Ed miliband

After a difficult few weeks for the Big Society, culminating in Liverpool’s nakedly political ‘withdrawal’ from the vanguard projects, Peter Oborne has already drafted an obituary for the Conservative's policy agenda.   As Oborne says, the Big Society goes to the heart of this government’s reason for existence, and its (real or perceived) failure would damage the Conservatives. But it's notable Labour has yet to come up with an alternative to the Big Society, or even a substantive critique of the idea. The problem for Miliband is that the Big Society agenda captures the centre ground of social policy – neither pro nor anti-state – and risks sidelining his party.

Cleggologists will mark down the Deputy PM's speech today as a typical effort. There was basically nothing in it that was new – but Clegg still put it across with more punch, and more persuasively, than most of his colleagues could manage. All of the slogans and pre-announced policies added up to something that sounded, fleetingly, like a plan for growth. Although we'll still have to wait for Vince Cable's review to see the outlines of that plan shaded in. Clegg's main point was straightforward enough: that the government has to, and will, go beyond deficit reduction to stoke the embers of the British economy. He then ranged across everything from the national infrastructure to – a theme of this week – endowing the British workforce with skills.

Open any mass-circulation newspaper and you will find plenty of insider's information about the Tory party. But precious little is known about their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. After decades in the political wilderness, most editors reasoned that it wasn't really worth their while finding out what the party thought. After all, what difference did it make?   Well, times have changed. What the party thinks, what it does, and, crucially, what it won't do, really does matter. So to help us here at Coffee House, Julian Astle, a friend of the Lib Dem leadership and director of CentreForum, the liberal think tank, has agreed to answer a few questions.

One yawn every minute. That’s how PMQs felt today. Foreign affairs dominated the session as Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister exchanged lofty words about the Cairo demonstrations and the spread of democracy around the world. Doubtless they felt they struck a suitably elevated tone but to the viewers they came across as a pair of prep school smart-alecs trying to sound like great statesmen disposing of liberated peoples after the fall of empires. Egypt and Afghanistan were both treated to a torrent of high-minded vacuities. David Cameron found the demonstrations ‘incredibly moving.’ Ed Miliband was impressed by the sight of ‘hundreds of thousands of people facing overwhelming odds to ask for their democratic rights.

Ed Balls gets personal in his interview with the Times (£) today, but not in the way you might expect. For most of the piece he dwells on what the paper calls his "hidden vulnerability" – the effort to contain his stammer. And from there on, the politics seems a touch softer than usual. There are surprisingly few overt attacks on his opponents, and those that make the cut are considerably less violent that we're used too. Which isn't to say that the interview lacks politics. No sirree. Here's a ten-point selection of some of the political highlights (so to speak), with my added comments:      1) Doubling back on a double dip.

What a joy it is to watch Ed Miliband contort and twist so that he can offer a hand of friendship to the Lib Dems. It has been a three-act show, so far. First, during the Labour leadership contest, he described the Lib Dems as a "disgrace to the traditions of liberalism," adding that, "I can see the death of the Liberal party to be honest". Then, he said that he would actually work with those dying Liberals, but only if they ditched Nick Clegg first. And then today, in an interview with the Independent, he suggests that Clegg might be able to stay on, after all. As turnarounds go, this one is predictable and sensible - but it's no less amusing for that. The Lib Dem response has once again come from Tim Farron; almost certainly for the same reasons as before.

We already knew Ed Balls was behind Gordon Brown’s economic policy. He devised the policy on spending that left Britain with the worst deficit heading into the crisis, and wrote the bank regulations that his colleague Douglas Alexander attacked earlier today.   What we have discovered today, from Balls’ first foray into economic policy as Shadow Chancellor, is that he was also behind the old Brown ploy of twisted facts and absurd assertions.   First, he claimed the public finances are better than the Treasury forecast. Yet the independent Office for Budget Responsibility found that the structural deficit – the hole we have to fix - was worse than Labour admitted.

After the gales of recent weeks, the past few days must have been relatively blissful for the Lib Dems. No fake constituents with hidden dictaphones. No massive student protests. No especial focus on their opinion poll ratings. But, instead, a mephitic heap of problems, or at least embarrassments, for Labour and the Tories. Warsi, Johnson, Coulson, even EMAs – Clegg & Co. have been spared the worst of it. Which isn't to say that the Lib Dems will be unaffected by recent events. For instance, as Paul Goodman suggests, Andy Coulson's departure unsettles the delicate balance of the coalition – and that will always have ramifications, however minute, for the yellow half of it. Yet it's the rise of Balls that may prove more significant for the Lib Dems.

The timing could hardly have been more resonant. On the day that Tony Blair is paraded, once again, in front of the Iraq Inquiry, Team Brown is firmly back in charge of the Labour party. For, I'm sure you've noticed CoffeeHousers, three of the four great shadow offices of state are occupied by former members of the Brown coterie: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. The fourth belongs to someone who doesn't sit easily in either half of the TB-GB divide: Douglas Alexander. The question, of course, is what this means for Labour's economic policy. And the answer according to Miliband is "nothing much". The Labour leader has been keen to stress that his party's fiscal plans remain largely unchanged by Balls' ascension.

Both The Mail and The Sun are running on their front pages that Alan Johnson’s wife is allegedly having an affair with his bodyguard. There are, though, other rumours referenced in other papers. The Tory view this evening is that they now face a tactically harder fight but a strategically easier one. They fully expect Balls to snap at Osborne’s ankles more effectively than Johnson did. But they think that Balls’ previous on the economy and his oft-expressed views on a double dip and the Darling plan will help them overall. One thing worth noting this evening is that Liam Byrne’s appointment to shadow Iain Duncan-Smith shows that Ed Miliband remains committed to offering broad support to IDS’s welfare reforms.