Labour party

Washington, D.C. Ed Miliband met with Barack Obama yesterday, haven't you heard? The British press covered the visit with their usual gusto but the visit barely registered on the radar of American outlets. Out of the country’s most influential papers, neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal wrote a single word about the potential next prime minister of the United Kingdom meeting the president. Miliband wasn't covered on any of the blogs or TV stations either. Only one US paper said anything about the visit.

Tony Blair, international superstar, has jetted into London to deliver the inaugural Philip Gould Memorial Lecture at Progress, a think tank. The speech would have enraged the likes of Len McCluskey, in the unlikely event that he listened to it. Blair trotted out all the pleasing soundbites of the past. The ‘third way’ was, he said, ‘a hard-headed examination of the world as it really is.’ Progressive politics was ‘not a cast of policy but a cast of mind. It’s not a programme but a philosophy. It’s not time limited but perpetual.’ The audience drank of these comfy platitudes and were nourished. Mr S, meanwhile, wondered what Ed Miliband, who has flown to America in pursuit of a photo-op with Barack Obama, made of it all.

On the hottest weekend of the year, few people would want to be stuck inside in Milton Keynes. But that is where the Labour hierarchy finds itself. For this weekend is the party’s national policy forum. Ed Miliband’s speech today is meant to try and show that while he has moved on from New Labour he is not old Labour. There will be much talk of how fiscal restraint will have to continue and how Miliband knows there can be no return to the free spending ways of the past. One aide sums the message up as, ‘We know there is no money to spend.’ But it’ll be fascinating to contrast Miliband’s speech today with the one that Tony Blair is giving on Monday to mark the 20th anniversary of his election as Labour leader.

In 2010, shortly after going into coalition, Lib Dem MPs and peers were addressed by various liberal politicians keen to share their experiences of being the smallest party in a coalition. It was a fascinating, if mildly depressing occasion, with the advice ranging from ‘it’s hell’ to ‘no really, it’s absolute hell.’ The most striking quote came from the Dutch politician Lousewies van der Laan who warned us not to act like ‘the mayor in wartime’: a reference to people who became mayors of towns occupied by the Nazis, and then justified the decision by admitting that things were horrific but would be mildly less dreadful due to their decision to take some power.

Labour has now reviewed the Harriet Harman interview on LBC in which she said 'I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes' and concluded that she wasn't calling for the squeezed middle to pay more in tax than it currently is. Very few people can honestly say they are able to make crystal clear assertions in every broadcast appearance they make, but Harman, had she had any idea that CCHQ was listening to her interview, hoping for something juicy, could have clarified what she meant by adding 'than those on low incomes' to 'I think people on middle incomes should contribute more through their taxes' so that the Tories couldn't suggest that she meant 'than they currently do at the moment'.

Politicians tend to get all the blame for immigration policies not working. But politicians are often doomed to fail on migration questions because there are deep-rooted problems with the way we all debate immigration and with what we expect of immigration policy. Following UKIP’s success in the European elections, and given the likely failure of the government to meet its net migration target by 2015, immigration is guaranteed to be a key focal point of public debate in the run-up to the general election next year. There is widespread agreement that Britain needs a ‘better’ immigration debate - but how can that be achieved? Over the past year I have been developing an online course on international labour migration for Oxford University which deals with this question.

In 1975 Margaret Thatcher said in her 'Free Society' speech to the Conservative Party Conference: ‘Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.’ Mr S could not help but recall these fine words after an email arrived from the Labour Party asking him to enter chunks of personal data into its website, such as his postcode and date of birth, in order to find out his ‘number’. Since Labour created the NHS 66 years ago, croons the propaganda, it’s delivered 44m babies.

In our latest View from 22 video, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the two top stories from this weekend — the allegations about a paedophile ring in Westminster and Ed Miliband's localist agenda — and how they will play out over the coming week. We're still playing with the format of this: two-subject discussions, or one? 5 mins, 10 mins or longer? Any thoughts welcome.

Tristram Hunt is getting a fair bit of stick from the Conservatives for refusing to condemn the strike action planned by the National Union of Teachers on this morning's Andrew Marr Show. The Shadow Education Secretary merely said 'it's not up to me to tell trade unionists what to do - what I want is teachers in classrooms in a conversation with the Secretary of State so we get over these kind of hurdles'. He said the current stand-off was 'as a result, partly, of some of the incendiary language from the Secretary of State'. Certainly when you read some of the NUT's literature around its industrial action, it's difficult not to conclude that this isn't as much about a dislike of Michael Gove as it is a particular policy.

Labour’s ‘media grid’ for this week had Miliband’s millionaire spinner Tom Baldwin pencilled in to brief Times journalist Rachel Sylvester and give her an exclusive story for Tuesday's paper. When the paper landed it was actually lots of Labour figures slagging off the leader, and saying how Ed had lots of policies but not the character to be PM. That's some class A spinning for you.

How much common ground do the political parties have on localism? As Isabel pointed out this morning, Labour and the Conservatives are engaged in an arms race to see who can out do the other on plans to devolve powers from central government. All politicians love to talk up localism — particularly in opposition, where there’s no Whitehall machine to deal with — but their dreams and slogans frequently change. This is what the three main parties have said, and currently believe, on empowering the regions: Conservatives In opposition, David Cameron put forward plans to devolve power in a more radical way than ever before.

Is Damian McBride auditioning for a job as the saviour of the Labour Party spin operation? His re-energised blogging would certainly indicate as much. In the last few weeks the Brownite bad boy has left his job with Catholic aid charity Cafod, and returned to writing full time. He's also managed to make a compelling argument for why his misdemeanours cannot now be compared to those of Andy Coulson, despite the best efforts of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor: 'So if the Tories want to keep using the ‘What about Damian McBride?