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port, before heading to Communiversity Centre at Croxteth with Stephen Twigg MP. Tonight he's staying in Liverpool, and taking part in the phone bank event there.

DAVID MILIBAND today criticised the government for opting out of the EU directive against human trafficking and the sex trade, accusing the Tories of "putting Tory animosity towards the EU above the safety of people who are trafficked into prostitution".

Speaking this afternoon, David said:

"You simply cannot combat trafficking in human beings, and the sex trade operating within the European Union, without cooperation at an EU level. Co-operation cannot be haphazard, and cannot be just sometimes, which is why this directive is so important."

"The flows of human trafficking within the EU area show this form of modern slavery has moved on, and so too must the EU’s directive in dealing with it."

Ealier today he was labelled "the special one" by Alan Johnson as the Peter Mandelson row rumbles on, but David, like his brother Ed, has sensibly allowed proxies to fight this battle, and has maintained a sensible distance.

Tonight David was at a rally in Newcastle as his team make one final push before voting starts.

ANDY BURNHAM today spoke out about coalition plans to shake-up the structure of the NHS, with proposals that Andy said were attacking the 'N' in NHS. The main thrust of his argument was that this was something which is happening despite being denied by both coalition parties. Burnham said:

"We are on the brink of reforms that will fundamentally alter its character – and it's time to raise an informed and inclusive debate about them.

"I have spoken to many NHS staff in all parts of the country about what the government’s reform plans mean."

"The threat is not theoretical but real. The very fabric of today's successful NHS is being unpicked before our eyes. Primary Care Trusts are being dismantled without any real detail on what will succeed them, or evidence that it will work."

"Then, from nowhere at the weekend, we hear that NHS Direct – a service that saves almost £100m a year – is to go without a proven alternative."

"Such is the importance of the NHS – and the ill-conceived nature of these reforms – that I believe it will soon dominate the political debate in this country...alongside the debate in parliament, we need to see NHS staff and patients given the chance to debate these proposals with MPs in villages, towns and cities up and down the country over the autumn and winter.""

DIANE ABBOTT made an appeal to party members in an email today as she prepares for the start of voting tomorrow. The email sought to focus on her key messages, as well as thanking supporters. Diane said:

"I want to stand up for the most vulnerable and protect those in need."

"I want make changes that new and old members want to see."

"I want to:

* PROTECT THE PUBLIC SECTOR

* SCRAP TRIDENT

* BRING TROOPS BACK FROM AFGHANISTAN

* STAND UP FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

* RESTORE FAITH AND TRUE DEMOCRACY IN THIS PARTY"

This email was trailed on her website as the "last message from Diane", which suggests that this might be Diane's final online push before the ballots drop - it's smart for her to hold this email back till the last moment, but the style its written in is unusual. I hope that she'll keep up her new media efforts over the final weeks of the campaign. I'm sure this won't be the final message from Diane by any means...

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Writing for LabourList last night, Ed Balls used a phrase that may well be taken on by others as we head into the final stages of the leadership contest - "Miliband soap opera".

From the outset of this campaign, the media have shown a dogged determination to make this race about the two brothers, putting them at its centre, pivoting the rest of the race (and the other candidates) around the fraternal battle - and trying to relegate the rest of the campaign, and the other three candidates, to a sideshow.

Of course it's easier for the press to write about a human story - the battle between two close, yet different bothers - than it is to write about the policies and issues that have really driven this campaign, the harsh impact of the cuts that this coalition government have presided over, and the way that the Labour Party has (by and large) conducted itself impeccably over the course of this leadership campaign.

In a way this may have helped Ed Miliband. He has far less experience that his shadow cabinet colleague Andy Burnham, yet he is the second favourite with a real chance of winning, while Burnham struggles to make a breakthrough. There is bound to be resentment from more established politicians (because that is what Burnham, Balls and Abbott are) that Ed Miliband has risen through a mixture of political skill and brotherly rivalry to be a frontrunner, and yet there has been little acrimony or back-biting. Do not let people tell you that the Labour Party is divided, that's simply not the case.

Many people, both inside and outside of the party, have been crying out for conflict, the rending of hair and the gnashing of teeth that is supposed to come with the loss of power. A period in opposition is never a good thing for a political party, but what we are seeing already, regardless of who wins, is the start of a renewal process. Ideas and policies oft-mooted by members at ward meetings, conferences and online are now at the centre of debate about how we move this party forwards, how we beat this government and how we get back to helping the people hurt most by the coalition.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Andy Burnham has given a major speech today in Liverpool on coalition reforms to the NHS, accusing the the government of attacking the N in NHS, and setting out his priorities for the health service.

You can read the full text of the speech below:

--

"I wanted this to be an open event because in my view nothing matters more to people in this country than the NHS – it belongs to all of us. We are on the brink of reforms that will fundamentally alter its character – and it's time to raise an informed and inclusive debate about them.

I have spoken to many NHS staff in all parts of the country about what the government’s reform plans mean. 

The threat is not theoretical but real. The very fabric of today's successful NHS is being unpicked before our eyes. Primary Care Trusts are being dismantled without any real detail on what will succeed them, or evidence that it will work.

Then, from nowhere at the weekend, we hear that NHS Direct – a service that saves almost £100m a year – is to go without a proven alternative.

I have said that this white paper represents the biggest threat to the NHS in its 62-year history, and the purpose of today is to set out a detailed critique to substantiate this claim. I will then go on to describe my own vision for the NHS in the next decade.

I want this critique to help develop an informed debate. Such is the importance of the NHS – and the ill-conceived nature of these reforms – that I believe it will soon dominate the political debate in this country. 

That is because, as I’ll explain today, there is no democratic mandate for these reforms. So, alongside the debate in parliament, we need to see NHS staff and patients given the chance to debate these proposals with MPs in villages, towns and cities up and down the country over the autumn and winter.

So, to kick-off this national debate, let me take you through five reasons why I believe these changes are so dangerous.

First reason.

They are the wrong reforms at the wrong time.

The next three years will present the NHS with a huge financial challenge. It is the worst time imaginable to initiate the biggest-ever structural reorganisation of the NHS.

Right now, the NHS needs organisational stability so all efforts can be focused on efficiency savings. By combining two major challenges - and taking attention away from finance - there is a real risk that the NHS will descend into chaos.

By 2014, the coalition expect the NHS to have delivered £20bn efficiency savings without affecting the front line. They have made this impossible by introducing a huge, expensive reorganisation at the same time.

Already they stand accused of using a ‘sledgehammer rather than a scalpel’ to find savings.

Keiran Walshe of Manchester Business School says the transitional costs of reorganisations are huge and the intended savings rarely realised. The process is a distraction from delivering care and ‘saps morale’. He says the reforms could cost up to £3billion – a scandalous use of money when every single penny should be directed to patient care.

James Gubb, from right-wing think-tank Civitas agrees that the costs will be considerable and the reforms “could set the NHS back between one and three years” which he calls “ruinous” for the goal of £20bn efficiency savings.

Even Sir David Nicholson agrees that there is a ‘significant risk of a loss of focus on quality’. As NHS Chief Executive, he has asked the NHS to set aside £1.7bn to fund these reforms.

The coalition agreement appeared to acknowledge the overriding need for stability with a promise of 'no further top-down reorganisations'. There has still been no explanation of why the government's thinking changed and the coalition agreement was torn up in the biggest and quickest U-turn in British political history.

Second reason.

It’s a bad deal for patients

Removing the national 18-week maximum wait takes power off the patient and hands it back to the system. As financial pressure builds, it means patients will begin to pay the price and waiting times will rise.

It took blood, sweat and tears to bring those NHS waiting lists down but all that progress is now at risk.

Long waits were the hallmark of the last Tory government. They set a target that people should wait no longer than 18 months, and missed it. Labour set a target that people should wait no longer than 18 weeks, and smashed it.

But the removal of the 18-week standard needs to be considered alongside two other proposals from the white paper - the abolition of the private patient cap and no bail-outs for NHS hospitals.

Hospitals are free to dedicate more theatre time to private patients and indeed have an incentive to do so given the market-based financial regime that is on the way. With no national NHS waiting times and no cap on the amount trusts can earn from private patients, hospitals will manage pressure by making NHS patients wait longer.

And so we face the spectre of seeing once again in our NHS that old choice for patients - wait longer or pay to go private.

Private sector firms know what it means. The NHS Partners Network said "Waiting times will go up and if people want a procedure they have a choice: they can wait or they can look to pay."

The health secretary wants an NHS that listens to GPs. Well we hope he will listen to them too, as two-thirds of GPs think waits will rise with the abolition of the 18-week target.

The Nuffield Trust agrees, and has called for waiting standards to be retained as firm targets.

The Health Service Journal expects a ‘highly visible deterioration in services’ as a result of scrapping targets.

Longer waits matter. They matter because they affect clinical outcomes, but they also matter because they affect public confidence in the service. The NHS belongs to us all and we should know what we have the right to expect when we call upon its services.

Third reason.

A postcode lottery writ large

The creation of hundreds of new, untested GP groups means variable service standards, access and quality depending on where you live. It is an attack on the N in NHS.

It is not just traditional enemies who are highlighting the postcode lottery threat.

The Tory think tank the Bow Group identified the risk that ‘with an increased number of commissioning bodies, there is a greater likelihood of different approaches to the prioritisation of treatments and funding decisions.’

They go on to say that this is likely to result in a postcode lottery. For all the coalition’s rhetoric about localism, they know as well as we do that the public hate postcode lotteries.

They see them as unfair, because they are unfair. Those people who cannot afford to move to another area are left with substandard care. National standards in the NHS empower the patient and are a guarantee of a minimum standards for all.

‘Lobby your GP’, the government cries.

But people don’t want to have to fight for their healthcare, and GPs don’t want it either. Many families don’t have the means to move is they are not happy with their local service.

The role of GP as champion of their patient is compromised by their role as budget-holder. It is also the case that the GP will be both a provider and commissioner, placing a major conflict of interest at the heart of the NHS. 

Fourth reason.

Fragmentation and privitisation - forcing Trusts to leave the public sector will create an unstable free market and change the character of our hospitals.

The hand-over of the budget represents the privitisation of the commissioning function in the NHS and a green light for private consultants and contractors.

I have great admiration for British general practice and GPs and don't doubt the commitment of the vast majority to the NHS. But there is a large irony in the fact that the very group that refused to be a part of the NHS at the very outset, and has remained outside ever since, has now been handed practically the entire budget to spend. 

I wonder what Nye Bevan would have made of it.

Since it began, the NHS has operated within a framework of public control, so that essential services are protected.

These reforms blow that careful balance apart, with Foundation Trusts re-classified so they are no longer on the government’s balance sheet.

This moves hospitals out of the public sector, meaning there would be no such thing as an ‘NHS hospital’, just hospitals that provide care to NHS patients, alongside private patients, if they choose. Competition law would reign supreme, overruling the BMA’s exhortations to GPs to make the NHS the provider of choice.

There’s no opt-out for providers, so if they’re not ready or willing to become stand-alone social enterprises, they will be forced to close, merge or be taken over by other providers.

At the core of the social enterpr

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

David Miliband has today criticised the government for opting out of the EU directive against human trafficking and the sex trade, accusing the Tories of "putting Tory animosity towards the EU above the safety of people who are trafficked into prostitution".

Speaking this afternoon, David said:

"You simply cannot combat trafficking in human beings, and the sex trade operating within the European Union, without cooperation at an EU level. Co-operation cannot be haphazard, and cannot be just sometimes, which is why this directive is so important."

"The flows of human trafficking within the EU area show this form of modern slavery has moved on, and so too must the EU’s directive in dealing with it."

"This new directive will make it easier for member states to catch and prosecute sex traffickers. It will make criminal proceedings easier for victims across the EU, and it will improve prevention and monitoring."

"Refusing to opt-in is putting Tory animosity towards the EU above the safety of people who are trafficked into prostitution."

"It also raises questions over the influence of the Liberal Democrats in the Foreign Office."

"On the back of the scrapping of the Annual Report on Human Rights, they are now party to running away from these crucial measures to fight the sex trade. This is despite their manifesto commitment to keep Britain involved in ‘international crime-fighting measures’. This coalition does not extend to foreign policy."

By Luke Akehurst / @lukeakehurst

I thought I ought to try to contribute something to the debate about triangulation versus dividing lines as electoral strategies, which in very crude terms is how commentators have characterised the debate between respectively David and Ed Miliband. Certainly David seemed to be advocating a strategy of triangulation with the coalition’s policies when he spoke about emulating RA Butler’s strategy of the 1950s of the Tories accepting much of the 1945 government’s settlement.

Wikipedia defines triangulation thus: "Triangulation is the name given to the act of a political candidate presenting his or her ideology as being "above" and "between" the "left" and "right" sides (or "wings") of a traditional (e.g. UK or US) democratic "political spectrum". It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one's political opponent (or apparent opponent). The logic behind it is that it both takes credit for the opponent's ideas, and insulates the triangulator from attacks on that particular issue."

The key section of that description is "on that particular issue". Unfortunately there are some colleagues in the Labour Party who seem to think it means taking the entire ideology and policy platform of the party and moving it wholesale to a position far nearer to that of the Tories.

Of course a broadly triangulating strategy worked very well for both Clinton and Blair in the 1990s. I think their strategy was broadly correct given the context then.

But Obama managed to win in 2008 with a strategy that was not just a straight replay of Clinton-era triangulation because the issues, the opponent and the electorate had changed in the 16 years from 1992, and similarly we need to look at the changed political, economic and policy landscape in the UK and come up with an electoral strategy for 2015, not 1997. Even if the circumstances were a complete replay we wouldn’t want to repeat a variation on the same strategy any more than a chess grandmaster would want to replicate their strategy in match after match against the same player– pretty soon your opponent works out a way to beat you if you don’t surprise them with new tricks – and the Tory party has got over it’s dumb phase when it made things easy for us.

The key thing about triangulation is that it doesn’t have to be applied crudely to the entire positioning of a party i.e. throwing the baby of popular policies out with the bathwater of the unpopular ones.

In 1994-1997 we triangulated area by area based on a sophisticated analysis of Labour’s strengths and weaknesses. Our strengths were that people thought we were compassionate and would deliver a properly funded NHS and schools. Our weaknesses were on defence (which we dealt with a lot earlier than under New Labour by ditching unilateralism in the 1988 Policy Review), perceived liberalism on crime (hence Blair’s "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"), and tax (hence the pledge not to increase the basic rate). So we didn’t triangulate our policies in the areas of strength – and went on to do radical things like the minimum wage that had been aspirations of Labour for 100 years but never implemented even by the Attlee government. But we did triangulate on the weaknesses – though I would argue that on defence what we really did was reverted to Labour’s historic pre-1979 positioning.

Some points about why this can’t just be replicated now:

· Then we were triangulating with a Tory government that had won four elections on over 40% of the vote. Now we would be triangulating with a Tory party that didn’t win the general election even with us exhausted after 13 years in power and following a global recession. What’s the point in moving towards policies that weren’t very electorally popular?

· The Lib Dems have effectively already blazed a trail for triangulating with this Tory party through negotiating a coalition agreement. The net impact has been to halve their support and increase ours’ by a third, suggesting swing voters wouldn’t thank us for moving right.

· The two main parties are already quite close together on the old 1980s areas of Labour weakness such as defence and crime. The areas where we could triangulate are primarily on policies that are at the fundamental core of what it means to be Labour. Triangulation now would involve moving nearer the coalition position on the VAT rise, public service cuts and economic strategy. I do not believe that this represents the beliefs of any but a tiny fringe in the party either in parliament or the country, whereas the mix Blair came up with was proven through the 'Road to the Manifesto' ballot process to represent the broad consensus of party opinion – you can’t ask Labour candidates and members to campaign on a platform they completely disagree with. It would also be abandoning the very areas of policy where we are nearest to public opinion. Swing voters didn’t vote for the Tories rather than us because they were going to raise VAT, cut public services and switch off the fiscal stimulus, they voted Tory despite those things because we did not present an attractive prospectus for the next five years, and because they thought "things could only get better".

· Triangulation has to have an ideological line in the sand that won’t be crossed. Would we triangulate with the BNP if they were our main opposition? I hope not.

· Our existing set of Labour voters nowadays have other places to go if we move too far from them – to minor parties or abstention. We need to think about retaining our existing pool of voters as well as growing it.

· We don’t know yet at the start of the coalition’s term what we will be triangulating with. We need to be careful about positioning ourselves too quickly without seeing the shape of the society, public services and economy we will be fighting over in 2015, or the popularity of the coalition by then. If it becomes grossly unpopular why would we triangulate with it? We don’t even know the electoral system we will be using and if AV came in then we will need a strategic approach based on getting transfers from smaller parties.

There’s also a problem in terms of the groups of electors some people in the party think triangulation would target.

Because people bandy around the terms Middle England and Middle Class as though they are interchangeable and monolithic, they seem to think our swing voters are people like Hyacinth Bucket, readers of the Daily Telegraph, or people who pay higher rate income tax.

In fact swing voters look a lot more like the average Labour activist’s idea of what a Labour voter should look like. That’s the tragedy – that we didn’t get the votes this time (or in the 1980s) of millions of people who we were actually set up to represent.

Some of these are the voters Ed Miliband has identified in the DE social classes (the least well off) who we lost in large numbers this time. I suspect they would be happy with quite leftwing policies on the economy and public services, but many of them will be ferociously rightwing on crime, Europe, defence, immigration and welfare reform (if you get welfare yourself because you need it you tend to have fairly robust views on "scroungers" who you think are less deserving). Many of them would link their worries about migrants (who they probably think are here because of the EU’s freedom of movement policy) and welfare "scroungers" (who they suspect are often also migrants) to the practical problems they confront about accessing public services and affordable housing, crime levels, lack of jobs/job insecurity and paying excessive levels of tax given their low incomes.

We need to get these voters back because it’s criminally negligent if an avowedly democratic socialist party can’t get the votes of the poorest, because even in key marginal seats there are wards full of this type of voter whose low turnout helps lose us the seat, and because the bit of power they do have is that their vote is worth the same as a stockbroker’s. There’s no point winning switchers if we throw away what should be our base vote through taking it for granted. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that the UK’s electoral geography means lots of them are in seats we already win, which will just get safer – assuming we keep the same voting system. The LDs’ insistence that first dibs on forming a coalition goes to the party with the largest popular vote does mean that piling up big majorities in safe seats by enthusing these voters could be important if there is another hung parliament.

Then there are C2 voters, the skilled working classes, and C1s, lower middle class people doing routine white collar jobs. These are the segments everyone agrees we need to go after and which Blair focused on because back then everything was simpler because we just weighed the core vote. These are the mythical 'Middle England' but they are actually distributed across the country in unglamorous and functional places like the M4 corridor, North Kent and South Essex, the London suburbs, the Pennine Belt and the manufacturing areas of the East and West Midlands.

They are politically important because their propensity to switch straight from Con to Lab or vice versa gives them a double value – they take one vote off the Tory lead in a seat as well as adding one to us. They i

By Ralph Baldwin

1. Must be able to pick out the most able and reasonably loyal team players (blindly loyal sycophants will smile and agree with you even as they bury your career).
2. Must be a team player yourself, you cannot lead if you do not understand teamwork. Blair sold out Milburn when Milburn needed support, back your team so that they can support you well.
3. Must be able to delegate responsibilities.
4. Must work out how to use the Labour Party membership more effectively and increase its numbers, a little more money and more volunteers always helps.
5. Must figure out how to obtain large donations in a manner that is not "sleazy", Man Utd can do it, so should we. If we do not have the public trust we fail and lose another election. What is the point of the money if it is all spent on losing? The greater the trust the more people will feel they can donate without scaring them off.
6. Ensure that MPs live up to the highest standards, they after all involved in the law making process and that means they have to be "better" than the law to be qualified to change it. Many people want to be MPs, it is the job vacancy easiest to fill.
7. Be personable, leading the Parliamentary Labour Party is the biggest PR job going after England football captain. Do not become obsessed with the media, respond to it, but focus on long-term popularity as well as addressing the immediate need.
8. Work with your civil servants, they are not the enemy, they do not know everything but do not alienate them. They are a tool in the tool box, just learn to use them correctly.
9. Get your message out there, use whatever means necessary. It does not have to be you giving the message and that might keep the media on their toes. Again this requires trust and teamwork; make sure you have a strong team in place.
10. Any Prima Donnas who want to constantly badger and bully for a position in the cabinet/leadership are placing their needs before the party. Give them a healthy holiday on the back benches, preferably for the rest of their "career".
11. Accept disagreements from your cabinet. It should never get personal though, so lay down the ground rules from the beginning. People have different views. Do not allow ministers to blackmail you into letting them get their way.
12. Accept that you do not know everything. A good leader stays well informed, you will need your own people to randomly visit hospitals, canvass and gather information for you. Where you know people will be unhappy with a decision you are having to make, it is up to you to make the case, if you can't then don't do it. Everyone has limits.
13. Be prepared to get your hands dirty, be with the homeless, the armed forces, KPMG Canary Warf, the resident who is not expecting a visit from you. Be as close to the people as possible, highlighting the disenfranchisement of the Tories. If you want to win power you have to play the game this way.
14. As often as you can,  meet people. Use some holiday time to visit some Brits, only bring the camera in they are happy for it to be and you get a genuinely warm performance that is stronger than one that is stage managed.
15. Make sure you know how far you are willing to go when making compromises. You must have a strong negotiating position and a clear idea of what the party needs, what the public needs and to what extent you can stretch or develop your position.
16. Do not allow the Tories to “normalise the cuts”. you must as leader with your team work out how to make sure the cuts are seen to be ruthless, beyond the pail and extreme use living examples constantly displaying where people are losing their jobs in both sectors and losing their businesses. Nothing bothers people more than unemployment as they begin to fear for their own jobs/businesses.
17. Explain how Labour can ensure the economy benefits from longer term cuts to grow and diversify the economy.
18. Coalitions represent a failure of diversity because we are ruled by a secular political class with a narrow range of skills and experience. Diversify the Parliamentary Labour Party, get there before anyone else and you will have professionals speaking out for their respective policy areas which will be harder for the opponents to contest.
19. Have a plan to keep Labour in for four terms. It may not happen but it permits your policy structure to develop over time in a coherent and consistent manner.
20. Good Luck. You'll need it.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

* Writing for LabourList, Ed Balls attacked the "Miliband soap opera" and laid out his housing plans.

* Polly Toynbee rails at "vain, venal has-beens", and their interbentions in the leadership contest...

* Steve Richards says it's time to move on from New Labour.

* David Miliband is said to be irked by Peter Mandelson's intervention in the leadership race.

* The old guard meanwhile have hit back at Mandelson.

* Mary Riddell says the race isn't as important as what comes next.

* Tony Blair looks set to attack Gordon Brown's record in government as his book is published.

* And Gordon Brown writes for the Independent on Niger, a nation "dying in silence".

By Ed Balls MP / @edballsmp

As Labour Party members prepare to decide our next leader, too many questions remain unanswered. The now daily episodes of the Miliband soap opera suit those who want to keep this a two-horse race, but do not do justice to the issues at stake in this election.

It is wearily familiar of the general election campaign when serious questions went unasked or unanswered as the media obsession with personalities dominated all discussion.

As we have seen since the election, politics – for good or bad – is in the end about practical decision making that affects people’s lives. It is about having the strength and belief to turn ideas into reality, and take a stand on the issues that matter. 

That’s why, as ballots go out, my focus is on one of most important issues affecting all our lives, critical to the coming decade: housing.

Today, alongside former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, shadow housing minister John Healey and shadow employment minister Yvette Cooper I am setting out an alternative plan on housing which directly affects the future of the economy, and which encapsulates my approach to the leadership of our party.

Throughout this campaign, I’ve argued that the biggest challenge facing the country is the economy and public spending.

I believe the coalition’s plans are savage, unnecessary and deeply destructive, and they need to be fought and exposed every step of the way.

But we also need to set out a clear alternative, explain why it is credible, and persuade people to start listening to us again.

Getting lost in debates about New and Old Labour may generate lots of headlines, but will get us nowhere with the public.

We need to show why our ideas will help meet the challenges of the next decade rather than the last one, and will help us win back the voters we lost.

And housing, an issue too often neglected, goes to the heart of these challenges.

For a start, housing exemplifies the economic alternative we need right now, and exposes the myth that cuts can somehow produce jobs and growth.

For every pound spent on house building an estimated £1.40 in gross output is generated across the economy. Every two homes built create an estimated three full time jobs plus up to four times that number in the supply chain.

That is why Kevin Rudd’s fiscal stimulus in Australia focused on public sector construction, and succeeded in averting a recession.

In Britain, the construction industry has so far been hit harder than any other by the recession, with 300,000 job losses so far.

Figures from April to June suggested a strong recovery, but they were a misleading guide to the future: they included businesses catching up with work after the bad winter, and they were buoyed by Labour’s public sector building programme, which the coalition has now slashed.

Plans pioneered by Labour’s last housing minister John Healey would have seen some 176,000 social homes built over the next four years, created by £11 billion of government funding, with as much again from councils and housing associations.

The coalition is set to cut that investment, as well as driving through changes to planning rules which will stop homes being built, and remove the requirement to include lower-cost housing in developments.

And while Ken Livingstone led the way as Mayor of London to boost social housing in the capital, those plans have been put into reverse by Boris Johnson.

Our first priority must be to fight those cuts, but I believe we must also recognise that Labour’s plans were too cautious, and make the case now for a major expansion in house building.

There can be no doubt that the extra homes are needed. With four and a half million on housing waiting lists and two and a half million in overcrowded accommodation, more affordable homes would meet an acute social need.

Since Alistair Darling’s March budget – thanks to our economic recovery plan – tax revenues have been higher and spending on welfare and unemployment lower than predicted. The public finances are around £12 billion healthier than forecast at the time of the Budget.

The coalition wants to use that extra money to pay down the deficit faster.

I think that at a time when the economy is still so fragile and other countries are already tipping back into recession, we should instead use that money to boost construction jobs and build new homes.

By using half of that £12 billion, a £6 billion investment this year and next, we could build 100,000 extra affordable homes which it’s been estimated would create up to 750,000 new jobs, directly in the construction industry and indirectly in the supply chain including thousands of apprenticeships for young people.

And rather than raising VAT on the repair, maintenance and improvement of housing to 20% from January, we should create a temporary rate of 5%, cutting the costs for households investing in the value of their home, and creating thousands more jobs. In the short term this could be paid for by part of the remaining £6 billion windfall, but the evidence from when this has been tried in other countries is that the actual tax take increases as a result.

Crucially, all the extra growth and tax revenues these plans would create would help us pay down more of the deficit later on when the economy is fully recovered.

But our campaign against the coalition’s housing policies does not just mean fighting for the new affordable homes families badly need, but also standing up for people who can’t afford their own homes.

As Yvette Cooper will argue today as a result of the coalition's housing benefit cuts, from next year 50,000 of the poorest pensioner households face cuts of £11 a week. Working families on low pay face cuts of £12 a week. Severely disabled people face cuts of £13 a week. And that just covers a quarter of the government's housing benefit cuts plans.

Hundreds of thousands of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society will not have the money to pay their rent if these plans go through. And George Osborne has the gall to describe this as progressive.

But let's admit where Labour got it wrong too.

We were late in recognising the importance of building more homes and more affordable homes. So whilst 2007 saw the highest numbers of homes built for thirty years, progress stalled when the financial crisis struck.

By the election, we looked out of touch with voters' aspirations of a secure home for themselves and their children. Worries on the doorstep about people 'jumping the queue' usually reflected despair at being unable to find an affordable home - because there were simply not enough of them.

And for many aspirant first time buyers, hit first by high house prices and then by the mortgage crisis and tougher lending terms, we weren’t able to do enough to help. We made a major difference to helping existing home-owners avoid repossession compared to previous recessions, but too many are still struggling to get on the ladder.

The truth is that whilst we made progress, Labour leaders over several decades never paid enough sustained attention to housing to make it the priority it deserved. That must change.

We now need a strong housing policy to support our economy, to provide the homes Britain badly needs and to reconnect with the voters we lost, both young families who want a home of their own and those queuing patiently for social housing.

That means building more affordable homes, new deals on mortgages to help first time buyers, more council house building, and fair reforms to housing benefit that support work – such as housing tax credit – not just blanket cuts.

For me politics is practical – it’s about how you put values into practice and make ideas into reality. That’s what I did in my 13 years in government, and that’s what I’m determined to do now. Not debating but delivering. And Labour’s leader needs to deliver now.

Details of Ed's housing event can be found here.

Former energy minister David Kidney speaks to ePolitix.com about his new role as the head of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and the possibility of a return to Parliament.

Ed Balls has hit out at the "soap opera" surrounding fellow Labour leadership contenders David and Ed Miliband, as the contest is increasingly framed as a battle between new and old Labour.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today may have been quiet in the world of work as most people spent the day gardening, sleeping or watching "Three Men and a Baby", but in the Labour leadership race there was a sudden flurry of action, as a Lord returned to the fray...

ED MILIBAND was the subject of Mandelson's return to the leadership contest today, and suggested in an interview with the Times this morning that electing Ed would result in an electoral cul-de-sac for the party. Writing exclusively for LabourList this evening, Ed Miliband's agent Sadiq Khan MP responded to Mandelson, saying:

"Peter falls into the trap of making misunderstanding Ed Miliband's position and makes an unfair caricature of Ed's campaign by saying that he is dumping on our record in government or appealing only to Labour's so-called "core vote"."

"What we achieved in government, we should be very proud of, but what Ed rightly says is that we lost our radicalism on some issues and were too afraid of the ghosts of our past, so took the wrong course on some other issues. If we don't own up to where we didn't get it right, then surely we stand no chance of putting back together the winning coalition that we need, in order to kick out the ConDem coalition."

Ed has so far kept away from the argument, spending today campaigning in Carlisle. Tomorrow is his "Call for change" event - more on that in tomorrow's coverage from the leadership race.

DAVID MILIBAND was today hosting the largest event of his "Movement for Change" campaign today, with a rally of over 1000 supporters at the Emmanuel Centre in London today. You can read David's speech on his website. Before the event David recorded the following Audioboo:

Listen!

David reacted to the event afterwards on Twitter, saying:

"Remarkable, moving, inspiring Movement for Change rally in Westminster. Real people, real politics."

His campaign team also tweeted the following photo from the event:

Earlier today, David was in West Bromwich, where he became the first UK politician to open a Hindu temple.

 

ANDY BURNHAM rode his battlebus back to his home patch in the North West today, and attended Manchester Pride. Later Andy was in Bootle, before heading out on the doorstep for a by-election in Ormskirk. While he was in Manchester, Andy recorded the following video:

Andy also followed several of his fellow leadership candidates by seeking to reach out to Lib Dems today - however Andy isn't seeking their votes, he's looking for their help to defend the NHS. In his letter to the Lib Dems, Andy said:

"This plan is much more radical and dangerous than the GP fundholding reforms of the last Conservative government. There is rising anxiety in the NHS about it."

"You hold the key to the future of our NHS. I do not believe that the people who voted for you at the election voted for such a radical break-up plan. I urge you to listen to them and stand up for our NHS in the face of this attack, which threatens to unpick its very fabric."

DIANE ABBOTT was on WATO today, commenting on Peter Mandelson's latest foray into the leadership campaign. Abbott said:

"Lord Mandelson is a man of great talent, but he has got to accept his era is over and the public do not want to return to the spin, the triangulation, the internecine warfare" she said."

On the subject of second preferences, Diane said she said she is asking supporters:

"to go out and get one more vote for me, because I believe I can still win... I'm not ready to declare for a second preference. I don't rule it out."

ED BALLS was campaigning in Bolton today with David Causby MP.

Tomorrow Ed will be hosting a housing event with Ken Livingstone, shadow employment minister Yvette Cooper and shadow housing minister John Healey.

By Sadiq Khan MP / @SadiqKhan

Let me say first of all that Peter Mandelson worked tirelessly in the general election, and was a big part of our success in government, on and off, over the past 13 years. We should not let any honest disagreements that we have over this leadership election cloud his important place in Labour’s history.

Peter’s intervention has served to highlight the big choice facing the Labour Party in this leadership contest – change versus a return to the New Labour of the past.

It is precisely because Peter Mandelson led our last general election campaign that I am surprised that he doesn’t see that we must change to win again.

To me, this is a simple equation: if we refuse to change, and insist that we were right on everything and the electorate were wrong to reject Labour at the last election, then how can we expect to bring back the 5 million “lost voters” who left Labour since 1997?

Peter falls into the trap of misunderstanding Ed Miliband’s position and makes an unfair caricature of Ed’s campaign by saying that he is dumping on our record in government or appealing only to Labour’s so-called "core vote".

What we achieved in government, we should be very proud of, but what Ed rightly says is that we lost our radicalism on some issues and were too afraid of the ghosts of our past, so took the wrong course on some other issues. If we don’t own up to where we didn’t get it right, then surely we stand no chance of putting back together the winning coalition that we need, in order to kick out the ConDem coalition.

Ed has made clear that to win again, we need to appeal across the board to the voters who left us – middle class and working class voters, people who left us for the Lib Dems and people who deserted us for the Tories.

That means recognising that we need to change on a broad range of policies, like ID cards and tuition fees. That means recognising that we didn’t do enough to lift people out of low pay and it means taking bold action to lift wages by introducing tax breaks for companies who pay a living wage. It means recognising that one more heave with the same New Labour playbook won’t win us the election next time round.

Peter will always have a special place in the history of New Labour, but he has recognised more than anyone in our recent past when the party has to move on in order to win again. Peter was right that the party had to modernise in the 1990s, but he is now on the wrong side of history in a way that he would never have imagined in 1994.

This isn’t 1994 - it is 2010, but Ed Miliband is right and Peter is wrong: now is the time for change, not retrenchment.

By Laurence Turner / @larry_turner

All candidates agree that this contest is about the future, but as we enter September it is hard to shake off the suspicion that our next leader will be decided by the ghost of conferences past.

Let me put my cards on the table. I am supporter of David Miliband, because I believe he has the gravitas to lead our party; the depth of policy understanding to genuinely renew Labour in opposition; and the ability to appeal to all sections of the electorate.

(Supporters of other candidates can start reading again now.)

I am also writing as someone who frequently despaired of New Labour during our thirteen years in office. Criticisms of New Labour are fashionably dismissed as naïve: we are incapable – we are told – of understanding the difficult compromises of office, the necessity of the modernisation project, or the impossibility of taking another path. Fortunately, the world is not neatly divided into competing camps of modernists and troglodytes.

The truth is that many party members accepted the need for modernisation, but were kept at arms length by the leadership. The party was too useful as an example of what New Labour was not; it was something for the government to be defined against, a perpetual symbol of the impossible politics of the 1980s. As a former aide to Tony Blair once put it, ‘if something is popular with the party there is a part of [Blair] that thinks there is probably something wrong with it.’ The resulting rift associated the leadership with arrogance and insincerity, and ensured that the membership was never fully brought into the modernisation process. One of New Labour’s core assumptions became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As any good progressive knows, a worm once trod upon will turn. Some supporters of Ed Miliband are attempting to paint David as the ‘continuity’ candidate whilst portraying Ed as a ‘break’ with the past. They clearly hope that this leadership contest will mark the revenge of the party on New Labour, and this line of argument may well end up swinging the election. I am unconvinced, and would make three points in response:

Both David and Ed Miliband were at the heart of New Labour in government. Both served as advisers, MPs and ministers. Ed went so far as to author the 2010 Manifesto. The main difference is that the brothers found themselves on different sides of the Blair-Brown divide.

If Ed really was the trenchant critic of New Labour that some would like to believe, what did he actually do about it? This is meant as a genuine question. Take Iraq. Along with over a million other Britons I marched in 2003, and would love to know if Ed similarly took positive action. Questions to Ed Miliband’s campaign on this matter have, so far, gone unanswered. Given that some will base their vote on the issue of Iraq, we deserve to know how deeply his opposition ran.

This leadership campaign has produced surprisingly little discussion of policy. The main disagreement between the Miliband brothers has been on the issue of university funding. This is hardly a repeat of the Bevan/Gaitskell struggle for the soul of the Labour Party.

There is a wider case against the low-level ‘sniping’ from both Miliband camps. We have, so far, avoided the fratricidal bloodletting that our opponents would dearly love to see. Long may that continue. Let us avoid another pitfall. The legacy of Thatcherism has divided the Conservative Party for twenty years, and kept them in opposition for the greater part of those two decades. Let us not repeat their mistakes. The worst thing we could do would be to replicate the structural weakness at the heart of New Labour – a destructive rivalry which owed far more to personality than policy. Our energy should be focused on fighting the iniquities of the present government, not spent wastefully on internal struggles and negative briefings. Only our opponents will gain in the end.

For me too, it is time to let go of the old hostility to New Labour. What is done is done, and the protagonists have departed the stage. There is nothing to be gained from fighting on; holding re-enactments of old battles will not change their outcome. We should instead learn from our mistakes, and preserve the best of our achievements. In the meantime, let us finish this leadership contest in the good spirit with which it started. Let us focus on the positive qualities of our different candidates, and conduct ourselves with a dignity which befits the Labour Party – and would befit a future Labour government.

 

By Diarmid Weir

There can be only one rational reason to vote against AV in next May’s referendum, and that is to undermine democratic government in Britain. This explains why ludicrous right-wingers such as Matthew Elliot and Lord Leach are in charge of the campaign for a ‘No’ vote. The best chance for the rich and powerful to carry on ruling the roost is to make sure that the house of commons remains as unrepresentative and polarised as possible.

Dishing the Lib-Dems, however much we believe they deserve it, is not a good reason to vote ‘No’. Even the most power-crazed and deluded are entitled to the odd good idea, and while AV is not the whole enchilada, it’s definitely better than the moronic First Past the Post (FPTP) system. If the Lib-Dems turn out to have played their part in a slash and burn catastrophe, as seems more than likely, then they will get their pasting at the polls, don’t worry. In fact, if the coalition breaks down early because of the loss of this vote (and I think that unlikely, or it probably never would have formed in the first place), that seems as likely to be to the Lib-Dems’ ultimate electoral advantage as otherwise.

If Labour, or a number of its high-profile members, were to campaign against AV, this will be seen for the hypocrisy it is, given that we very recently had just this proposal in our own manifesto. And why on earth would we reject for national elections something that, as anyone who has attended a branch or CLP AGM will know, is standard practice within our own party?

The advantages of the Alternative Vote are subtle but decisive. By allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference, it means that it is always possible to give support to their most preferred candidate. Even when that candidate seems unlikely to win, by ranking a second candidate (and further candidates) voters can still express a preference over the final outcome. This reduces the degree to which voting is influenced not by our true preferences, but by our guesses about how others will vote.

Standing for election to parliament is not the same as trying to win a competition. The purpose of the exercise is to find the candidate that best represents the views of his or her constituency. If a candidate cannot win the support of the majority of constituents, then this suggests that they do not do so. The AV system will generally produce a winner that has some support from a majority of voters. Candidates that take extremist lines in policies or campaigning will usually fail in this regard.

I’m a supporter of a fully proportional system, but I accept that some arguments against PR have merit. In particular, there is a case for a strong constituency link for MPs. AV will not affect this. There is the argument that frequent coalitions are a problem. AV should not generally make coalitions more likely. So, I repeat, there is only one rational reason to vote ‘No’, and that’s not one that any Labour member or supporter should be entertaining. Among supporters of more extensive reform there may be a temptation not to vote at all, but strong support for this change might just show that electoral reform isn’t only for anoraks.

By Chris Watt

As the ConDem coalition reaches 100 days in office, we learn that their welfare review will look at abolishing winter fuel payments for all pensioner households. This policy, introduced by Labour, deserves to be defended; its abolition would be misguided for two fundamental reasons.

Firstly, the idea is to reduce the cost of the system, but the universal system is cheap and simple to administer. Making it means-tested would involve a massive increase in the bureaucratic cost of the system, as forms are processed and assessments of eligibility made.

Secondly, and more importantly, many of those pensioner households who rely on the payments to keep warm every winter would lose out. Many would simply not fill in the form in order to claim if it was means tested.

The coalition argues that by removing the payments for those on higher incomes, it would save the cost of paying those who can afford their bills. However, many, especially those who would inevitably only just miss out under a means test, would fall into fuel poverty.

This would happen because fuel poverty is measured not only on income, but on how much it takes to heat the household. Without the requisite increase in funding to improve the energy efficiency of some of our worst housing, we could see increasing numbers of our elderly being faced with a choice between heating and eating each winter.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

* Mandelson warns against trying to create a pre-New Labour Party, in what many have suggested is a criticism of Ed Miliband.

* Ed Miliband tells The Sun that he thinks he's going to win.

* He has also tried to carve out differences between him and his brother in an interview with the Independent.

* Tony Blair is expected to throw publically throw his support behind David Miliband this week.

* Mary-Ann Seighart on Labour's "middle class prize".

* In the FT, John Lloyd writes on the subject of Labour leaving the "comfort zone".

* Andy Burnham tells the Lib Dems that they hold the key to the future of the NHS.

* And the Chagos Islanders have made an appeal to the Labour leadership candidates...

By Howard Dawber

Over 100 days ago, Britain woke up to a new coalition government. In that time they have already displayed extraordinary economic illiteracy and are beginning to champion a dangerous mix of cruelty and cheerful incompetence, perhaps already worse than any government in living memory.

Here are the final five of the top 50 things they have done wrong ... so far...

46. CUTTING EXTENSION OF FREE SCHOOL MEALS
The coalition is planning to stop the proposed roll-out of free school meals to the children of low-aid families. The decision will cost families earning less than £307 a week about £600 a year, equivalent to a penny rise in their income tax for each child.

Why is it a bad idea? Children from low-paid families are, statistically, more likely to get ill, more likely to be obese, and more likely to have an unhealthy diet at home. Making sure they get one balanced, nutricious hot meal each day is a good idea. The Child Poverty Action Group said that it was “stunned” by the ConDems’ move, which would have lifted 50,000 children out of poverty at a stroke.

47. CUTTING WINTER FUEL ALLOWANCES
On August 18th, as the 100th day of the coalition dawned, we learned that the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners might be cut,  reduced or means-tested. A government website is already advising that women will now only receive this benefit after the age of 65 (instead of 60 as at present), and this may rise to 66 in line with the increased pension age. Iain Duncan Smith is apparently advocating cuts to benefits which go to the middle-classes like the winter fuel allowance and child benefit, to help pay for other benefits he wants to bring in. This is exactly the opposite of what David Cameron promised during the general election debates when he categorically stated, in response to a question from Gordon Brown, that the winter fuel allowance, free bus passes, and free prescription charges would stay. We now know at least two of these benefits will be cut – we have to wait and see if he goes ahead and cuts prescription charges, too. In the coalition document itself it says that the coalition will “protect” the Winter Fuel Allowance. Whatever that means.

Why is it a bad idea? The winter fuel allowance was brought in to save lives and stop older people suffering from fuel poverty over winter. Starting at £100 in 1998, it rose to £250 by last year and £400 for older pensioners. Being a universal benefit, the costs of administering the payment were very low, and this ensured that everyone who needed it, received it.  This change may directly cost lives or contribute to ill health as pensioners who should get help with their fuel bills over the winter will go without, like they used to.

Osborne’s other problem is that even cutting £600m from Winter Fuel Allowance compared to Gordon Brown’s payments last year would not impact the deficit at all. The £2.7bn paid out last year included a £50 “bonus” for most pensioners and a £100 “bonus” for those over 80. So the figure in the budget for this year is only £2.1bn. To make any impact on the deficit, Osborne would have to cut the level further and / or means test the benefit. Means-testing the benefit will cost a lot of money – possibly even more than £200 per applicant meaning that there will be no real cost benefit in making this change.

48. PHILLIP GREEN TO ADVISE ON CUTS
Philip Green, the owner of TOPSHOP and BHS, has been asked by George Osborne to advise the goverment on cuts to government expenditure. However Green is avoiding paying tax on all his income by putting key business interests in his wife’s name. She “lives” in Monaco. According to several newspapers, this arrangement is thought to have saved them tens of millions of pounds in tax.

Why is it a bad idea? Bringing in outside experts to help with policy ideas is not a bad idea. But in a government and Conservative Party packed with millionaires, some of whom (Lord Ashcroft for example) have a dubious record of schemes to avoid paying their fair share in tax, another offshore-tax-avoiding millionaire like Green seems a bit over the top. There is something fundamentally wrong about bringing in someone who doesn’t ever have to worry about money to help decide which cuts are going to be made affecting those on the lowest incomes for whom every pound is vital. And Vince Cable apparently agrees with me.

49. THE WHOLE JUSTIFICATION OF THE DEFICIT REDUCTION PACKAGE
The ConDems have based their whole economic policy on the idea that the economy is tanking, that there is no spare money in government, but that growth is strong enough to cope with a massive reduction in public spending. In their analysis Britain’s deficit and debt puts us on a par with Greece and if we don’t take drastic action the whole economy will collapse. Labour’s plan to halve the deficit in 4 years, generally regarded as ambitious but workable by economists, is too slow. They want to halve it in two years.

Why is it a bad idea? The ConDems have their facts wrong, and on top of that have the wrong strategy as well. Despite being faced with the worst world-wide recession in decades, Labour took brave decisions to support the banks, stimulate the economy and keep spending under control. As a result, unemployment when Labour left office in 2010 was LOWER than when Labour came to power in 1997. Interest rates remain the lowest they have been for decades. Having got the economy out of recession at the end of last year, growth is now higher than expected – the economy grew by 1.1% from April – June. Unemployment fell in the last quarter and is lower in the UK than the EU average. Our banks have been stable and secure.

And what about our terrible, terrible debt – the reason the Tories keep talking about the “unavoidable” cuts? UK debt as a percentage of GDP reached 68.7% earlier this year and is still rising. That’s not great. But it is comfortably lower than the other G7 countries like Germany, the United States, France, Canada, Italy or Japan. Last time the Tories were in power they put up our debt from 34% of GDP to 51% to help get through the recession of the 1990s. This time they are doing the exact opposite to what most countries around the world agree is the right way to get back into sustainable growth.  For a comparison with our major international competitors see this graph. The “savage” cuts programme is not just wrong because it is not based on a real understanding of the economic position of the country, it is wrong because it may reverse the positive trend of growth.

The Bank of England says that the ConDem plans will lead to a slower recovery and higher inflation than previously expected with Labour’s plans.

Finally we taxpayers are already £5bn in profit on the government’s investment in Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland. Within a year of the end of the recession Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s decision to step in with funding has been proved not just right but very profitable too. The Tories, incidentally, want to sell these shares off at a loss to benefit their friends in the stockbroking and hedge fund industry.

50. THE COALITION – A BAD IDEA FOR THE LIB DEMS AND THE COUNTRY
Finally, the worst decision of all. The decision by the Liberal Democrats to go into coalition with the Conservatives in the first place. Speaking on Newsnight on 18 August, Peter Hyman was right. A minority Conservative government, or one with a small majority, would have pulled to the centre, and been more cautious in its cuts, worried about Labour and the Lib Dems combining to bring it down. The inclusion of the Lib Dems (and even some Labour advisers) in the coalition allows the Tories to be more radical and to dare to make cuts that they would have thought impossible before the election. With the Lib Dems locked in, the Tories have been able to cast off their centre-right manifesto and instead unleash the full force of the neo-Thatcherite cuts programme.

Clegg and perhaps most unfortunately of all Danny Alexander – who are both decent, honourable people – are being us

By Mark Ferguson / @MarkFergusonUK

There's a whole slew of Labour leadership-related article in today's Sunday papers. The most striking thing about them is that the media, at least, now clearly perceive this to be a two-horse race: coverage of Ed Balls, Diane Abbott and Andy Burnham is scarce indeed.

Yes, there are two frontrunners now in this leadership election. But the role of the other candidates, as I've written elsewhere, remains crucial, and how their second and third preferences transfer is still likely to decide the outcome of the race.

Rather than going through them all one by one with a scalpel, I thought it better to list some below and allow LabourList readers to devour them one by one throughout the day:

David Miliband interview - Sunday Mirror.

Ed Mliband interview - Sunday Mirror.

Sky's the limit for the Miliband boys - Sunday Mirror.

Lily Allen is backing Ed Miliband...over curry - Sunday Mirror.

Sunday Mirror backs David Miliband - Sunday Mirror.

Ed Miliband article: I'll make capitalism work for the people - Observer.

David Miliband interview: I can build a coalition across the party - Independent on Sunday.

A little fratricide could do Labour no harm - Independent on Sunday.

David Miliband 'simmering with sibling rage' over having to share race with Ed - Mail on Sunday.

The new 'Millie' crisis facing Labour -  Sunday Times (paywall).

By Howard Dawber

Over 100 days ago, Britain woke up to a new coalition government. In that time they have already displayed extraordinary economic illiteracy and are beginning to champion a dangerous mix of cruelty and cheerful incompetence, perhaps already worse than any government in living memory.

Here are the numbers forty-one to forty-five of the top 50 things they have done wrong ... so far...

41. CUTTING THE JOBSEEKERS' GUARANTEE

The Con-Dems are cutting the  two year Jobseeker’s Guarantee, which promised every adult who had been out of work and claiming JSA for two years a guaranteed offer of a job, internship, volunteering placement or work experience. It now appears that the guarantee will now be completely cut.

Why is it a bad idea? Along with all the other measures to help people back into work which the coalition has decided to cut, this scheme is vital right now. The ConDems have said they will put in a new programme of help for jobseekers by next summer - however this effectively condemns the 2.5 million unemployed people to go without this structured help for the next year.

42. ENDING FREE SWIMMING FOR UNDER-16s AND OVER-60s
Labour brought in free swimming for children and older people to help keep the nation healthy and make sure these groups used their local pool. A cheap, popular scheme which helped drive business to local leisure centres, especially out of peak times. The ConDems have decided to end the scheme.

Why is it a bad idea? Along with a lot of their other cuts, this one may cost more in the long term. Swimming is good exercise and if making it free encourages people who otherwise would not go to their local pool, it helps reduce obesity and heart problems. The new government's own report on the scheme showed it has has a positive impact on the exercise levels of the target groups, and has also driven additional fee-paying customers into pools. A short-sighted and mean-spirited decision.

43.  CUTTING SPORT FUNDING - AS LONDON 2012 APPROACHES
The ConDems, who made such a show of supporting England in the World Cup, have decided to make drastic cuts to the budgets of our sports bodies. UK Sport has had an immediate budget reduction of £1.7 million and Sport England is facing £4.254 million of cuts. Sport England have said they are going to try to achieve this  through further reductions in administration and back office functions. However, their Chief Executive notes that this will be ‘challenging, given the £20 million savings we are already delivering in our administration costs over the current three-year spending period’.

Why is it a bad idea? Sport is already under-funded. Now we are about to host the Olympics and our national sports bodies are going to be scraping around to fund training and support for elite athletes, as well as being unable to capitalise on the huge explosion of interest in sport expected, when they should be building new facilities and funding new projects. A very short sighted decision.

44. YOUTH FACILITIES MONEY CUT AND GIVEN TO "BIG SOCIETY BANK" INSTEAD
Under Labour, the government planned to use money lying in dormant bank accounts to fund a major expansion of youth facilities like youth clubs and skate parks. The coalition has decided instead to use this money to fund a new "Big Society Bank" which will be used to promote Cameron's pet Big Society schemes.

Why is it a bad idea? This effectively steals money which should be going to young people and hands it over to central government to be used in the promotion of pet projects. Shameful. What's even worse is that Extended Schools and youth services are also facing big cuts so these vital facilities are going to be hit on day to day running costs as well as capital. Someone should tell Cameron that these projects help keep young people off the street and out of trouble...

45. CUTS TO LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FUNDING
Local authorities in deprived areas depend on funding from central government to pump prime regeneration and job schemes. This isn't top-down bureaucratic waste - it's essential seed-core funding. Thatcher and Heseltine understood this which is why they set up powerful and well-funded Development Corporations to revitalise the inner cities of the 1980s. But this ConDem coalition is cutting most of the key schemes which help support business in our most needy areas.  £49.9 million has been cut from the Working Neighbourhood Fund, which aims to tackle worklessness in deprived areas, £17.5 million has been cut from the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) which aims to stimulate economic development in deprived areas and £186 million has been cut from Regional Development Agencies.

Why is it a bad idea? This takes money away from deprived areas and will make it much harder to promote economic growth.

 

Twenty Labour PPCs have issued an open letter declaring support for Ed Miliband. The former candidates write:

"Ed Miliband is the only candidate who can give a voice to our authentic Labour values and offer a coherent policy programme that works. He is the change that we need to win the next election and transform Britain for good."

The full text and signatories are reproduced below:

--

As Parliamentary Candidates standing for Labour at the last General Election, it became clear to us as we talked to voters that those who previously supported us felt that the previous Labour Government didn't listen enough and weren't doing enough to address their concerns. This included the increasing income gap between them and those earning obscene amounts - notably in the banking sector whose frivolous excesses and irresponsibility had led to the worst peacetime economic crisis since the Great Depression. Coupled with that was the abolition of the 10p rate which meant overnight they were paying double the amount in taxation and taking a double cut in their earnings. This would explain that among all the different social groups, the skilled working class or C2s showed a drop of 18% support for Labour.

In order to win back our own supporters who deserted us at the last election and ultimately to win back the 5 million voters who backed us in 1997 we need to endorse the candidate who will address these concerns and do the best job for the people of this country.

Having listened and talked to all the Leadership candidates, we are convinced that the person who most effectively meets the challenge is Ed Miliband.

Ed is the candidate who can best offer the change our Party needs if we are to win back the support of people across the length and breadth of the country.

He wants to change Britain's economy so that it encourages people to take responsibility. That means taking action at the top of the wage scale to ensure that the richest contribute their fair share. It means supporting those who can't work, but encouraging those who can to do so. And it means recognising the contribution that middle-income earners make, so that they are supported if they fall on hard times.

As part of this change, Ed wants to tackle inequality in our society. That's why he's campaigning for a Living Wage to ensure fair pay for a fair day's work. And that's why he wants to establish a High Pay Commission, to close the gap in income inequality between the top and the bottom.

To build this new economy, local industries have to be supported and nurtured. Ed is furious, as we are, about the Coalition Government scrapping the Regional Development Agencies, which did so much to sustain local economies. As leader, he would support an active industrial policy that encourages more high-paid, high-skilled, and more sustainable jobs.

Ed knows we have to get the budget deficit down and is committed to making the tough decisions needed to help balance the books. However, he believes this must be done fairly and not at the expense of the most vulnerable in society, and in way that ensures growth to strengthen and entrench the recovery.

New Labour achieved a great deal in Government - the National Minimum Wage, crucial investment in public services, a windfall tax on utilities to pay for tackling youth unemployment, the introduction of civil partnerships and better paternity and maternity rights in the workplace. In addition, as former SoS at the Department of Energy and Climate Change Ed was the first government minister anywhere in the world to commit to cuts of 80% in greenhouse emissions by 2050. He also championed the new electric car being manufactured by Nissan in Sunderland. Finally the Equalities Act was one of the most powerful tools we have for empowering those disproportionately affected by Con Dem policies and Ed has taken the lead in this area by unequivocally recognising that we must embed equality in the Party itself at every level from cabinet down to branch. Overall Ed is proud of our record, and so he should be.

But at times we lost sight of what we hold dearest - our values - and how best to articulate and apply them to policy making, which is why we lost the election this year. In order to win back the trust of the public at large, Labour needs to return to its values, and rely on them as we set about building a better Britain.

Ed Miliband is the only candidate who can give a voice to our authentic Labour values and offer a coherent policy programme that works. He is the change that we need to win the next election and transform Britain for good. That is why we as Labour Parliamentary Candidates at the last election are supporting him. That is why we want Ed Miliband to be Leader of the Labour Party.

Jonathan Slater (Aldershot)

Lucy Powell (Manchester Withington)

Stuart King (Putney)

Nancy Platts (Brighton Pavilion)

Catharine Arakelian (Chingford and Woodford Green)

Graham Giles (Gosport)

Richard Scorer (Hazel Grove)

Tom Miller (Woking)

Tom Flynn (Southend West)

Luke Pollard (South West Devon)

Michael Sparling (South East Cornwall)

Sonia Klein (Ilford North)

Nicholas Milton (Kenilworth and Southam)

Tim Shand (Guildford)

Kevin Bonavia (Rochford and Southend East)

Eleanor Tunnicliffe (Richmond Park)

John MacKay (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross and candidate for the Scottish elections in 2011 in Caithness, Sutherland & Ross)

Jane Innes (Nuneaton)

Gareth Gould (South Holland & The Deepings)

Andrew Judge (Wimbledon)

 

By Matthew Turmaine / @turmaine

If politicians can take an agreed set of principles and apply them to circumstances they are faced with, achieving a positive outcome or the potential for such, they might be said to be successful. The general election result suggests that Labour needs to evolve and adapt to the circumstances it now faces if it is to achieve electoral success. Here are ten areas where it could improve.

1. The Economy: We Dropped the Baton
Accept that we lost the debate on the economy. We can argue till the cows come home about how our proposals would have been different and better but the public bought the Tory argument that our national debt is like an overpowering credit card bill rather than an investment for the future. Certainly, we should oppose the cuts every inch of the way because they are wrong and won't work, but start doing some serious thinking about how we'll clear up the mess the Coalition leaves for the unemployed, the wasted opportunities and the dispossessed. This is where we will gain ground.

2. Immigration: The Multi-coloured Elephant in the Room
Deal with the immigration debate. Like it or not, the public didn't buy our arguments on immigration. Too late we realised that establishing limits, having previously been positive and open about immigration was contradictory and shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted (not to mention wrong). It's a subtle and complex debate but there are areas of clarity. Explain where and why it's good and acknowledge where it's just driving blue collar salaries down and propose to do something about it - the ‘living wage', perhaps. Asylum seeking should be a trigger for compassion, not a dirty word.
3. Education: We Need a Level Playing Field
Barely a week goes by without media reporting on how middle class parents pretend to be religious to get little Tarquinius into a state school that delivers results and doesn't require them to re-mortgage to pay fees. Working class parents simply pray their kids will be able to read and write well enough to get a job. We need to properly empower teachers and create a genuinely nationwide secular system of state school excellence. This constant fracturing engenders unfairness and deceit. Re-establish the link between child behaviour and parental responsibility.

4. New Internationalism: Friend or Foe?
Surely this is one of the founding principles of the Labour Party? We need to start working better with the UN so that, for example, having the latest bristling nukes isn't the only route onto the Security Council. We're never going to give them up unilaterally and we'll never get a proper international consensus to prevent additional states developing or acquiring them unless we move much, much faster in this area. Time is of the essence here. We should also take our leading role in overseas aid and export it, if you'll excuse the expression.

5. Stop the War on Public Services:
We have got to do much better at making the case for public services in the light of economic hardship. The Coalition attacks, seemingly on the basis that if the private sector can't have something then neither should the public, will devastate people's engagement with front line public services. We all understand the economics of this but we need to get across that we're not proposing to rob Peter to pay Paula but to build growth that will benefit all. The State is a brand and we have to address why it has such bad PR at the moment, from the Film Council to giving people a helping hand.

6. Fairness: Looking Up, Looking Down
The Coalition has broadcast the word ‘fairness' to an even greater extent than its claims to be ‘progressive'. But there's something very wrong in our country in terms of fairness at the moment. Disadvantaged people often don't realise how unfair their deal is in society. If we are to properly address these issues, we need to proclaim that inspiration is as important as aspiration, for without the former we'll struggle to achieve the latter. We need to be prepared to say that the luxury of being loaded means you pay more. And we need to have an answer to why most people feel short-changed on tax and salaries while the bankers we saved are getting bonuses again.

7. You Can't Get Me; I'm Part of the Union:
Our politicians and leaders have become timid in the face of expanding global capitalism. Labour has been guilty of this in government too. It is not to suggest that we don't want globalisation or that we don't want economic growth - we need both. However, we have to find a way to be able to better manage being open for business while expecting companies and business leaders to play fair. We should address the perception of Unions in our economy. A better integrated industrial philosophy would surely help avoid the conflict we've seen of late. Put a Union rep on the board and reform how really ‘we're all in this together'.

8. Europe: The Final Countdown
Europe is such a thorny issue in the UK, especially if you believe our popular media's presentation of it. But we need to build our willingness to engage properly and appropriately. In terms of trade alone it's astounding that the popular view is so negative. We will be building a rod for our own back if we don't reform our attitude to Europe. As the scales rebalance in terms of global economic power, Europe presents us with a positive way forward. It will take guts, determination and persistence to do it but we have to argue that the family of European nations needs to be more familiar than it currently is. Even the IMF has started to consider this.

9 Electoral Reform: I'd Like Some Democracy, Please
The debate over electoral reform has become a mess. Tied as it is to the Coalition's attempts to reduce the number of MPs and change the boundaries, the AV proposals, to which we became supportive prior to the general election, look as if they'll collapse. It should be so much better. If I live in a safe Tory seat, why should a lifetime of participation in the electoral process count for nothing? Every election, every vote wasted. Whoever wins the leadership of our party needs to show strength and propose properly reforming our electoral system. Remember, it only means an end to majority government if you can't win the argument.

10. Let the Punishment Fit the Crime:
Many people in our country live in fear of crime. Statistics indicate that we dealt well with crime while in government. But people don't believe it. It's also costing us a fortune to lock up so many people. We need to look at new ways of reducing and dealing with crime. We should talk to the kids carrying the knives being used in street crime. We should also seriously consider not locking up non-violent criminals. Sure, fine them to the hilt, tag them, make them clear up dog shit for a couple of years in the name of community service but we have to find better ways to punish people and much better ways to rehabilitate people. People want to see violent criminals locked up, that's fair enough but we need to find a way to make the rest of the system work better so people stop ending up there in the first place.

By Lisa Nandy MP / @lisanandy

The ballots for the leadership election go out next week, but I am picking up a disconcerting level of confusion amongst party members about when they vote or how the system works. The preference system that the Labour Party uses has its advantages, but it also makes it hard for people to understand the eventual result. It was a similar story during the Deputy Leadership, when there was a feeling of unfairness amongst many members that Jon Cruddas, the popular left-wing candidate at the time, had won more first preferences than other candidates, but didn't win the contest.

It is starting to concern me because I had hoped (perhaps over-optimistically) that the leadership contest would be a critical opportunity to reinvigorate the party, and stimulate debate and grassroots involvement that has been lacking for too long. In Wigan there was initially a great deal of interest but I am becoming concerned that people are switching off. I'm sure it isn't just because of the ballot system, but it doesn't seem to help.
It's a relevant concern at the moment, because on 6th September when the House returns we're considering the proposal to hold a referendum on the alternative voting system. My view is that at a time of such economic pain we ought to be focusing on the sort of problems that people appear in my surgery with; not seeking to introduce a referendum on a voting system that many people seem to find more, not less, confusing.

I hope that whoever becomes Labour leader on 25th September will also take this view. In the heat and noise of the contest we're not hearing enough about the cuts. All of the candidates have talked about the pain they've caused but we've heard less about how they're both unnecessary and harmful to the economic recovery. Some of the candidates are trying - Ed Balls is the latest - but it is hard to get the message across when the media is largely focused on the personalities of the candidates and the heat of the campaign.
There has thankfully been some media attention this week about the disproportionate impact of the budget on certain groups, including women and people on low incomes. I have seen for myself the impact on women, as they are starting to become over-represented in my Wigan surgeries. Taken together the cuts to child benefit and other children's services are starting to cause real problems for women with children, but there are also hidden costs.
The Budget, for example, claimed that all public sector workers earning under £21,000 would be entitled to receive an increase of at least £250 per year but it later emerged that around a million part-time workers who earn £21,000 or less will actually have their pay frozen on the grounds that their equivalent full-time earnings would be over the limit. These regressive measures combined place a devastating pressure on women in particular, who are more likely to work part-time. The Fawcett Society are leading the way on this with help from some of my Labour colleagues, but without a concerted, united effort we will not get the message across.
That is why, despite my great hopes for this leadership contest, I will be relieved when it is over. We need a strong, representative shadow cabinet that can get the message out about the real impact of this coalition. It has been useful to have a chance to debate where Labour ought to go next, but certainly in my CLP there is now a strong appetite to focus our energy on what is happening to people out there in our community.

 

Ed Miliband has given a keynote speech this afternoon in London in which he sets out his stall for why he believes he should be Labour leader.

You can now read the full speech below.

--

There comes a time in every election when a choice has to be made – and in this Labour leadership election, we are now approaching that time.

It’s not a choice between Old Labour or New Labour

A core vote or middle England.

The question for us in this contest is: can we have the courage to recognise the scale of the change needed after one defeat, not after four as we had to do after 1992.

I believe that we must choose change.

Ideologically. Electorally. Organisationally.

Ideologically, because I believe we lost our way and got trapped in old ways of thinking.

Electorally, because the electoral map has changed.

Organisationally, because we thought the way to win was despite our movement not because of it.

Those are the changes we need to make. Those are the changes to move on from the New Labour comfort zone.

New Labour: right for its time – but tt was formed sixteen years ago and now we need to move on. Traditional New Labour solutions won’t work, and that is why I am the modernising candidate in this election.

1. Changing ideologically

First, we need to move on ideologically.

In 1994, Tony Blair told our party that our values were still the right values but that we got stuck in outdated ideas. He was right then.

And some of the truths of that time we must retain: we still need to speak to all sections of society, we still need to create wealth as well as distribute it, we still need to ally social justice and economic success.

But that generation of politicians was born in a very different era: they came of age in the 1980s. Some of the assumptions of that generation of politicians have served their time They saw Labour’s failings and how we had to change. But let’s be honest, for too long they were haunted by the ghosts of the 1980s as well.

New Labour fell into the same trap as Old Labour, clinging to old truths that had served their time: we got stuck with old certainties, bad policies and became out of touch.

Take two examples: our approach to markets, and the state.

New Labour: right to embrace markets, but the ghosts of the 1980s meant we couldn’t recognise their limits.

So while we were fixated on deregulation the banks spiralled out of control.

We didn’t want to be against aspiration, rightly so, but we ended up defending top pay even when people felt outraged about the excesses they saw – the party of the windfall tax becoming the party of bankers’ bonuses.

We were so concerned about being typecast as anti-business that we couldn’t provide protection for some of our most vulnerable workers.

And for the same reason, we backed new runways when our young people were telling us the environment mattered more.

The New Labour modernisers became the New Labour traditionalists, and became out of touch – and that’s why we need to modernise again in our approach to markets.

And just as we got stuck in old thinking about markets, so too in relation to the state.

New Labour did great things with the power of the state, including saving the economy during the banking crisis.

The hallmark of New Labour was what counts is what works but too often that led to a view of the state that was too managerial, top-down and too over-whelming.

Too managerial because a good idea, about targets led to bureaucratic overload, so the people who worked in the public services felt they had no stake in the improvements we were seeking.

A good idea, being intolerant of low standards in public services, ended up in the way it was done with people at the frontline too often feeling the culture was Whitehall knows best when they had something to say.

And also, particularly after 2001, we became too casual about state power and the liberty of the individual: from ID cards to ninety days.

All of these things need to change, on markets, on the state, and on foreign policy, on democracy, we have to have the courage to change, to think again — not about our values but about how we put them into practice.

And in this campaign I am the person who has shown I can take us beyond the New Labour comfort zone.

I am the candidate who has the strength to say where we got it wrong – to challenge old orthodoxies, to challenge the previous generation’s assumptions, with the confidence to change to win.

That’s what makes me the moderniser in this election

2. Changing electorally

And we’ve got to modernise too in our view of the electoral challenge facing us.

The electoral challenge facing 2010 Labour is very different from the challenge facing 1990s Labour.

The challenge for 1990s Labour under Tony Blair was to attract back middle-income voters, particularly those who had gone to the Tories. The challenge for us now is bigger: to attract back both middle-income voters and low-income voters.

And just to be very clear about this, let me repeat what I said in the essay that kicked off the debate about Labour’s electoral challenge ten days ago:

“We can neither win an election with the working-class vote alone—New Labour was right about that---nor can we take it for granted.”

And let’s look at the challenge for different voters that we lost.

The poorest and the low paid felt we had nothing to saw to them about the challenges in their lives.

Why is this argument important? Because the New Labour comfort zone said they had nowhere else to go – but that increasingly isn’t the case.

Between 1997 and 2010, we lost three million votes among manual workers or the unskilled.

And the increase in Conservative support came not from the most affluent but the least affluent.

We also need to win back middle-class voters, many of whom went to the Liberal Democrats.

Some went over specific issues such as Iraq and civil liberties, in seats, like Hornsey and Wood Green or Manchester Withington.

But for others, it was feeling increasingly squeezed. People working harder and longer, and suffering from the pressures of work and life being out of balance.

And they feared for their children: worrying that the next generation may be the first not to enjoy a better quality of life than the one that gone before. Watching their children descend into ever greater debt and with no hope of making it onto the housing ladder. Many felt we had nothing to say to them either.

We have to win them back too.

There are no false choices to be made here between appealing to one part of the electorate or the other.

The choice is whether we recognise that it is all parts of the electorate that we need to win back, not just one.

To win all of these voters back, we have to get out of the New Labour comfort zone and show we can change.

3. Changing organisationally

And in order to get back in touch with the people we lost, we must also change the way we run our party.

We need a party that looks outwards and listens to members of the public.

But in order for that to make a difference, we also need a leadership that listens to what our party is saying.

I disagree with those in my party who argue for renationalisation of the utilities or the abolition of Labour’s academy schools. If elected, I will lead this party, I will tell it hard truths and I will change this party.

But it’s not naive, it’s rational to say that on agency workers, on housing, on tuition fees our members got it right and we got it wrong.

A strong party is necessary to get policy right because some of the best policy can come from the ground up.

And a strong party and movement is about how you make change happen. We can pass legislation, we can spend money, we can raise revenue. All of those things matter.

But political change doesn’t just happen because we pull levers and legislate, it happens because our movement makes it happen.

Over 400 Labour councillors have now signed up to lead campaigns for the living wage in their communities, alongside trade union activists.

And it this is the kind of movement we need: bringing together labour party members, trade unionists, but also interested in the environment, young people – all people who share our values.

And in order to that we don’t simply need structural changes but above all a new attitude and cast of mind.

So we need big change as a political party: ideologically, electorally and the way we run our party. We need to move on from the New Labour comfort zone.

But we also need to do something else.

I am more certain than ever as this campaign enters its final stretch that people want a politics that inspires.

There are millions of people who want something bigger for our country and want something more from our politics.

We do need to reduce the deficit but politics must be bigger than that.

Remember our history. After 1945, with the biggest deficit in our history, that Labour government set out the vision of a good society---for a new welfare state and a new economy.

The choice for us is whether we can rise to the challenges of our times.

So we must have the courage to change.

Conclusion

A hundred years ago the centre left came together to found the Labour party.

Thirty years ago next year, tragically the Labour party split and the Limehouse Declaration set up the Council on social

By Dan Young

This nation is one of tradition with one of the greatest being the Monarchy. In 1066 William the Conqueror became the earliest undisputed monarch of the UK and in doing so began a long line that, with the exception of a small period between 1649 and 1660, has remained intact thereafter. According to an ipsos MORI poll conducted in 2006, 72% of Britons still favour a monarchy and only 18% a republic. This is significant because the same poll stated that, within the next 100 years, 53% of them believed the Monarchy would no longer exist and that a republic would have replaced it. However a similar poll in 2009, during the MP expenses scandal, was conducted by the Guardian and the Observer to assess how the British public would overhaul the current political system to make it more accountable and democratic. 56% of people surveyed said the solution was to abolish the monarchy.

The leader of the Australian Labor Party and, for the time being, Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, has recently called for the Monarchy and Australia to sever ties when the current Queen dies, and that, in its place, Australia should become a Republic, although she did not say what system of Republic would operate. This sense of republicanism is not new to Australia either and, as recent as 1999, the country had a referendum on whether to become a republic with a President elected by the Parliament. The result was that 55% saying no and 45% saying yes.

So, the question I pose is whether or not the monarchy has served its purpose and whether or not it is the system of state we need for the 21st century?

The problem a monarchy will always have is that it is the opposite of democracy and denies its citizens the most basic right of electing their head of state, but also being eligible to hold that office themselves. This ensures the head of state is more accountable to the people and it also stops the devaluation of the parliamentary system that currently occurs due to the lack of accountability of the current monarch.

The monarchy also discriminates on the basis of gender, religion and ethnicity. The law of Britain states only a member of the Church of England can inherit the throne on the basis that they will become the new head of this church in doing so. The British royal family is gender discriminative due to following the role of male primogeniture which means the eldest son inherits the throne rather than the eldest child as would occur under absolute primogeniture. Due to narrow breeding patterns, the ethnicity of a monarch will very rarely change, and, so members of other ethnic groups are unable to become the head of state within Britain. This is a travesty for such a multicultural country and will ensure we never achieve our Obama moment, in which an ethnic minority may reach the highest office of the land.

The final argument against the monarchy is that it is not cost effective: the figure of 62p cost per year for each adult is far from the true figure. This does not take into account many hidden fees such as royal security or the money paid by regional councils to fund a visit by a member of the royal family. This would amount to more than £100 million pound per annum as opposed to the £34m assumed by The Daily Telegraph. It could be far more for all we know, as the costs of the Monarchy are exempt from Freedom of Information requests.

These are the reasons I am in favour of abolishing the Monarchy, but, also in the process, I would like to see a wave of constitutional reform which would include the following:

* A fully elected house of Lords on a 15 year basis with multi-member constituencies elected in the same way as the European elections
* The PM to continue as normal and to be elected in the same way rather than the introduction of a presidential system
* The greater introduction of elected mayors

The electoral system could be subject to reform, but, at this time, I am unsure as to which system I would prefer, and it would have to be implemented without gerrymandering the constituency borders to ensure favoritism to any one political party.

This reform, in reality, would not make a noticeable change on a daily basis as the Monarchy only has a ceremonial role at best. However, it would lead to a far superior system of government based on democracy and accountability, rather than one of needless tradition and image. Our nation would finally be able to remove this albatross from around its neck and be able to truly triumph itself as a nation of modern times in which we look to reform rather than revolution as a means of improving our constitution and the system of the people.

This is an issue I do not expect the next Labour leader to attempt to tackle as I realise it is not a vote winner, but can very easily become a vote loser. However I would like to see greater emphasis put on this issue within the Labour party and hopefully it will result in a true outcome, which will eventually lead to a national debate on the issue of the Monarchy and its future, if it has one at all.

By Brian Barder / @BrianLB

In the last of three articles about the events of the five days immediately following the election in May leading to the formation of the coalition, Brian looks at the lessons of those events for the Labour party.  The first two articles are here and here.

In the five hectic days between the election results on 6 May 2010 and the appointment of David Cameron as prime minister on the 11th, Labour never had a chance of a deal with the LibDems that would have kept Labour in office, even under a new leader. Some LibDems have suggested that they were forced into bed with the Tories by Labour's failure to negotiate seriously with them or to offer a better deal than the Tories.  This is false, although it has a grain of truth in it.  The LibDems went through the motions of negotiating with Labour purely to maximise their leverage in the real negotiations they were conducting with the Tories.  It's worth re-visiting those five days to see what lessons Labour might draw from them next time an election results in a hung parliament - something that now seems likely in most future elections while the state of the parties in the country remains broadly the way it is, even if the electoral system is not changed between now and the next election.  What really happened, and why?  In this third and final assessment of the lessons of the Five Days in May, I look at what Labour did and didn't do in that frenetic period and what lessons Labour can learn from the experience.

An essential but widely neglected factor in these events is that the parties were seeking to conform to a new, or newly formulated, rule-book for a hung parliament, drawn up by the Cabinet Secretary and approved before the election by a parliamentary select committee and by the leaders of the principal parties.  (Before the election I wrote a more detailed analysis of the new rules, e.g.  here and here.) Briefly, they provided that (1) whatever the arithmetic of the election results,  the incumbent prime minister had not just a right but a positive duty to remain in office, and not to resign, until there was clearly and incontestably an alternative member of the new parliament able to form a government that would have the confidence of an overall majority of MPs;  (2) it was the duty of the party leaderships, not of the Queen, to negotiate with each other until there was clear, firm agreement on a government and a head of it able to command the confidence of the majority of the house of commons;  and (3) if inter-party negotiations failed to agree on such a new leader and government, it would be the duty of the incumbent prime minister, regardless of whether his or her party had the most seats in the new House, to present a programme of policies in a Queen's Speech to the house of commons at the opening of the new parliament and to invite the House to vote to approve or reject it.  The purposes of these re-formulated rules were to protect the monarch from involvement in party politics and the need to make invidious and controversial decisions, and to ensure that government could be carried on, with a prime minister in place in No. 10, throughout the time needed for the negotiation of a new and durable government, so that in the event of a sudden crisis during that period, the ship would not be without a captain and crew.

It was clear from 6 May that although the Conservatives had failed to win an overall majority of seats in the house of commons (which would have required Brown to resign and Cameron to become prime minister immediately),  in every sense Labour had lost the election, having lost almost a hundred seats, with the Tories winning 48 seats more than Labour and more than 2 million more votes.  Unsurprisingly the Tory tabloids screamed for Gordon Brown's instant resignation and vilified him for ‘hanging on in No. 10′, either not aware of the clear provisions of the rule book, or preferring to ignore it for a more newsworthy and politically exciting headline.  Clegg, who had repeatedly set out as his guiding principle before the election that the party with the most seats and the most votes should have the first opportunity to try to form a government, nevertheless invited both the Labour and Conservative leaderships to hold talks with him and the LibDems about the possibilities of a deal with one or the other.  (In an earlier and different age, the then Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe had advised with exemplary clarity and concision how his party should conduct itself if holding the balance of power: "Keep your distance but allow the largest party to govern."  In the event Clegg acted on the second part of this advice, but ignored the first.)

The Conservative-leaning website TotalPolitics summarised what happened next according to the BBC programme "Five days that changed Britain", made by its political editor Nick Robinson, in a review by Juliet Shardlow:

"...But even as the bullish PM offered to step aside on the Monday, Robinson asserts that the Labour negotiating team just gave up. A key player in this loss was Ed Balls who even in his retelling of the frosty, unorganised talks with David Laws and co, seemed arrogant and bullish. The programme sheds light on the future role of Vince Cable. His discomfort with the coalition was plain to see, having secret phone calls with Brown. Ming Campbell even claimed that the Liberal Democrats should avoid looking like a Tory "pet". William Hague could deny it all he liked, but the Conservatives obviously had a coalition back-up plan - putting an 11-point policy paper on the negotiating table for the Lib Dems. This slick attack broke any chance of a Lab-Lib deal."

According to the detailed and informative account of the five days in Lord Mandelson's new book, The Third Man, well before the election Gordon Brown had begun to contemplate the implications of a possible hung parliament after the election and had been actively considering the potential for a deal with the LibDems that might enable Labour, if not Brown himself, to remain in office.  Throughout the five days, Brown clung to the hope that this might yet be achieved, frantically working the telephones to see what it might involve.  Recognising that the election result was in part a verdict on himself, he offered to step aside and allow a new Labour leader to head a Labour-LibDem coalition or a minority government with LibDem support, and indeed there was a long-lasting argument about how long, if at all, Brown could remain in office after the formation of the new government before formally stepping down.  (It seems not to have occurred to anyone that Brown could have remained Labour party leader while one of his Labour front-bench colleagues headed a new Labour-LibDem government.)  The question of Brown's future so preoccupied the negotiators that discussion of the policy agreements and concessions which might have tempted the LibDems into a deal with Labour rather than with the Tories seems to have been rather a side-show.  Any pretence of seriousness was undermined by the harrumphing from the sidelines of a few has-beens such as John Reid and David Blunkett, unhelpfully trumpeting their opposition to any dilution of the fine wine of New Labour with the insipid water of the LibDems.   Only Brown apparently came prepared for a detailed negotiation: Labour had produced no collectively agreed plan ready to be presented to the LibDems in the way that the Tories had done, a fact which helped the LibDems to put all the blame on Labour for their eventually being ‘forced' to sign up with the Tories.   Blaming Labour was something they needed and still need to do in order to try to pacify those on the left of the party who were and remain deeply unhappy at their party's close partnership with a party of the political right.

In the end, the rule-book requiring the prime minister to stick it out in No. 10, humiliated by defeat, until the Tory-LibDem deal was signed and sealed and approved by the LibDem MPs and peers, proved to be unworkable.  Gordon Brown, his patience exhausted, and having been cannily advised by Mandelson to leave No 10 for the last time in daylight and dignity, not slinking away in the dark, telephoned Clegg to tell him he was going to the Palace to resign.  According to Mandelson's account, Clegg was appalled:

"You can't," Nick replied. He said he still couldn't be sure a Tory coalition would work. Gordon's resignation could end up leading to a minority Cameron government. Gordon was serene in his reply. "The public has run out of patience. And so have I," he said. "I have served my country as best I can. I know the country's mood. They will not tolerate me waiting another night. I have no option. You are a good man and you have to make a decision. I have made mine. It is final. I am going to the Palace. Goodbye."[Mandelson, The Third Man, p. 554]

So much for the ‘rules', imposing a duty on Brown not to resign until a new administration was agreed and ready to take over immediately:  the LibDems in parliament still hadn't voted to approve the proposed coalition and its newly negotiated programme.&

As we reported earlier in our 8 o'clock roundup, Ed Balls has accused David Cameron and George Osborne of being "growth deniers". He was speaking at Bloomberg, where ten days ago George Osborne claimed Labour were "deficit deniers".

You can now read the full speech below:

--

I am very grateful to Bloomberg for giving me the opportunity to come here this morning to respond to the bullish speech given from this same platform by George Osborne 10 days ago.

That speech is the clearest articulation of the Cameron-Clegg Coalition strategy for this parliament.

In it, their Chancellor repeated his claim that fiscal retrenchment through immediate and deep public spending cuts to reduce the fiscal deficit would build financial market confidence in the UK economy, keep interest rates low and secure economic recovery by boosting private investment.

And the Chancellor once again declared that his was the only possible credible course ahead - dismissing anyone who doubts that fiscal deflation on this scale and at this delicate stage in the economic cycle is necessary or wise.

I was in America when I read about the speech, travelling across New England.

And after seeing first hand the worried and increasingly pessimistic mood in the US - in the media and in conversation with friends - it jarred to read the British Chancellor saying he was "cautiously optimistic about the economic situation".

The prevailing attitude I saw in America was not optimism but fear.

Every newspaper I read highlighted people's worries about their business, their jobs or their home and the growing concerns of US policymakers and business leaders and financial analysts at the emerging signs of a double-dip recession - and not just any recession.

They fear what Americans - especially on the Eastern seaboard - like to call a ‘Perfect Storm'.

A perfect storm where continued de-leveraging by banks and the private sector meets premature fiscal retrenchment from governments and a drastic tightening of consumer spending... as tax rises, benefit cuts and rising unemployment hit home.

And it is these fears - not just in the US but round the world - which in recent days have caused equity markets to fall sharply, bond markets to surge, well summed up by Wednesday's Financial Times front page headline ‘Market jitters over growth'.

This is a risky and dangerous time for the world economy. History teaches us that economic recovery following a large-scale financial crisis can be slow and stuttering.

In the US, the debate is not about fiscal tightening but whether further stimulus is needed to prevent a double-dip. And the world will be watching closely when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke speaks this afternoon in Jackson Hole to see what message he sends about the future course of US monetary policy and whether he can revive flagging confidence in the US recovery.

Here in Britain we have seen, in recent days, MPC member Martin Weale warn of the risk of a double-dip recession as a result of the current fiscal tightening.

But whether our economy continues to recover or slips back into sustained slow growth - even recession again - is not just a concern for Treasury ministers and financial analysts.

Whether our leaders make the right calls now on growth and jobs, the deficit, public spending and welfare reform will determine the future of our country for the next decade or more and shape the kind of society we want to be.

I do believe we face a choice as a country - on the economy and the future of our public services and the welfare state.

And today I want to respond to what I believe was a fundamentally flawed speech ten days ago:

- wrong in its analysis of the past;

- reckless in its diagnosis of the current situation; and

- dangerous in its prescription for the future.

This week's IFS analysis of the June Budget has confirmed what we already knew - that the Coalition's economic and fiscal strategy is deeply unfair.

In this speech I will argue that it is also unnecessary, unsafe for our economy and unsafe for our public services too.

Of course we need to deal with the deficit and there is no doubt that we must cut waste where it is found. There is no dispute about that.

We do need a credible and medium-term plan to reduce the deficit and to reduce our level of national debt - a pre-announced plan for reducing the deficit based on a careful balance between employment, spending and taxation - but only once growth is fully secured and over a markedly longer period than the government is currently planning.

I believe that - by ripping away the foundations of growth and jobs in Britain - David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne are not only leaving us badly-exposed to the new economic storm that is coming, but are undermining the very goals of market stability and deficit reduction which their policies are designed to achieve.

Far from learning from our history it is my fear that the new Coalition government is set to repeat the mistakes of history - and that George Osborne's declaration of ‘cautious optimism' on this platform a fortnight ago may go down in history alongside Norman Lamont singing in his bath.

But it is not too late to change course.

So today I will set out the building blocks of an alternative economic strategy that is rooted in economic history and analysis as well as our country's shared values.

POLITICS, ECONOMICS AND HISTORY

First, let me say why I think it is so important for me - and indeed every other candidate who seeks to lead the Opposition - to stand up now and challenge the current consensus that - however painful - there is no alternative to the Coalition's austerity and cuts.

Because as someone who was at the heart of the decision on whether Britain should join the Euro, it seems incredible to me that such fundamental and far-reaching economic decisions are being taken by the coalition government with so little debate and - let us be clear - with no mandate from the British people for their rise in VAT or immediate and deep spending cuts.

Yes, there is plenty of discussion up and down the country about where the axe should fall on public services - as my opposite number Michael Gove has discovered.

There are intense disputes, not least within the Conservative Party, about whether welfare reform can deliver the impact and savings claimed by Iain Duncan Smith.

And there are very important arguments taking place about the universality of benefits, and the age at which pension-related entitlements should kick in.

These are all important debates.

But the fundamental questions we face now - Is it right to be cutting billions of pounds from public services and taking billions of pounds out of family budgets this financial year and next? what will that do to jobs and growth? and ultimately, what will that mean for the deficit? - are almost ignored.

Yes, there are some important warning voices - Anatole Kaletsky, Paul Krugman, Lord Skidelsky, David Blanchflower to name a few - who have written powerful critiques on the comment pages of the broadsheets.

But for the most part, the political and media consensus has dictated that the deficit is the only issue that matters in economic policy, that the measures set out in the Budget to reduce it are unavoidable, and that there is no alternative to the timetable the Budget set out.

Interviewers look aghast when I tell them that cutting public spending this financial year and pre-announcing a rise in VAT is economically foolish, when growth and consumer confidence is so fragile. ‘But what would you cut instead?' they demand.

So strong and broad is this consensus that a special name has been given to those who take a different view - ‘deficit-deniers' - and some in the Labour Party believe our very credibility as a party depends on hitching ourselves to the consensus view.

I am not one of them.

The history of British policymaking in the last hundred years has taught us that on all the other occasions when major economic misjudgements were made, broad-based political, media, financial and popular opinion was in favour of the decision at the time, and the dissenting voices of economists were silenced or ignored.

In 1925, Chancellor Winston Churchill decided to return sterling to the ‘gold standard' on the grounds that there was no credible alternative which the financial markets would support and that a return to gold would boost confidence and private investment.

He was supported by the broad mass of economic opinion - including the Governor of the Bank of England, Montagu Norman and the leadership of the Labour Party. Only John Maynard Keynes stood out against the consensus at the fateful 11 Downing Street dinner where Churchill made the decision.

But Keynes famously lost the argument and, as he correctly predicted in The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill, the result was deflation, rising unemployment, the general strike and then Conservative election defeat.

In 1931, two years after the biggest financial crisis of the last century, Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald said spending cuts were unavoidable to slash the deficit, ease pressure on sterling and satisfy the markets, in the hope of triggering a private sector led recovery.

He wrote: "We are compelled to devise special measures to meet the temporary difficulties. The critics will have to face facts and deal honestl

* At Bloomberg, where ten days ago George Osborne claimed Labour were "deficit deniers", Ed Balls will accuse David Cameron and George Osborne of being "growth deniers".

* £2,000 to meet David Cameron sparks "cash for access" row.

* Tory donor and "fugitive tycoon" Asil Nadir returns to Britain to face trial for fraud.

* MPs turn the air blue over new expenses body IPSA.

* Arthur Scargill's last industrial action will be against his own union, writes Paul Routledge in The Mirror.

* Defence manufacturers have asked David Cameron to clear up confusion over how the replacement for Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent will be funded.

* That "big society" in action: £734m to be cut from voluntary projects by the coalition.

* Former First Minister Jack McConnell will stand down from the Scottish Parliament at next May's elections.

Conservative justice minister Crispin Blunt has revealed he is gay and is separating from his wife.

I recently learnt from the single parent charity Gingerbread that there is a 'debt mountain' of over £5 million owed to children in Edmonton in child maintenance arrears. It's a figure that truly shocked me. What surprised me even more is that out of the 647 parliamentary constituencies, Edmonton's £5 million worth of child maintenance debt is far from being the biggest - it doesn't even come close. In fact, Edmonton is the 407th worst offender. There are 406 constituencies with more owed and Great Grimsby is top of the charts with a child maintenance debt mountain of over £11 million. The figure for the whole country is a staggering £3,761 million.

What is worse still is that hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds will go completely uncollected. Only around £1,065 million of the £3,761 million March 2010 total is deemed to be 'collectable' by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, which is now in charge of the Child Support Agency. And last year, this body missed its debt collection target, collecting £147 million of arrears against a target of £170 million. Child maintenance is such a vital source of income for many single parent families, paying for items such as children's clothes, school meals, trips and activities, that it is particularly painful to know that certain money is considered to be non-collectable.

I am totally in support of the work Gingerbread are doing nationally to cut these child maintenance debt mountains, particularly their calls for a debt recovery target for 2010/2011 to be set by the Child Support Agency as a matter of urgency. And on a more local level, if you are a single parent looking after children and needing help in recovering child maintenance arrears - or help and advice with a number of other, not exclusively single parent issues, including benefits and tax, child maintenance, housing and employment - you can call Gingerbread's free helpline on 0808 802 0925 or you can find out more about their highly valued work by going on their website.

Today's post has been written by a local student who we've had with us on work experience all week. Thelma is just about to go into her final year of A-levels at Edmonton County School and, after that, has hopes to study psychology at university. During her time with us she wrote two possible blog posts, one on Afghanistan and one on Edmonton which she titled, 'The community within the shadows.' Thelma described the Edmonton post as "a bit cheesy" but it's the post I've chosen to put up here as I think it offers a positive future for our community and makes some great suggestions for local activities we could put on to bring people together. Have a read and see if you can come up with any ideas which may help to pull Edmonton out of the shadows. I agree with Thelma: it's time for Edmonton to shine.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Edmonton is a great community with a good multi-cultural environment. It has great people within it and has a diverse age range. I think it's about time that Edmonton stepped out of the shadows of being under the Enfield banner and start being recognised. We need to start doing things as a community…it's time for Edmonton to shine.

In 2008-2009 Edmonton was going though the toughest times a community could possibly go though. Edmonton was always in the media spotlight for all the wrong reasons. People didn't want to turn on the television because the main headlines in the news would be, 'Another teenager has died in Edmonton, North London after being fatally stabbed to death.' Well it's time that Edmonton was in the news headlines again, but for all the right reasons this time.

As a community we need to stand out and be one. As we are a multi-cultural community we should organise events that can be done together, so that everyone can take part in what's going on, no matter of your age, size or race. Edmonton has talented young pupils from various schools that can help organise an 'Eddympics,' which is sure to capture the country's attention. Other games could include a multi-national dish day where different cultures can cook food and we can all sit down and eat. Come on Edmonton, it's time for us to rise up onto our feet again.

Politicians "fail to see the link" between construction and the economy the industry has warned, as better than expected GDP figures are attributed to the sector.

Ed Ball has warned the coalition risks tipping the country into a double dip recession as a result of its "heartless and wrong-headed" program of cuts.

By Howard Dawber

Over 100 days ago, Britain woke up to a new coalition government. In that time they have already displayed extraordinary economic illiteracy and are beginning to champion a dangerous mix of cruelty and cheerful incompetence, perhaps already worse than any government in living memory.

Here are the numbers thirty-six to forty of the top 50 things they have done wrong ... so far...

36. TRYING TO CURB PARLIAMENTARY POWER

In the first few days of the coalition, Nick Clegg proposed changing the rules to make it more difficult for parliament to throw out the government. At present, if the government is defeated on a simple majority on a question of confidence in the government, it would be expected to call an immediate general election or at least for the PM to resign to enable some other sort of coalition to be formed. Clegg wanted to change the rules so a majority of 55% was needed.

Why is it a bad idea? This was seen as a cynical ploy to keep the coalition in power as it would take and almost impossible co-ordination of all Labour MPs plus all the Lib Dems and other minor parties, and even Tory defectors to kick out Cameron - he has 46% of the votes in the commons. Luckily Labour, some Lib Dems and even Tory backbenchers quickly saw through the plot and Clegg was forced to abandon the plans.

37. CANCELLING THE LONDON CHILDCARE AFFORDABILITY PILOT
The Childcare Affordability Pilot was supposed to run from May for a year and parents were invited to take part by the Child Poverty Unit. Some families had 100 per cent of their childcare costs paid by HM Revenue and Customs, which funded the scheme, and others were given a £500 advance to help them arrange childcare. But officials from the Department for Education have now written to participants telling them the pilot will end on September 15th and they must pay back any money they borrowed.

Why is it a bad idea? Both short-sighted and cruelly executed. It has left parents on low incomes - who volunteered to take part in a new scheme to help make childcare provision better - struggling to pay back hundreds of pounds.

According to the Evening Standard, single parent Michelle Burke, 37, signed up for the free childcare scheme a few months ago after being invited to take part.  She works for an advice charity and her job often takes her away — costing her about £60 extra for overnight childcare. A low earner, she was given a £500 advance which she spent on childcare for her son Liam, eight, who has Asperger's syndrome.

But at the end of last month, the Department for Education informed her the pilot was being discontinued.

Ms Burke told the Standard that  she has been forced to borrow from her parents to repay the loan. She said: “I can't afford this — it's appalling.” She added that she knew if she left the scheme the cash had to be repaid, but that it was the government which had effectively “left” the scheme - not her.

38. U-TURN ON HOSPITAL CLOSURES
During the election local Conservative and Lib Dem candidates claimed that Labour was closing local Accident and Emergency Units, Maternity Units and other hospital facilities. This was the result of the Picture of Health programme, which looked for savings in the NHS budget by centralising specialist facilities into separate hospitals rather than having lots of generalist hospitals. Marches like this one in Bexley and campaigns were run on "Brown's NHS Cuts". Andrew Lansley, then Shadow Health Secretary, said he would immediately halt the changes if elected. Indeed in some places he actually promised to re-open A&E units which had already moved.

Well, he did get elected. And now the NHS Chief Executive has written to all the hospitals saying they need to have a plan in place to implement the closures and changes by October this year.So they are going ahead with everything they campaigned against.

Why is it a bad idea? Because Lansley is again saying one thing and doing another. The Tories were happy to play politics with the issue in the run up to the election and then as soon as they are in, go ahead with the changes anyway.

39. ENDING THE "YOUNG PERSON'S GUARANTEE"
The coalition has announced an end to the Young Person’s Guarantee, a promise to all unemployed young people that if they were out of work and claiming JSA for six months they would be guaranteed a job (via the Future Jobs Fund), a training place or work experience. This guarantee will now not be extended beyond the current financial year, and will cease to operate in March 2011.

Why is it a bad idea? The Young Person's Guarantee was a commitment from government to help unemployed young people get their careers on track - vital at the moment when jobs are few and far between. The guarantee was easy to understand and brought together a good set of options for young people. Also, it worked: DWP/ONS figures show that, up to the end of May 2010, there had been 11,890 starts on training provided under the YPG.

40. CUTTING THE GOLDEN HELLO FOR NEW EMPLOYEES
The coalition has announced cuts of £30 million from the ‘golden hello‘ scheme which offered a subsidy of £1,000 plus help with training costs for businesses that employ someone who has been unemployed for over 6 months. This scheme has now closed nine months early, and stopped at the end of June.

Why is it a bad idea? The scheme helped people get back into work and was sorely needed to help counter the impact of the recession.

 

Yoosk have been collating questions for the leadership candidates over the past few weeks. Andy Burnham is the third candidate to face the Yoosk team, and answers questions on life chances, an English Parliament, and Nick Clegg.

By Chris Williamson MP / @ChriswMP

The hyperbole surrounding the first 100 days of the ConDem coalition government has now passed.

It was a milestone that saw the media concentrating on the fact that two political parties are working together in Britain’s first coalition government since the Second World War. But the media didn’t highlight how the Liberal Democrats have become indistinguishable from the Conservative Party.

It’s a far cry from last year’s Liberal Democrat conference when Nick Clegg said:

"We know what happens when you simply squeeze budgets, across the board, until the pips squeak. We know, because we lived through it before, under the Conservatives. We remember the tumble-down classrooms, the pensioners dying on hospital trolleys, the council houses falling into total disrepair. We remember, and we say: never again."

Yet, despite Clegg’s rhetorical criticisms of Conservative cuts, the Liberal Democrats have endorsed the fastest, deepest and most savage reduction in public spending since the 1930s.

Next month, Mr Clegg will attempt to reconcile his remarks when he addresses his conference in Liverpool. The word is he intends to urge Liberal Democrat supporters to simply celebrate the fact that they are in power.

Of course the truth is the Liberal Democrats are not really in power at all. Their cabinet members are merely occupying titular positions while their strings are manipulated by Conservative puppeteers.

After betraying everything the Liberal Democrats claimed to stand for, Nick Clegg’s comments betray an underlying contempt for the people who trusted him. Holding up five superficial cabinet members as an example of something to celebrate suggests that Nick Clegg thinks his supporters are stupid.

But far from being stupid, many people who voted for the Liberal Democrats in the general election are indignant that their votes helped to usher in a new Conservative era.

Support for the Liberal Democrats has been haemorrhaging away ever since they signed up to the coalition agreement and the Labour Party has seen an unprecedented increase in membership.

But the dwindling support for the Liberal Democrats is cold comfort when the country is about to be gripped by the most severe austerity measures in living memory.

And when it comes to cuts, my fear is we ain’t seen nothing yet. The Comprehensive Spending Review is due in the autumn and will set out where the Con/Dem coalition’s sweeping cutbacks will be made.

Leading economists are worried that the government’s policies will result in a double dip recession and a huge rise in unemployment. Consumer confidence is falling, people are fearful about losing their job and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research is predicting that last month’s encouraging economic figures will be short lived.

The Conservatives are not being honest with the British people. They are using the national deficit as cover for their ideological assault on what they describe as ‘big government’ and the Liberal Democrats to provide window dressing to legitimise Tory dogma.

But it’s worth considering what it is they want to abandon. It’s big government that is responsible for the NHS, providing care for elderly people, delivering education, putting police on our streets and protecting our children. It’s big government that supports local businesses through regional development agencies and it’s big government that saved the aerospace industry through the Export Credit Guarantee Department.

In short, big government is a good thing but David Cameron’s so-called 'big society' is a confidence trick to implement the 21st century equivalent of the poor law.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we all stand together, we can defeat the cruel intentions of this callous ConDem coalition.

By Mike Ion / @MikeIon

Let's begin with a little quiz. What do the Today programme presenter Evan Davies, Ed Miliband, his brother David, the BBC Business Editor Robert Peston, novelist Zoe Heller and LabourList editor Alex Smith have in common with yours truly? Is it that we are all passionate Manchester United fans? Or is it that we are all ardent Coronation Street watchers? Or how about we all holiday in the south of France? Actually it is none of these. The simple answer is this, we are all products of the comprehensive system of schooling.

This years GCSE results are set to be one of the best ever for the 93% of the nation's 16 year olds who attend the fantastic array of varied, innovative and specialist state schools. There is only one factor more powerful than a pupil’s social background as a predictor of her/his future academic performance at sixteen and that is the average social background of other pupils in her/his school. Since comprehensive education was introduced barriers to achievement for many young people have been removed. The annual government statistics of school attainment, examination results, and participation in further and higher education offer clear evidence of a 'levelling-up' over the last 30 years.

In some areas of England it is reasonable to regard comprehensive schooling not as a 'failed experiment' but as an experiment that has not yet been tried (Hackney being a good example).

In 2009 well over half of all 15-16 year olds in maintained schools in England achieved 5+ 'higher passes' at the end of compulsory schooling. This is the hurdle set in the past for only those attending grammar schools, one which many, even of that selected minority, failed to surmount. In 1970, nearly half of all of pupils left secondary school with no qualifications; in 2009 that figure was down to 2%. In 1971-72 14% of under-21 year olds entered higher education, in 2007-2008 45% entered. Over a third of the age group entering higher education is an aim which would have seemed impossibly ambitious a generation ago. Given that expenditure on education did not increase in real terms between the mid-1970s and the late-1990s this remarkable increase in productivity as measured by qualifications is attributable, in large part to the promotion of the comprehensive system.

I often hear some of my friends and "comrades" attempting to ease their conscience by announcing that the local comprehensive school is simply not good enough and then seek to justify their decision to go private in the name of parental responsibility. Some parents, while perfectly prepared to buy into state primary education, have an innate prejudice against their local state secondary school. It is also the case that because so many of these parents work in the media (or are in government) there is little political mileage in calling for the reform of private schools and more equal access to universities. Those who do have influence, those who have a "voice" in our society have such a high stake in the current order they will seek to mobilise and organise in order protect it.

The sad truth is that when middle-class parents abandon the comprehensive state sector in favour of the private, it is conservative and not progressive politics that triumphs.There are plenty of other talented and successful Evans, Eds, Roberts and Zoes out there and many of them have their local comprehensive school to thank for helping them achieve what they have.

By Diana Holland

This week’s alarming Institute for Fiscal Studies report - which resoundingly and rightly classes the ConDem’s June budget as regressive – sadly confirms our earlier analysis. Previous research undertaken by the TUC and others has revealed that the budget and the £6.2 billion worth of cuts announced in May will hit the most vulnerable and the poorest hardest.

A TUC report has combined the distributional impact of spending cuts announced in the budget with the impact of the budget’s tax and benefit changes to calculate the overall impact of both. The report reveals that the average annual cut in public spending on the poorest tenth of households is £1,344, equivalent to 20.5 per cent of their household income, whereas on richest tenth of households it is £1,135, equivalent to just 1.6 per cent of their household income.

The ConDems may attempt to pull the wool over our eyes by saying that the richest have been hit hardest, but we should not be fooled. The annual loss in income and services may be £2,685 for the richest households and £1,514 for the poorest but this is the equivalent to just 3.6 per for the richest and a massive 21.7 per cent for the poorest. ConDem protestations of a fair budget and protecting the vulnerable look hollow in the face of these facts.

But it does not stop there. Women will bear a disproportionate burden of the cuts outlined in the budget. Even if we exclude cuts to support for children – which is being slashed by £2.4bn including cuts in Sure Start, maternity grant, health in pregnancy grant, child benefit and tax credits, mainly paid to women – a gender audit of the budget shows that women still pay £3.6bn of net personal tax increases/benefit cuts, compared to that of men who pay £1.9bn. This owes to the fact that women are more profoundly affected by things like housing benefit cuts and the switch to CPI rating rather than RPI of the additional state pension and public sector pensions. It is also worth noting that an extra £560 million cut from the Child Trust Fund is not included in the gender audit.

Moreover, many ConDem cuts will also fall disproportionately on children, the elderly, those suffering from long term illness, disabled people and the unemployed. Thirty of the cuts in the £6.2 billion package announced in May specifically impact on these most vulnerable groups, cuts which include: a programme to support children with reading difficulties; plans for building school playgrounds; an affordable housing programme; free prescriptions for everyone with a long term health problem in England; free social care to 11,000 older people; and the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ refurbishment programme of hundreds of schools across the UK.

This is aside from other high profile cuts such as the Future Jobs Fund – a programme that has created jobs and opportunity for hundreds of thousands of previously out of work young people.

They say actions speak louder than words – the ConDem coalition may lay claim to be about a new kind of politics but a budget that so devastatingly hits the most vulnerable hardest makes all too clear that this coalition is about the very old politics of divide and rule. Union and Labour Party members need to fight back in the name of a fairer and more just society.

Diana Holland is Assistant General Secretary - Equalities at Unite and is a candidate for Labour Party Treasurer.

The Paul Richards column

The news that the Tory Party will be hosting a cash-for-access dinner at their conference next month provides the excuse to recycle some old jokes. If it costs a grand to sit next to Eric Pickles, how much would it cost to not sit next to him? It also gives us an excuse for the likes of the pugnacious Michael Dugher MP for some old-fashioned Tory-bashing. The coincidence of Asil Nadir, Tory donor and fugitive from justice, arriving in London reminds us of the good old days when the Tories took money from just about anyone. The late great Tony Banks told the Labour Party conference the Tories were ‘funded by foreign fascists and run by dickheads’.

Before we get too carried away, though, we should remind ourselves that the Labour Party organises identical events where people pay for dinner on the promise of a senior politician on their table. Lest you think swanky fundraising dinners are a product of that evil Tony Blair, remember that the saintly Labour leader John Smith hosted one the night before he died.

Such events play on the idea that sitting next to a minister at dinner will somehow give business leaders great insights and information of use to their business. In reality, any business leader with a legitimate cause or concern can pick up the phone, speak to a civil servant, and arrange a meeting with a minister or MP. Any citizen can walk into Central Lobby and make a case to their MP. That’s why it’s called lobbying. You don’t need a thousand pounds.

Unfortunately, the political parties do need the thousand pounds. They need many thousands of pounds, and the swanky dinners will continue for as long as they do.

The answer lies in reform of the system of party funding, with greater state funding of parties. Like the Schleswig-Holstein Question, which Palmerston suggested had been understood by only three people, one dead, one mad, and himself, and he’d forgotten, party funding is a hard debate to understand. Sir Haydon Phillips, former permanent secretary, chairman of the National Theatre, the Salisbury Cathedral Fabric Advisory Committee and the Marlborough College council was asked by Labour to investigate party funding, and came away unable to slice the Gordian knot. The sticking point was trade union donations to Labour, which few outside the Labour family understand.

We already have state funding of parties. Oppositions receive the ‘Short money’ which Labour was generous enough to treble over its time in office. The Liberal Democrats were reliant on state funding, and fought to retain it after unexpectantly joining the government. Your taxes also pay for the special advisers working for secretaries of state. The argument is whether it is healthy to ‘nationalise’ political parties by making them dependent on the state for their finances, or whether they should remain voluntary associations.

If the Tories get their way, all of this will become academic. They propose to cap donations at around £50,000. That will have little impact on the Tories, who know hundreds of people with £50k in their back pockets. It will destroy the Labour Party’s funding base, which relies on big donations from a handful of trade unions. The party is close to bankruptcy already. A tough anti-union law would reduce the party to the level of a small charity. The Tories have shown that they are prepared to act in a ruthless partisan way with their proposals to scrap dozens of Labour parliamentary seats. They'll do the same to outlaw union donations. Crossing our fingers and hoping for the best won’t get us through. Neither will waving placards saying ‘defend the union link’. The new leader, along with the newly elected treasurer and NEC, will need to win back those high-level donors who have deserted us in recent years, and massively increase the amount of small donations to Labour. The surge in membership has been a welcome bonus. But the hard truth is that the new Labour leader will need to get his dinner suit out of the wardrobe and start hosting some thousand-pound-a-plate dinners of our own.

Paul Richards' new book Labour's Revival is out this September.

With numerous figures associated with the New Labour pressure group working on his campaign, Progress have finally endorsed David Miliband's leadership campaign today.

Declaring this to be "David Miliband's moment", September's Progress magazine backs the shadow foreign secretary saying, "David Miliband has demonstrated an appeal which crosses the party and reaches beyond it. Labour should elect him leader."

The editorial argues that he is "the grassroots' choice"; says he is the person most willing to change our politics and political culture; and claims that he is the only candidate to have "shown the willingness to tackle the difficult politics posed by the deficit."

The piece concludes: "While each of the candidates might well add something to a Labour shadow cabinet, only one of them has shown the willingness to tackle the difficult politics posed by the deficit; has offered an account of the party's 13 years in office which celebrates its achievements while being honest about its missed opportunities; and has set forth a vision for Labour's future which will expose the hollowness of the coalition's claim to offer a new politics."

Ed Miliband is the shadow energy and climate change secretary and a candidate in the Labour leadership election. He met Mark Ferguson in his campaign office on Monday, 23rd August, 2010.

Recently you wrote in your Fabian essay that you were concerned about Labour losing D & E (working class and unskilled) voters. What would your main strategy be for winning those voters back?
We’ve got to win back voters from across the income range. The figures I produced in the Fabian essay showed that we lost three times more D/E voters compared to A/B voters [professionals], and that a lot of A/B voters went to the Liberal Democrats, while a lot of D/E voters went to the Conservatives. To win those people back to Labour, we need policies that speak to people's lives – so it’s about not just a minimum wage but a living wage of over £7 an hour, which I’ve been campaigning for in this election. It's also about other big issues: on housing, we delivered on decent but not on additional social housing; and we need to replace tuition fees with a graduate tax. It’s a myth that you can either appeal to “aspirational” voters or the so-called “core vote”. That implies that our traditional supporters aren't aspirational, when they absolutely are. But we know it's a struggle, particularly for those people on low incomes, to get on – you're worried about your kids going to university and getting into debt. So a whole set of the policies I've produced in this campaign will appeal to people and bring them back to Labour. But it’s not just about policy; it's about changing the movement, and our links to the trade union movement; it’s about re-energising vibrancy in Labour as a political movement. It's about all of those things together.

You've mentioned the living wage and a graduate tax. They're both relatively popular policies within the party, and they seem popular with the public, at least when I've been out on the doorstep. As the person who wrote the manifesto, isn't there an argument that they should have been Labour Party policy already?
We did say we'd pay a living wage in Whitehall – I think that was a step in the right direction – and we said we'd increase the minimum wage in line with earnings. But I take the criticism, in a way, that it was much harder to renew in government, and it was much harder to change. But the question of this leadership election is, “do we have the courage to change?” Do we think that sticking with tuition fees, sticking with our approach on the economy, sticking with our approach on civil liberties is going to win us the election? Or do we think, “no, we've got to change”. In 1994 we had the courage to change. We've got to find the courage to change again. I think that's the choice before us as we go forward.

In terms of writing the manifesto and then standing for party leader, that’s something you've got in common with David Cameron. Are there any other similarities?
Not many, no. He’s got a very different view about society to me. David Cameron believes that the way you make people free is by having a small state – that somehow that will make people free. I actually do believe, in relation to civil liberties, that you have to be careful about the state being overbearing – but I also believe that the right kind of government, and the right kind of enabling state, can increase people's freedom. Because where does freedom come from? Freedom comes from going to university, getting a good education, having a health service that is there when you need it, having a strong welfare state that can make people entrepreneurial – those are freedom’s enablers. David Cameron has a very different view of society, and how you make people freer and more powerful, and he has a very different view of human nature – that insecurity will breed entrepreneurship. I don’t agree that that's the way to make an entrepreneurial society.

You said at a press conference a few weeks ago that you are in favour of constructive opposition. Is there anything that you think the government has been right about so far, and anything that Labour has been wrong to oppose?
I agree with the government on getting rid of ID cards, somewhat on financial grounds but really more on the grounds that we never really proved the case for the extension of the power of the state in relation to ID cards. I think that Ken Clarke is right to open up the debate about short prison sentences. Labour’s got to change on those things. My colleague Alan Johnson said words to the effect of “I can't think of anything we got wrong on civil liberties during our time in government”. I've got great respect for Alan, but I profoundly disagree with him on that. It's not pandering to say that's a change we need – a change on civil liberties. His position is stuck in a comfort zone, a New Labour comfort zone, if he thinks we don't need to change on that issue.

If you're elected as leader the big early challenge is going to be the October spending review. In light of that, have you considered how you might tackle the financial constraints, and – although I know this is a question candidates won’t answer – have you thought about who your shadow chancellor might be?
On the second question, you're right: I'm not going to answer it [laughs]. It's what I call a measuring the curtains question, and I don't think any of us as leadership candidates should be in the business of making deals with people or nominating our shadow cabinet before we've even been elected, or not elected. On the first question, how do we oppose the coalition government, I think in three ways. First of all, the coalition has plan for growth, so they don't have a credible plan on the deficit. Secondly, we have to show that we have an alternative, and I think Alistair's plan is the starting point for that. I think we need to look again at aspects of it as the situation changes, such as the balance between tax and spending. And thirdly, we've got to make a bigger argument. There are more things that matter in our society than the deficit. Of course we've got to cut the deficit, but if we'd taken the view after 1945 that the only thing that mattered was the deficit, we'd not have built a National Health Service. I think that David Cameron has a very barren vision of society – a barren vision of society which simply says all we need to do is reduce the deficit and it'll make people free. I've got a much bigger vision of the kind of society we could be: a more equal society, a more just society, a more democratic society; a society where we look after each other, where we respect the environment. I think there's a much bigger vision, and decisions on the deficit have to be made in accordance with that bigger vision of the type of society we want to become – not just on the idea that the only thing that matters is the deficit.

You've spent a lot of time with the other leadership candidates. You've said that it's been nice to spend time with your brother...
Definitely.

In light of the amount of time you've spent with the others, would you be happy to work in the cabinet with them all, either as leader or perhaps working with someone else if you're not elected?
Definitely, absolutely – though it's a matter for the Parliamentary Labour Party as to who’s elected to the shadow cabinet. With regard to the other part of your question, one of the things that’s annoyed the media in this election is that we as candidates have all got on well and we haven't been taking lumps out of each other – and I think that’s right.

What do you think the greatest strengths are of each of your opponents individually?
My goodness – that could take a lot of time because there's lots to say about each of them. I'll start with Diane – shall we go alphabetically?

Alphabetically is fine by me.
I think Diane has a very strong set of principles. I don't agree with her about everything, for example her views on Afghanistan. But I think she's a principled person. I think she's got a deep commitment to the Labour Party and the Labour movement. I think Ed Balls has shown that he can go after the Tories and he's someone you'd always want on your side. I think Andy has shown an ability to reach out and connect with people, and I like his phrase “Aspirational Socialism”. I'm not going to steal it because people know it's his phrase, but I think it's a very good way of putting the challenge of the future for Labour. And David has enormous strengths which he's demonstrated during this campaign – he’s someone who has presence and a depth of knowledge which I think is a massive asset to the Labour Party. And he’s my brother and I love him very much.

Those are the strengths of your opponents – what is your greatest weakness?
I think I am very demanding of myself and others. I think anyone who has worked for Gordon for a length of time develops that characteristic. I hope I'm not overly demanding, but I think I sometimes am – though that’s because I have high standards about what we can achieve as both a country and as a campaign. So I think if I had to be self-critical that's one of the things.

You mentioned that you worked for Gordon, that you worked with him for a number of years. David is often thought of as being close to Tony Blair. Ed Balls is often seen as close to Gordon Brown. But you’re not seen as much as being aligned to Gordon Brown, considering you worked for him for a long time.

By Sunny Hundal / @sunny_hundal

I think we're all agreed that the media-hyped "war of words" between Ed and David Miliband is not worth getting annoyed over. They are looking for a massive fight and we should avoid handing it to them.

But the extended Labour leadership election has finally opened up a notable cleavage between the two leading candidates.

David Miliband yesterday warned of the danger of retreating to Labour's "comfort zone". Ed Miliband retorted by saying we should avoid "staying in the New Labour comfort zone".

We might be splitting hairs here, but it's worth emphasising that both sides are partly right. The left cannot just talk about re-distribution all the time. Politically, it may appeal to about 25-30% of the population but it will not win Labour an election or allow the party to push that agenda in power.

The Labour Party has to talk about growing the economy and not just accepting economic stagnation (while finding other ways to improve living standards of course); it has to carry middle class families; it has to appeal to aspirational people who want it to be a party of opportunity not just progressive taxation. But quite specifically, it should avoid being the party of big business elites, and focus on SMEs and entrepreneurs - the driving force of any economy.

Unfortunately, because the left doesn't talk enough about these sides of the political economy, it's easy to paint us all as people only interested in super-high taxation.

But there are questions about the "comfort zone" that the David Miliband camp are reluctant to answer too.

How did the party lose so many voters over the last 13 years? Why did party identification fall from 44% to 34% from 2005 - 2010? We can attribute the actual vote of 29% to Brown's unpopularity, but it still doesn't explain why a relentlessly centrist New Labour party, that adopted Alistair Darling's economic strategy rather than that of Ed Balls, lost so many voters.

This is what Ed Miliband is alluding to, and the charge that David Miliband is avoiding.

The Progress wing of the party assume that working class people or liberal-lefties have no choice but to hold their nose and vote Labour. I'm afraid that might work for Polly Toynbee but that didn't work for millions of us (including myself) who felt lefties weren't just ignored but were despised by the hierarchy.

Unless the party accounts for those votes, they'll just stay at home, despite the coalition's cuts.

The US is an instructive example here: Barack Obama's main problem now in the upcoming mid-term elections isn't right-wing anger (which has always been there) but distinct lack of enthusiasm among Democratic voters. They feel the President has let them down and they cannot bring themselves to go out and vote as they did in 2008.

A Labour leader needs to unite all wings of the party: the left, the liberals and the centrists. That also means he will have to step outside of the "comfort zone" and admit the party got it wrong and alienated millions of voters over the last 13 years.

Sunny Hundal is editor of Liberal Conspiracy. He tweets here.

By Chi Onwurah MP / @ChiOnwurah

Disraeli is reputed to have said there are lies, damned lies and statistics. But he forgot to mention they are most dangerous when masquerading as objective analysis.

Anyone who has seen one of the leadership hustings knows that the election is doing what the party wanted it to do – stimulating debate about the kind of party we are, the kind of leadership we need, who we exercise power for and why.

And of course part of that has to be an analysis of the past, what we have achieved, where we have gone wrong and what that might mean for the future.

The different leadership candidates are doing this in different ways, and obviously coming to the conclusions that best fit their strengths. One of the reasons I’m supporting Ed Miliband is that I think he’s got the mix about right between analysis of the past and vision for the future.

But I’ve also heard more negative conclusions, and one particularly damning one - Labour was only in power for twenty years in the 20th century. We’ve already had a decade in power this century, we could be out of power for the next eighty years – unless we make a ‘safe’ leadership choice.

Well this is the kind of sloppy analysis which annoys the Engineer in me. So I thought I’d spend some of my summer holiday seeing if my statistical prowess could improve Labour’s relationship with the past. Within a couple of hours I’d ‘proved’ that we are set for continual political domination from 2050 (see below).

But in reality, the only relationship which matters is the relationship we have with the voters. Whether we win power depends on how well we set out the right progressive future for the country.

Now I know there are some in the Labour Party who prefer the moral high ground of opposition to the messy compromises of power. I am not one of them. We have to win back power, that is what the country needs. And I believe that everyone, whether without out of work, or on low, middle or higher incomes, benefits from a fairer society. It means more opportunity, more security and shared sense of purpose and responsibility. So yes, we not only need a wide appeal, we deserve a wide appeal. But we must appeal on the basis of our vision of the future and our values – not out of fear from a misinterpretation of the past.

Labour's years in power, a statistical perspective

Labour was in majority government for 23 years in the last century.

What does this mean for this century? Well the short answer is – nothing. If we only have the 20th century to go on, that’s one data point. You can do absolutely nothing with one data point. Those who foresee eighty years in the wilderness should remember that.

We could cheat a little and use the 19th century too – it’s cheating because the Labour Party didn’t exist so it would have been pretty impossible to be in power, but it gives us something to ‘anchor’ our analysis.

So now we have two data points, zero years in power in the 19th century, 23 in the 20th century. What does that tell us about the 21st century? Well, again, not much. But we can play around a bit with different possibilities. It all depends what kind of relationship you think there is between the different figures. There are some common ones.

If it follows a saw tooth function (Figure 1) then things are looking pretty bad – we should have been out of power for all of this century:

Figure 1 Labour years in power [Sawtooth]

If it is a step function then we’d basically repeat the last century and have 23 years in government:

Figure 2 Labour years in power [Step]

If it is a straight line then we can expect 46 years – things are getting better:

Figure 3 Labour years in power [Straight Line]

If we are on an exponential trend than we can look forward to 529 years in government in the 21st Century. That’s the one I like best though clearly we’d also have to invent time travel.

Figure 4 Labour years in power [Exponential]

What it really shows is that when it comes to something as complex as British government, the last two centuries can tell us very little about the future.

But what if we look decade by decade? The Labour Party has existed for 11 decades, that’s 11 data points, not a huge amount but enough to start getting some interesting graphs.

Figure 5 shows the years in which Labour was in government in each decade. It’s a hell of a graph. A stuttering sine wave is what I would call it. How can it possibly be used to predict the future? Well there are some great statistical tools to do just that.

Figure 5 Labour years in power, decade by decade

In statistics, linear regression is used to try and find underlying trends. It is horribly complex. But fortunately it’s available in Excel at the press of a button. As you can see below:

Figure 6 Labour years in power – the underlying trend

If I were a dishonest statistician I would say that not only is the trend line increasing but by 2050 Labour will be in power ten out of every ten years. Permanent government. I’ll settle for that.

Of course I’ve broken most of the rules of honest statistics. I haven’t explained all the factors involved, and the assumptions on which ‘linear regression’ is based. I haven’t even proven that there is a real relationship between time and the Labour party being power. But this analysis is just as valid as asserting that we have already spent half our expected time in power this century. The only thing an honest statistician could say about that stuttering sine wave is – the trend is up.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

* Jon Cruddas writes for the Mirror on why he's backing David Miliband.

* The New Statesman throw their support behind Ed Miliband.

* And Ed M also gets the backing of Seamus Milne in the Guardian.

* The Guardian says the gloves are now off between the brothers in the leadership fight.

* David Miliband says that Labour should learn from Rab Butler.

* Writing in the Independent, Steve Richards prepares us for the return of Tony Blair to the national stage.

* Nick Clegg says that the "fairness" of the budget shouldn't be judged by numbers alone.

* And Arthur Scargill has been expelled from the NUM.

Three weeks in and the London bike hire scheme is being hailed as a success. Cyclists, from the proficient to the not so proficient, can be seen everywhere gliding (or wobbling) about town on the distinctive blue bikes. But, there is a group of individuals who have shunned the so-called Boris Bike* and even the bus, tube or occasional taxi in favour of the chauffeur driven car. Who are these people?, I hear you cry! They are all members of the same Coalition Government which pledged to cut waste by axing chauffeur driven ministerial cars.

What was it David Cameron said? "If there is something that really annoys people it's seeing politicians swanning around in chauffeur-driven cars like they're the Royal Family." However, a few months into the Conservative/LibDem Government and seven departments show no sign of given up their cars, while many other secretaries of state continue to cling on to their own chauffeur driven car. Perhaps this was another one of those Tory/LibDem "promises" that wasn't really a promise. It's hard then for Cameron and Clegg to claim we're "all in this together."

Fellow MP Tom Watson has estimated that axing chauffeur driven ministerial cars - such as the numerous Jaguars Cameron, William Hague, Ken Clarke, Michael Gove, Eric Pickles et al refuse to let out of their grip - in favour of using cars where necessary from the Government Car Service Pool, as stated in the new ministerial code published on 21st May, could deliver savings to the taxpayer of at least £6.2 million per year. That's certainly not a figure to be sniffed at. It could keep my Oyster card - and yours - topped up for life!


* It seems a little unfair on Ken Livingstone calling them Boris Bikes given that the former London Mayor was the one who put all the legwork (pardon the pun) into getting a bike hire scheme for the Capital. Couldn't we call them the slightly less catchy, Ken Cycle instead? No? Alternative name suggestions on a postcard, please!

I've just added my name to a petition that political pressure group, Compass, is currently running in an attempt to end legal loan sharking. Yes, that's right, this practice, where irresponsible lenders charge whatever rates they want, is actually legal and is repeatedly tipping customers into inescapable cycles of debt and poverty.

Despite the Bank of England base rate being just 0.5%, some loan and credit companies are charging annual interest rates equivalent to over 2500%. This is surely wrong, but there is currently no ceiling on the amount lenders can charge. The Government has already committed to regulating excessive interest rates on credit and store cards, but it makes sense that all forms of consumer credit should have a rate cap. Until then, this practice will continue.

I have been a strong supporter of affordable short term credit, provided by the likes of local credit unions, cooperatives and mutuals. Often the lower income families are not catered for by many high street banks and that's when the loan sharks come in to play. Ironically, it is those who are most in need that end up paying the highest rates to obtain credit. Therefore, as well as a rate cap on irresponsible lending, affordable sources of credit need to be developed so that people do have options.

It is a very complex issue and certainly not one that will be solved overnight, but signing the petition and emailing the Prime Minister with your concerns on legal loan sharking is a pretty good way of putting the wheels in motion.

David Miliband has won the support of John Cruddas in his bid to become Labour leader, while his brother Ed has secured the backing the New Statesman and Ed Balls has been endorsed by former London mayor Ken Livingstone.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Today saw reaction to the IFS report, which labelled the recent budget "regressive", a flurry of emails from leadership campaigns, and another MP swinging behind David Miliband - and it's a big one.

DAVID MILIBAND today gained the support of yet another crucial MP, and one that may be significant for the campaign as a whole. Influential back bencher Jon Cruddas has backed David in an interview with the New Statesman. Speaking to the magazine, Cruddas said:

"I'm endorsing David because of a couple of contributions he has made - one was the column on Englishness he wrote (in the New Statesman). Another was his Keir Hardie Memorial Lecture. What was interesting to me about this was when he started talking about belonging and neighbourliness and community, more communitarian politics, which is where I think Labour has to go."

Jon also wrote a post for David's website, in which he admitted some differences with David, but underlined his support:

"Taking the fight to the coalition, and rebuilding a party that is ready again to govern will require a united Labour party. This is why I’m supporting David Miliband’s campaign for Leader of the Labour Party."

"He has shown that he has the right stuff and is a good bloke. He has the patience, the strength and the convictions necessary to get the voting public listening to us again."

"He won’t pick a fight on every issue, but when he does, it will matter.  David Miliband is someone who can lead a credible opposition to the coalition government and build a party that is united for the first time in a decade."

"I’ll be honest – there are a fair few things where David and I don’t agree. We hail from different backgrounds within Labour. But we both understand the need for new leadership and a new start."

Tonight David gave a speech which his campaign had trailed as his most important of the leadership campaign so far. Although much of the thrust of the speech was about pride in Labour's record, there was also a sense that David sees things in the recent record of the party that he would seek to change:

"We need to learn the right lessons. Proud of our record, humble about our mistakes too."

"Tony and Gordon did great things. Really great things. But I know that in Tony’s time he did not focus on income inequalities, stopped devolution at Scotland and Wales when we should have carried it on, and too often defined himself against the party not against the Tories."

"Gordon was wrong about the 10p rate, and wrongfooted in debates about the role of the state and the importance of crime and security as Labour issues.  Both of them underestimated the extent to which the problems of the British economy had not been resolved by the 1980s."

You can read the full speech here.

Speaking to Sky News today, DAVID MILIBAND accused George Osborne of "double talk" over the budget, saying:

"It’s a double whammy on the people of Britain because we’re going to be poorer as a result, growth is down, employment down even on the government’s own figures, and we’re going to be a more divided country. That’s not the sort of Britain I want to see....The report today is an absolute torpedo at the claims that were made by George Osborne in the budget. He said he’d be straight talking but in fact it turns out there was double talk not straight talk because you can’t quarrel with the IFS."

His campaign website has also had a revamp, no doubt in anticipation of increased traffic as the contest heats up and ballot papers hit doormats. To celebrate the revamp, his campaign launched a new, slick video of David and his campaign, which you can see here:

While his brother was endorsed by Jon Cruddas in the New Statesman, ED MILIBAND was today endorsed by the New Statesman. In a blog on their website, Mehdi Hasan said:

"I am pleased to inform you all that the New Statesman has decided to back Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership."

"But let's be clear: we believe that both Miliband brothers would make decent, able and progressive prime ministers, and could lead Labour to victory over the Con-Lib coalition at the next election. And there was much debate, discussion and agonising, here in the New Statesman offices, with different members of the team backing different candidates. In the end, however, we agreed that Ed Miliband best represents the historic ideals, values and ambitions of this magazine."

The leader, published tomorrow, will say that Ed Miliband "has been most prepared to challenge New Labour orthodoxies".

Today Ed's campaign team released a video featuring his campaign team and supporters:

Ed also sought to draw a line under his views on gay marriage equality today in an article for Pink News:

"I want to see heterosexual and same-sex partnerships put on an equal basis and a Labour Party that I lead will campaign to make gay marriage happen."

"I also want Labour to lead where in the past it has failed to do so. We were wrong while in government not to overturn the ban on gay men donating blood. Many gay men would be very low risk donors, exactly the kind we need to encourage to address shortages in blood and many other countries run very safe systems without such a ban. I'm determined to find a better way of ensuring blood is safe."

And in response to a (perceived) attack from his brother, Ed issued a press release this evening, asking other candidates to take "special care to continue our debate in the spirit we started out. I will continue to conduct this campaign in that spirit."

ED BALLS was the first to react to the IFS report this morning, releasing a statement in which he said:

"So much for the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s promise to be a family friendly government. It is hard to think of any government in the history of our welfare state that has hit children and poor families so heavily and so fast." 

"While Labour’s budgets saw hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty, this Tory-Lib Dem budget will see the poorest families with children lose more than any other group. This report is the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s claims to have delivered anything but the most regressive Budget in a generation."

Ed also received the full throated support of Ken Livingstone today, which could be influential with Ken supporters voting in the mayoral contest at the same time as the leadership election. In his email to Ed Balls' supporters, Ken said:

"I'm asking you to give your first preference to the candidate I believe is best placed to be Labour leader - Ed Balls. "

"As Mayor of London I worked with dozens of Labour Ministers. But Ed Balls impressed me as someone who could really get things done in government."

"He's Labour through and through and is committed to strengthening the trade union link. And he's shown over the last few months that he is the candidate best placed to shorten the life of this Tory-Lib Dem government."

However, there was a telling paragraph further down the email, in which Ken indicated who else he favours in the leadership, and those who, by omission, he won't even be voting for:

"I know all of the candidates well - and they all have their strengths. I will be voting for three candidates - Ed Balls, Diane Abbott and Ed Miliband. My first preference will go to Ed Balls. I hope you'll consider giving him your support too."

DIANE ABBOTT wrote for the Independent today, responding to recent debate within the Labour Party, and outlining her view of how best Labour can best renew and reach out to the voters it has lost:

"There was a ubiquitous television advert for sweets in the 1980s where the catch line featured an endearing moppet saying "Don't forget the fruit gums mum!" You no longer see this ad. But the right of the Labour Party has its own ubiquitous recurring theme where someone pops up and says "Don't forget the middle classes!" The latest tribune of the right to utter this sentiment is my leadership rival David Miliband.... All the evidence is that Middle England is as heartily sick of "New Labour" as anyone else. It is a marketing brand that has outstayed its welcome. If we took a pragmatic view on policy, rather than running like scared rabbits from anything that might be tagged "left wi

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

David Miliband gave a major speech tonight which his campaign have trailed as his most significant of the campaign so far. It took place at King Solomon Academy in London, and you can read it below.

A week today voters in the Labour leadership contest will start to receive their ballot papers. A month today the Labour Party will announce the name of its new leader. So things are now serious. 

In fact they become more serious by the day. For our country and for our party. The economy is being given shock therapy; so is the health service; public provision is to be shredded; and the most vulnerable in our society are set to pay the greatest price. 

At the same time the government seek to plunder our politics, claiming the language of fairness, solidarity, responsibility and democracy. 

So we have to fight back. Quickly.  

Unlike in 1979, the public did not reject our goals or our values on May 6th. But they rejected us. And the coalition aim to make it permanent. Labour out of power for a generation.

The stakes could not be higher. 

For the children no longer getting new schools; for the mothers seeing support for their families cut back; for the businesses shedding staff rather than taking them on; for the consumers whose confidence is tumbling as austerity turns from policy into self fulfilling prophecy; and for us as a political party.

Our leadership contest has had some extraordinarily positive features: packed hustings, new members, and civility and comradeship that has been the perfect antidote to the horror stories of Labour history and the psychodramas of the recent past. 

You the members saved the Labour Party on May 6th. Since then you have humbled me with your resilience and inspired me with your passion. When Charles Smith told me in Chesterfield on Monday that he had been a party member for 74 years, that he had shaken hands with only one Labour leader George Lansbury, and that he was still fighting for working people today, I knew that nothing could break the spirit of the Labour Party.

But the debate has been too comfortable. Not enough acknowledgement of the challenges we face. Not enough sober recognition of how the land lies outside the tent.  

We have spent too much time looking inwards and backwards, when we need to look forwards for new ideas and outwards for a new relationship with voters. 

In the world outside, British politics is at a crossroads. We could be heading for a multiparty system of permanent coalitions. Or we could be in for a repeat of history’s trends – that when Liberals go into coalition with Tories, the two party system comes out stronger – and the Tories benefit.

Look more closely and the future of Britain itself is up for grabs. We face challenges as big as those facing any government since 1945. 

Changing World

The conventional answers of left and right, state and market, have little purchase on some of the most challenging social questions that have been raised at the hustings. We are a country that in the last few weeks has come together in a remarkable way, across lines of race and religion in a remarkable act of solidarity with the victims of the Pakistan floods. 

But issues closer to home, where that solidarity is also needed; loneliness amongst the elderly, self harm amongst the young, the stubborn cycle of criminal behaviour, speak to a loss of connection and moorings. Each is about people, and their relationships, not programmes of government.

There is the economic crisis. We have one of the most diverse economies in Europe: more manufacturing than France, creative industries bigger than Germany. But there is a structural weakness. We are over-reliant on financial services and the South East. Under-powered when it comes to private investment, skills, the exploitation of new markets and the renewal of our national infrastructure. That is why growth rates have consistently come in under forecast over the last decade. It is key to tackling the deficit itself

The fiscal deficit is matched by a democratic deficit. This is about the expenses scandal but much more. International problems yet international institutions are too weak to cope. Politics is slow when answers need to be fast. 

The new government have alighted on some of the right questions. But their economic recipe is dangerous; their Big Society tells people sink or swim; their foreign policy has a shrivelled notion of Britain’s global networks; and their public service reforms will leave people powerless over the public services they rely on.

So we need an alternative.

The Challenge for Labour

The key to our future as a party is to understand that the fact that they are wrong matters less than the fact that we are not trusted. We are pigeonholed as profligate when we need to be frugal; we are seen as statist when in fact our mission is to empower individuals, communities and businesses; and we are seen as the establishment when we need to be the radicals. 

I know and you know that unless we are serious and credible as agents of change in Britain we will never win this trust back.  

We need not just to oppose this government. We need to defeat them. 

To defeat this government, to renew our party, and to revive our country. That is the purpose of my candidacy for the leadership of our party.

It means learning from the past but not simply repudiating it. 

There is a palpable urging in the party for its leaders to stand up far more effectively for the change we achieved. I will stand up for our achievements because I am proud of them.

No government since the war has left crime lower than when it came into power – except Labour since 1997. Nor done more for civil and social rights. Nor channelled more income to the poorest pensioners and children. Nor shown greater commitment to the poorest in the world. Nor raised educational standards faster. Nor seen higher levels of employment. We achieved great things.

And when I talk of Labour’s achievements I don’t mean ‘we’ the government I mean ‘we’ the party. With a record that lives out the values of our movement and is a record we can be proud of together.

Yet it is also true that we lost on May 6th 2010 on an epic scale: it is not just the 29 per cent share of the vote that is our worst result since the second world war bar 1983; it is that outside the Labour heartlands we were given a drubbing. We lost 1.6 million low income voters between 1997 and 2010 and 2.8million skilled and lower middle class voters.

So we need to learn the right lessons. Proud of our record, humble about our mistakes too.

Tony and Gordon did great things. Really great things. But I know that in Tony’s time he did not focus on income inequalities, stopped devolution at Scotland and Wales when we should have carried it on, and too often defined himself against the party not against the Tories;

Gordon was wrong about the 10p rate, and wrongfooted in debates about the role of the state and the importance of crime and security as Labour issues.  Both of them underestimated the extent to which the problems of the British economy had not been resolved by the 1980s.

The challenges we face are difficult but the answer is not impossible. 

We are internationalists, and today we need stronger internationalism – from climate change to migration to terrorism. But today I want to focus on what we do at home. 

The answer to our challenge lies within ourselves. It is written on our membership cards, radical words if taken to heart would result in a transformation of this country.

“Power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few”.  Inspiring words. It is our creed.

The redistribution of power, that deepens and strengthens democracy in our country, holding market and state to real account. 

A moral economy, with much wider access to capital and wealth, across classes and across the country. 

The promise of opportunity, true liberty, so people can live a life according to commitments and choices that they can authentically call their own.

We don’t need to be the generation that re-writes Clause IV. We do need a leader who puts it into practice with verve and imagination. 

For too long we have viewed clause IV as a philosophical statement of values when in fact it offers a popular platform for Labour. 

Our values can be the foundation for us to win again. With me there will be no false choice between values and power. By putting our values into action in the right way, Labour can be the change Britain needs.

The Redistribution of Power

Power in the hands of the many not the few. Because we are socialists not statists. And it is the promise of democracy to hold the market in check and the state to account.

I will never let the Labour Party again be in a position where the Conservatives are claiming the inheritance of the cooperative movement, mutual societies and the self organised community groups who built the labour movement. 

These are not the fossils of our past; they are its treasure, the inherited capital which I will nurture and with which we will renew ourselves.

We have a government today whic

The Labour movement column

By Anthony Painter

In order for Labour to be in government it has to build a winning majority. There. That’s the magic formula. In this majority there will be working and middle class voters. It wins the working class voters by being real Labour and it wins the middle class voters by being New Labour. The way to win an election is to build motivated support on the left and attract swing voters at the same time.

Confused? You should be. For in the world of Labour political strategy there are only two groups of people - the working and middle classes. And there are only two strategies - target the core vote or target the median voter.

These strategies jockey for position as follows. Someone pops up and says Labour lost x million working class voters and needs to be true to its roots or values in order to win them back. See Ed Miliband for a variant of this.

Someone then comes back and says that Labour must not forget ‘aspirational voters’ - often expanding that such voters are to be found in the south east (apparently.) Step forward Joan Ryan.

And then someone pops up and says, no Labour must be a broad coalition of all classes. See David Miliband in the Telegraph at the weekend for this argument.

And then we go round again. The next loop has been started in The Independent today by Diane Abbott. Round and round we go. I could link to 100 similar articles of all three types: core, aspiration and broad church.

If this is the level of strategic thinking that Labour is now capable of then it is on a very long road back to power - assuming the coalition doesn’t implode. Where Ed Miliband has a point is that Labour did lose working class voters to the Conservatives. All the voters Labour lost didn’t vote Conservative but a significant portion did. His analysis stops short, however. The real question is why did Labour lose these votes to the Conservatives? If they were ‘real’ or ‘traditional’ Labour then why on earth would they vote Conservative?

David Miliband cautions against “crude marketing” and “transparent positioning” and he’s right. If you accept that is all New Labour was about - and I don’t though at its worst it could be - then that is an approach that is for the birds. What you gain by positioning in one direction you lose elsewhere. Essentially you find yourself on a seesaw of public opinion: what you gain in height to the right, you lose to the left and vice-versa. Into the bargain you seem capricious and vacillating. Instead you need credible answers to the multiple and great challenges that the UK is facing, a connection to people’s core values, and an understanding of the policies that can make an immediate and practical difference to people’s lives. Rather than chasing votes, it is better to provide convincing answers that address real concerns.

So the challenge is to find a way of expressing your values in a way that people understand but it is also to understand their concerns. Which brings us nicely back to those lost C2/D/E voters and why they were lost. The recent Demos research on the different value sets between the voters Labour kept from 2005 and those it lost is important here.

Some of the questions where there was the biggest difference between the two groups were to do with the state: its efficiency, its function, its form. A significant portion of the voters who deserted Labour - 35% - wanted more choice and control over public services and 55% thought the priority was to end top-down control and improve NHS efficiency rather than avoiding cuts (this compares to 31% of the voters Labour kept who thought the same.)

The point here is not to prescribe a particular set of policy solutions. The issue is that Labour no longer knows its ‘core vote’ - bear in mind Labour lost its C2/D/E voters disproportionately and many went to the Tories as Ed Miliband points out. The second issue is that the leadership contenders and Labour commentators have, so far, been reluctant to confront these inconvenient truths.

That changed this morning in a piece by David Miliband in The Times (paywall, sorry...) He writes:

"We are pigeonholed as profligate when we need to be prudent; we are seen as grabbing power for the State when our mission is to empower individuals, communities and businesses; and we are seen as the Establishment when we need to be the radicals."

It’s not that Labour got everything else right but got its approach to the state wrong. In fact, it was also far too relaxed about letting the market do its worst and then dealing with the aftermath. But the country at large does not quite view the state as the benign force for fairness that the Labour Party does - all too often in an unquestioning manner.

None of this is about wooing this or that group of voters. It is not about core versus aspirational voters or whatever. It is not about New v Old Labour. It is about understanding the rich tapestry of complex concerns, needs, and instincts that cut across classes. Voters no longer congregate in blocks. Modern Britain is far more pluralistic and finely grained than that. But Labour sometimes still seems to think that Britain is rather more akin to the 1950s - hence the strategy merry-go-round.

Hopefully David Miliband’s intervention today will finally confront this lingering issue for Labour. That is not positioning. It is good sense to understand where people are and address their concerns in reflection of your values and with credible policies. There are many ways of doing so but just ignoring it is not the answer. There. A strategy.

Anthony Painter blogs at www.anthonypainter.co.uk. He is an Associate at Demos, leading on the Open Coalitions project within Open Left. These are his personal views.

By Howard Dawber

Over 100 days ago, Britain woke up to a new coalition government. In that time they have already displayed extraordinary economic illiteracy and are beginning to champion a dangerous mix of cruelty and cheerful incompetence, perhaps already worse than any government in living memory.

Here are the numbers thirty-one to thirty-five of the top 50 things they have done wrong ... so far...

31. ABOLISHING THE AUDIT COMMISSION
The Audit Commission was set up by the last Tory government in 1983 as a way of improving and monitoring management of local government, the police, fire services and the NHS. Since it was founded it has proved to be exremely effective, helping councils benchmark their services, helping central government discover what works and what doesn't work. It has practically eliminated some of the problems local government faced in the 1980s where councils would overextend themselves, borrowing and spending too much, and threatening local services. In recent years their anti-fraud drive has saved an estimated £600m of taxpayers' money. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has decided to abolish it.

Why is it a bad idea? The coalition says it wants to give local councils more freedom - and that abolishing the Audit Commission will take away a whole load of targets and bureaucracy. But the Audit Commission helps councils run more efficiently - if it is abolished councils and central government will have to spend more money on outside consultants to find out the same things and to share good practice - and the government will have no-one checking that local councils are spending their money properly. Pickles has also said that private companies will do the auditing from now on - a huge bonanza for private accountancy firms who stand to make bumper profits at the expense of local tax payers - and the first stage in a wave of privatisation in local government.

32. ABOLISHING THE NEW "GO ORDERS"  PROTECTING WOMEN FROM DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
On Friday 16 July, addressing the Women’s Aid National Conference, ConDem Home Secretary Theresa May said, “Let me make clear: my ambition is nothing less than ending violence against women and girls". She also said that achieving an end to domestic abuse “was a priority for me in opposition and it is a priority for me now I am in government. So have no fear - have no doubt - that your cause is my cause.” In August, she decided to scrap a new scheme which would protect women from domestic abuse by removing their violent partner. The scrapping of the so-called 'go orders' roll-out is part of a cuts package of £2.5bn from the Home Office budget.

Why is it a bad idea? David Chaplin, a spokesman for the NSPCC children's charity, said the organisation was "deeply disappointed" by the move. He said: "We strongly supported the orders. They would have given some vital respite to the victims of abuse." The Home Affairs Select Committee recommends ‘go orders’ as an "inexpensive" measure in protecting victims of domestic abuse and says similar schemes "have proved effective in other European countries".

33. CUTTING FUNDING FOR CHILDREN'S PLAYGROUNDS

The coalition has frozen grants allocated to 132 local authorities to pay for 1,300 new childrens play areas - many of which have been designed by the children themselves.

Why is it a bad idea? Because playgrounds help cut obesity, and provide healthy outdoor spaces for communities. Children should be encouraged to think about how they interact with each other and many will be bitterly disappointed that the new play space they have designed will now not be built.

34. RAISING RAIL FARES BY UP TO 8%

In opposition Tory MPs complained about high rail fares and talked about how they were the new champions of rail travel. The Lib Dem manifesto promised to cut rail fares by keeping any increase capped at one per cent below inflation. Now we are being warned that fares - already planned to rise by 5% in line with inflation - may go up by 8% in January due to cuts in the Department for Transport's budget.

Why is it a bad idea? Higher fares put people off rail travel, reduce Britain's competitiveness, and encourage more car travel which is environmentally less efficient. So much for the ConDems being pro-rail.

35. ABANDONING ENVIRONMENTAL TARGETS

In opposition and in the coalition talks, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said they would introduce strict new emissions targets to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases, particularly from power stations. In 2006 Cameron first proposed the idea, pointing to the experience of California. In June 2006, Cameron said: "I can announce today that a Conservative government will follow the Californian model, and implement an Emissions Performance Standard."

Now, according to the Guardian,  they have decided not to include these new targets in their energy legislation this autumn.

Why is it a bad idea? This is yet another example of the ConDems saying one thing and doing another. It also opens the door for a new generation of coal-fired power stations like Kingsnorth. Having opposed much of Labour's environmental targets and legislation while talking up their green credentials, and using the Kingsnorth issue to attack Labour, the Tories are reverting to type now in Government and backtracking on their commitments. Greenpeace said: "if they u-turn on this and fail to put (the targets) in their new energy law, how can they claim to be the greenest government ever?".

Yoosk have been collating questions for the leadership candidates over the past few weeks. Ed Miliband is the second candidate to face the Yoosk team, and answers questions on AV, fair treatment for women and his second vote in the leadership contest.

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Research from the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) released today indicates that the impact of the recent "austerity budget" will fall hardest on the poorest in society, and that the measures contained in the budget were "regressive". Labour figures have lined up this morning to lambast the government over the budget, and comment on the findings of the IFS.

UPDATE: Speaking to Sky News, Ed Miliband said that the government has been "exposed" by today's report:

"They put up VAT to 20% we know it’s an unfair tax that meant they didn’t go ahead with our national insurance change that would have been more progressive and they didn’t tax money, enough money off the banks which would also have been fairer."

"There are choices you can make and I’m afraid they made the wrong choices and that’s what’s been exposed today."

"My criticism of this government is they have no plan for economic growth in this country. Indeed, we’re seeing danger signals around the figures on growth and that’s going to be bad for tax receipts, bad for unemployment and bad for the deficit."

Ed Balls was the first to react this morning, releasing a statement in which he said:

"So much for the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s promise to be a family friendly government. It is hard to think of any government in the history of our welfare state that has hit children and poor families so heavily and so fast." 

"While Labour’s budgets saw hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty, this Tory-Lib Dem budget will see the poorest families with children lose more than any other group. This report is the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s claims to have delivered anything but the most regressive Budget in a generation."

Shadow work and pensions minister Yvette Cooper responded to the figures saying:

"These figures show the government is pursuing a shocking and unfair attack on children and families. “The Chancellor claimed his Budget didn't increase child poverty – but only because he deliberately didn't count cuts in housing benefit, disability benefits and child tax credit that hit families hard."

"The idea that the poorest families with children should end up being hit hardest is appalling and gives the lie to George Osborne’s claim it was a progressive budget."

Speaking to Sky News, David Miliband accused George Osborne of "double talk" over the budget, saying:

"It’s a double whammy on the people of Britain because we’re going to be poorer as a result, growth is down, employment down even on the government’s own figures, and we’re going to be a more divided country. That’s not the sort of Britain I want to see....The report today is an absolute torpedo at the claims that were made by George Osborne in the budget. He said he’d be straight talking but in fact in turns out there was double talk not straight talk because you can’t quarrel with the IFS."