Labour party

Matt Hancock is both a competent economist (read his account of the Great Recession) and a keen political strategist. Where possible he has used his position as minister for skills to position the coalition on the compassionate side of the employment argument; for example, with his considered support for the minimum wage. Yesterday, in an article for ConservativeHome, he pre-empted Labour’s attempt to shift economic focus to the cost of living, now that hopes of a recovery are building. He made two basic points: 1). Labour’s record on the cost of living is abysmal – wages did not keep pace with growth during the boom. He says that gross disposable income fell by 1.1 per cent per head between 2003-08.

Today’s award for Westminster nominative determinism goes to Labour’s duty spinner over the weekend. Sending out press releases for the red team was one Victoria Street. This name is not a group account reflecting the old location of Labour HQ - 83 Victoria Street - but, as a source confirms, is that of a junior staffer. It reminded me of the time when the Downing Street press office started emailing information from an Alistair Campbell last year. A coincidence, thankfully.

It’s a good time to be a Tory in Westminster at present. Labour is under pressure. The backbench dissenters have been quietened. Aides, hacks and spinners exude an air of confidence when you meet them in SW1’s watering holes. Even Boris Johnson reckons that David Cameron could yet pull it off in 2015. Speaking of which, the party has captured the services of Jim Messina, a strategist who has worked with Barack Obama. He will whip CCHQ’s mercurial digital assets into shape and help to sell the government's economic record. Aside from enjoying the benefit of Messina’s gifts, this is a PR coup for the ‘nasty party’. Observe the reaction of certain Labour figures: Jim Messina either doesn't know or doesn't care what a malignant thing the Tory party is.

Politics abhors a news vacuum. So with the government on holiday, attention shifts to the opposition. This is why oppositions normally have a whole series of summer stories ready to fill this vacuum. But, oddly, we have heard little from the Labour front bench in the last ten days or so. One consequence of this is that criticisms of Ed Miliband’s leadership by the Labour backbencher George Mudie are going to get more play than they normally would in tomorrow’s papers. There’ve been none of the attacks on a government that you would expect from the opposition in the penultimate summer before a general election. It is hard not to feel that Ed Miliband is being let down by a shadow Cabinet that isn’t being as energetic as it should be.

Grant Shapps’ latest broadside against Labour shows how keen the Tories are to frame the next election not as a referendum on their performance in government but as a choice between them and Labour. Shapps wants voters to think about the fact that the alternative to David Cameron as Prime Minister is ‘Miliband and Balls’ driving up Downing Street before they cast their ballots. The Tory Chairman’s speech, due to be delivered at Policy Exchange this morning, also shows where the Tories think Labour are vulnerable. Tellingly, he talks about ‘Miliband and Balls’ rather than just Miliband; the Tories believe that Balls’ presence is a reminder to voters of the links between the current Labour leadership and the Brown era.

Charming little spat between the Conservative Party and George Orwell’s old literary haunt, Tribune. The magazine, which is edited by a former Labour councillor, is up in arms because the Tories will only give it one free pass to their autumn conference. Given that the periodical has only three members of staff and is the chosen reading matter of what's left of the very left, Steerpike can see why the Tories reckon that one freeloading tribune of the people will be enough. But former Tribune editor Mark Seddon says: ‘It’s an outrage that they should pick on a small paper because it happens to be left-wing.’ A Tory insider hit back this afternoon: ‘This is typical of Labour’s something for nothing culture.

From David Cameron’s declaration that you could sum up his political priorities in the three letters N H S, to the commitment to increase the health budget every year, the Cameroons have sought to reassure on the health service. They want voters to believe that it is safe in their hands. This is what gives the row over the NHS’s 111 helpline number its political importance. Labour, still fuming at how the Tories used the Keogh review to attack its record on the NHS, is trying to use the help-line’s problems to show that ‘you can’t trust David Cameron with the NHS’.

In the last few months, the Tories have--quite deliberately—behaved like an aggressive opposition. They’ve sought to constantly attack Labour, trying to force them onto the back foot. Even with David Cameron and George Osborne away on holiday, the Tories are determined to keep doing this. On Wednesday, Grant Shapps will launch the Tories’ summer offensive against Labour. He, in the kind of language more commonly used to promote summer horror films than a political agenda, will invite voters ‘to imagine a world where Ed Balls and Ed Miliband end up back in Downing Street.’ This is all part of the Tories’ efforts to link Miliband to Gordon Brown and memories of the last Labour government.

Everyone in SW1, it seems, has an opinion on this controversial scheme. Most people hate it. The general assumption is that this is a Tory stunt clothed as a government policy. The question is, though, has the van campaign been a successful policy pilot from a presentational point of view? Here are some thoughts: 1). The right-wing press. The Mail is utterly contemptuous. A leading column claims that only one illegal immigrant has stepped forward. The leader goes on to say that voters punish cheap stunts; what people want is action. And if that wasn’t enough, the paper’s front page (below) is uncompromising. All of this will have gone down badly in the Home Office, which has a good story to tell about reducing net migration. 2). Disaffected voters.

Naturally, today's first estimate of Q2 GDP figures showing that the economy grew 0.6 per cent makes good news for the Conservatives. They can relax on their sun loungers (sorry, in their desk chairs in their constituencies as they work hard for local people) this summer knowing that though things are only getting better slowly, they are at least getting better. For George Osborne, this is personal vindication of his private theory that things would start to turn around this summer. The Chancellor's plan for this year had been to survive the Budget and hope for growth later in the year. He appears to have taken the right strategic course.

Will Michael Gove's education reforms really have a lasting impact? It's a question that perturbs his supporters no end, as the Education Secretary is attempting to do a great deal in five years that a Labour government could still unpick. Perhaps the funding for more free schools, a key dividing line, announced in the 2015/16 spending review, will make a difference, but Gove was today pretty optimistic about the chances of Labour embracing, rather than just tolerating, his reforms. In a question-and-answer session, Gove said: 'I think that it's certainly the case that there's a lot of momentum in the department for education at the moment for continued reform.

Alan Johnson's interview with Total Politics highlights one of Ed Miliband's two big problems for 2015. One is the influence of trade unions over policy, or at least the perceived influence. The second, which Johnson expounds on, is whether it is too much to ask voters to trust Labour again when its top team contains so many familiar faces from the last government. Johnson tells Sam Macrory: 'Everything is focused on what the chancellor is doing, not what the shadow chancellor is doing, and it's a tough call. He's also got to turn round this defeat, where for a long time the myth was created that it was because we overspent - and he was part of that, so he's got to overcome that as well, so it's a tough job for him.

Ed Miliband was clear yesterday when he announced that he will run a special party conference next spring to vote through his reforms to Labour's relationship with the unions that there would be a 'cost' to the party. Now we have the first indications of how great that cost might be. Lord Ashcroft has released one of his inimitable polls, this time of Unite union members. It finds that only 30 per cent of members would choose to opt in to Unite's political fund, while 53 per cent said they would not and 17 per cent had not decided. There wasn't much support for the current opt-out system, either, with 31 per cent saying they backed it, and 57 per cent saying they preferred an opt-in. When asked whether hey would join the party, 12 per cent said they would.