Labour party

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Liam Byrne changes tack to say benefit cap isn’t tough enough

From our UK edition

Liam Byrne's attack on the workless benefit cap this morning is interesting, because he's trying to position himself as tougher than the Conservatives on out-of-work benefits. Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary said: 'The benefit cap is a good idea in principle but it's already fallen apart in practice. Ministers have bodged the rules so the cap won't affect Britain's 4,000 largest families and it does nothing to stop people living a life on welfare. The government needs to go back to the drawing board, design a cap without holes and put a two-year limit on the time you can spend on the dole, like Labour's compulsory jobs guarantee.

Thursday

Matthew Parris

Why partisan columnists (like me) are doomed

From our UK edition

An email exchange with a Conservative-leaning friend this week left me feeling sheepish. But if shameful my behaviour be, I’m not alone in the shame. I thought it worth sharing the conversation. We were corresponding about Ed Miliband’s stand-off with the Unite trade union. In a message to my friend, I remarked: ‘It’s reaching the point where (paradoxically) EM’s tendency to take the line of least resistance may actually push him into confronting Unite.’ And that’s true: worms turn and it’s not always good politics to corner people. But it is the next part of the message that I’m hard-put to defend.

Steerpike

Dame Gail Rebuck – tax cutter

From our UK edition

The Queen of Publishing, Dame Gail Rebuck, abdicated earlier this week when she stood down as chairman and chief executive of Random House. Dame Gail will take up the somewhat more emeritus position of chairman of the UK arm of Penguin Random House — the literary world’s new super-group. Her Majesty will use some of her spare time to chair the Cheltenham Literary Festival. She has been making remarks about these changes over the last couple of days and Mr Steerpike was interested to learn that this firm Labour supporter, the widow of Philip Gould, is a tax cutter.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt turns on Labour over union policy influence

From our UK edition

One of David Cameron's better lines at Prime Minister's Questions was that the trade unions 'buy the candidates, they buy the policies and they buy the leader'. In his final response to Ed Miliband, he said: 'What is Labour's policy on Royal Mail? It is determined by the Communication Workers Union. What is its policy on health? It is determined by Unison. What is its policy on party funding? It is determined by Unite.' To underline that point, Jeremy Hunt has sent a letter to Andy Burnham this afternoon asking for 'clarification about union influence over Labour health policy'. The letter, which you can read in full here, says Burnham altered Government policy 'in response to union demands'.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Ed Miliband’s Surprisingly Bold Plan for A New Model Labour Party

From our UK edition

Tony Blair has welcomed Ed Miliband's "big speech" on reforming Labour's relationship with its Trade Union backers. And so has Len McCluskey, chief potentate at Unite, the Union whose allegedly nefarious activities in Falkirk have prodded Miliband towards reform. Blair expects Miliband's proposals to change everything; McCluskey, presumably, is confident any changes will prove largely cosmetic. They can't both be right. But, actually, it is a little unfair to put "big speech" in inverted commas. This was, or at least has the potential to be, a transforming moment for the Labour party. Granted, no-one is quite sure how this will happen  - and the detail matters - but everyone agrees something is afoot.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband is back on the front foot, for now at least

From our UK edition

There was a point in Ed Miliband's speech on a 'better politics' where it became clear that for the rest of our lives we're all going to be trapped in an endless cycle of opposition politicians announcing that they are going to forge a 'new politics', as though some other chap hadn't said the same thing only a few years before. There really is nothing new under the sun. But it would be unfair to dismiss the Labour leader's speech as meaningless simply for saying what others have said before him: perhaps he was hoping that the goldfish bowl of the Westminster Village would turn out to contain a bunch of people with goldfish memories, too. His speech was in many ways impressive politically.

The Spectator

Ed Miliband’s speech on reforming Labour’s relationship with trade unions: full text

From our UK edition

Let me start by saying how pleased I am to be here at the St Bride’s Foundation. Only a few hundred yards from where the Labour Party was founded over a century ago. And especially to be here with so many community organisers and Labour Party members from right across the country. I am here today to talk about how we can build a different kind of politics. A politics which is truly rooted in every community of the country. And reaches out to people across every walk of life. That is what I mean by One Nation. A country where everyone plays their part. And a politics where they can. It is about a politics that is open. Transparent. And trusted. Exactly the opposite of the politics we’ve recently seen in Falkirk. A politics that was closed.

Rod Liddle

God forbid that unions try to influence the Labour Party

From our UK edition

I think it was the arrival into the debate of those Blairite ghosts Mandelson and Reid which helped me make my mind up. Somehow, Ed Miliband has been coerced into taking on the Unite union on the grounds that they are doing shady business on the matter of selecting candidates. Mandelson and Reid are both demanding Miliband stand firm (an interesting thought) and stick it to Len McCluskey: Unite is trying to influence Labour’s agenda, they howl. Well god forbid that unions have any input into the Labour Party’s policies.

Isabel Hardman

Who owns Labour? Unite turns on the Right

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband's speech today isn't an attempt to close down the row over Falkirk, but to get back on top of the issue, rather than appearing to be bounced along by events. What it will do is open a huge row with the union bosses: one the Labour leader needs to be seen to have won at the end of it all. Here is a briefing on what to expect from Miliband. The Tories are pleased this morning that Len McCluskey has written in this morning's Guardian that 'switching to an "opt-in" for the political levy wouldn't work… would debilitate unions' ability to speak for our members and would further undermine unions' status as voluntary, and self-governing, organisations'.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband’s ‘Clause IV moment’: what you need to know

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband is giving a speech tomorrow morning on 'the biggest Labour party reforms for a generation' to shake up the party's relationship with the unions. It's a 'One Nation Politics' speech, which shows the Labour leader thinks his 'One Nation' tag can even be applied to cleaning up a mess in your own party, and will contain what spinners are briefing is a 'radical' shake-up of the party. He will say that 'One Nation is a country where everyone plays their part and a politics in which they can'. This politics is the 'opposite of the politics we saw in Falkirk. Here's your guide to what he'll say tomorrow, and what appears to have been left out: 1. Opt-in arrangements for union members to choose whether or not to join Labour.

James Forsyth

Can Ed Miliband dodge the ‘weak’ tag?

From our UK edition

When a political party repeatedly uses an attack line it is nearly always because their polling shows that it works. This is certainly why the Tories keep calling Ed Miliband ‘weak’. Indeed, they’re so keen to keep hitting him with this charge that they’ve stopped accusing him of knifing his brother for fear of undercutting it. This is one of the many things that makes Miliband’s speech tomorrow so important. The Tories are desperate to portray Miliband as a weak leader being pushed around by the ‘bully boys’ of the trade union machine. If Miliband is seen to have ducked the issue, the Tories will have yet more ammunition for their ‘weak, weak, weak’ attacks.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband prepares for his most testing week yet

From our UK edition

While the Tories bask in the glory of Abu Qatada's deportation, the progress of James Wharton's Private Member's Bill, and the general good atmosphere in the party, Labour is trying to work out what the best response to its terrible week is, and how to get to a situation where it is on top of the story, rather than jogging after it. The Independent on Sunday quotes one senior figure today as saying that Ed Miliband only has two weeks in which to resolve the Falkirk row, and his acolytes were out in force today to underline that the fightback is already under way. Michael Dugher has just appeared on Pienaar's Politics to say that the 'process of change, if anything, has got to accelerate and I think that's what you will see in the days and weeks coming after this'.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband and Len McCluskey’s acrimonious rally

From our UK edition

Wham! Len McCluskey and Ed Miliband have spent this afternoon hitting criticisms back and forth over the Falkirk row. Earlier, the Labour leader sent a challenge shooting over the net to the Unite boss, telling McCluskey he 'should be facing up to his responsibilities'. Then the Labour party said it was referring the matter to the police. McCluskey slammed back on Sky News, saying Unite had 'done nothing wrong'. He said: 'I'm afraid the way it has been handled by the Labour party headquarters is nothing short of disgraceful.' And he warned Ed off having a confrontation with the unions: 'It's depressing that Labour leaders seem to want to have a Clause 4 moment, they have got to have a situation where they front up union leaders. Well, Ed doesn't need to front up me. I'm his friend.

Isabel Hardman

‘Len McCluskey should be facing up to his responsibilities’: Ed Miliband stands up to Unite

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband's supporters have been arguing that he needs to show muscle on the Unite row before his opponents successfully argue that he is a weak leader in thrall to the union puppet masters. While Conservative MPs joked abut Tom Watson's 'Buddha' comments in the Chamber this morning, the Labour leader did speak out about Len McCluskey and the Falkirk row. To his credit, he has shown that muscle. He is referring the Falkirk allegations to the police this afternoon, and this morning, he said: We will act without fear or favour. Instead of defending what happened in Falkirk, Len McCluskey should be facing up to his responsibilities. He should not be defending the machine politics involving bad practice and malpractice that went on there, he should be facing up to it.

Isabel Hardman

Douglas Alexander’s evasive EU referendum speech suggests his party could change its mind

From our UK edition

The Tory party have been having a very fun morning in the Chamber so far. The debate about James Wharton's Private Member's Bill for an EU referendum has had the atmosphere of a children's party. David Cameron was smiling on a frontbench like the indulgent father watching his child getting a little over-excited. William Hague played the part of conjurer, producing a magnificent speech attacking Labour and, to a lesser extent, the Lib Dems, for not giving voters a say.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Len McCluskey tells Labour how it should be done

From our UK edition

Yesterday Len McCluskey made it very clear that Ed Miliband was definitely, definitely the leader of the Labour party. He said: ‘There can be absolutely no question about who runs the Labour party: it is Ed Miliband and he has my full support. Yes, there may be issues we disagree on, that is allowed in a democratic party, but Unite is fully behind Ed Miliband and after today’s performance by Cameron the sooner he is prime minister the better.’ Which was unhelpful, really, as it's never good when the unions have to issue a statement clarifying who the leader of the Labour party really is. But Len's hands-off approach doesn't mean he can't still tell the party exactly how things should be done.

James Forsyth

What Tom Watson’s resignation means for Labour

From our UK edition

Tom Watson’s resignation from the shadow Cabinet won’t draw a line under the row about Unite’s influence over Labour. But, rather, it will escalate it. This is now a serious enough issue to have drawn a shadow Cabinet resignation. Watson’s self-indulgent resignation letter makes clear that he’s going partly because of Blairite criticism. As he puts it, ‘There are some who have not forgiven me for resigning in 2006’. This puts the whole Blairite / Brownite narrative back at the heart of Labour politics. It is a reminder that a party does something awful to its soul when it removes a totemic, election winning Prime Minister mid-term.  I also suspect Watson’s departure will make those around Len McCluskey feel under pressure.

Isabel Hardman

Breaking: Tom Watson resigns

From our UK edition

Tom Watson has announced he is standing down from his role as Labour general election co-ordinator. You can read the full text of his resignation letter to Ed Miliband below. Given the letter says he offered to resign on Tuesday, the lines prepared by Miliband on Watson for yesterday's PMQs make a little more sense now. James also reveals in his column this week that 'several of those close to Miliband have doubts about [Watson's] work rate and priorities' when considering whether he should be running the party's 2015 campaign. Dear Ed, I said that I’d stay with you as general election co-ordinator within the Shadow Cabinet as long as I was useful. I think it would be a good idea for you, and me, if I stood down from the role now.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

‘Weak, weak, weak’ Labour will have to avoid looking panicked on any referendum pledge

From our UK edition

David Cameron's statement on the European council was another example of how easy it is at the moment for the Tories to portray Ed Miliband as a weak leader. He made it perfectly clear what he wanted those watching to take away by stealing Tony Blair's 'weak, weak, weak' line in 1997 when attacking John Major (which is well worth watching again). Today the PM told the Commons that Ed Miliband's position on Europe could be summed up in three words: 'weak, weak, weak'. He said: 'What I thought was interesting about the right hon. Gentleman’s response was that we heard not a word about the referendum that we are going to discuss and debate on Friday. I think I know why. The right hon.

Isabel Hardman

‘Who governs Labour?’ is perfect new Tory attack line on Miliband’s weakness

From our UK edition

A row in Labour over union influence that doesn't benefit the Tories in some way is as rare as hen's teeth. But the latest revelations about Unite's attempt at 'transforming Labour' (as reported by Rachel Sylvester in her explosive Times column) are even more of a gift to the Conservative party than usual because they feed perfectly into the line of attack the party has chosen. As Coffee House reported recently, Lynton Crosby told Tory MPs that he wanted to focus on Miliband's weaknesses as leader, identifying clear weak spots rather than the 'he makes the coffee' line. That the unions are enjoying such success in stitching up the selection process contributes to that impression of weakness, particularly if Miliband finds himself unable to do anything decisive.