Labour party

The battle-lines over the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill — which faces its second reading in the Commons this afternoon — have been drawn. Labour has tied its opposition to the Resolution Foundation's analysis showing that the bulk of the policy will hit working families. As Ed Balls put it last week, 'Two-thirds of people who will be hit by David Cameron and George Osborne’s real terms cuts to tax credits and benefits are in work.' They've labelled the move a 'strivers' tax', a continuation of the divisive rhetoric from both them and the Conservatives that seeks to pit 'hardworking families' against 'people who won't work' (as a recent Tory ad put it).

Nick Clegg is in a pugnacious mood at the moment. First there was the very conveniently leaked memo in which Lib Dem strategists urged MPs to criticise their Tory Coalition partners publicly. Now he's gone on the attack against Labour's spending plans, or lack thereof. The Deputy Prime Minister writes in The Times: 'The Labour leadership continue to complain about the coalition's approach, but without providing any credible alternative. They're learning the tricks of opposition and finding their rhetorical refrains. But where are the numbers? Where are their sums? The country has undergone the biggest economic crisis in living memory, yet they offer no explanation of how they'd get us out of this mess, nor any admission of responsibility for their part in creating it.

There’s long been a sense on the Tory side that the party’s campaigning isn’t as sharp as it should be, that CCHQ isn’t up to the job. The Ashcroft target seats campaign was so valued not just because of the money but because of the organisational and management muscle behind it. The new Tory Chairman Grant Shapps was sent to CCHQ in the reshuffle with instructions to address the place’s institutionalised incompetence. The early signs are encouraging. When Labour announced that it was launching a campaign in the 60 seats where the number of people on working tax credits, which are only going up by 1%, was larger than the Tory majority, Shapps had a Tory response in place in each of those seats by the time Labour’s campaign actually launched.

Who's on the side of the strivers? Is it George Osborne, who's cutting benefits in real terms for the next three years, which he defends as 'being fair to the person who leaves home every morning to go out to work and sees their neighbour still asleep, living a life on benefits'? Or is it Ed Balls, who's opposing the move as Osborne 'making striving working families pay the price for his economic failure'? Both men are convinced that their stance will help win the votes of low- and middle-income workers. At least one of them is wrong. Isabel has explained the sources of Labour's confidence. One is a YouGov poll released on Sunday, showing 42 per cent of 'C2DEs' (working class and lower) think benefits should rise at least in line with inflation.

Liam Byrne is a modernising, Blairite Labour MP, and in case you were in any doubt about that, he conducts his interview with Coffee House sitting next to a framed photograph of him with Tony Blair. The party's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary is well known for his modernising zeal, which has sometimes led him onto a collision course with his party grassroots and other MPs on the left. This week, though, he's on a collision course with the Conservatives, who hope they've managed to corner Labour into admitting it hasn't quite modernised its welfare policy enough to win voters back. The Welfare Uprating Bill, launched in last week's Autumn Statement, will see benefits rise by 1 per cent, rather than in line with inflation.

What do people take away from the 2011 census? I cannot help but see the clearest possible reason for why trust of politicians is at an all-time low. Perhaps other voting members of the public remember as far back as 2004 when the Labour government predicted that fewer than 20,000 people would come to Britain from those Eastern European countries given full access to the UK labour market. As of last year the Office of National Statistics confirmed at least 669,000 people from these countries working in the UK. Or they might remember Labour immigration minister Phil Woolas promising in an interview with the Times in 2008 that, ‘It’s been too easy to get into this country in the past and it’s going to get harder.’ Mr Woolas even talked about quotas being brought in.

Chuka Umunna’s interview on The Sunday Politics today highlighted several of the problems facing the Labour party. When Andrew Neil pressed him on whether he could name any heads of big companies backing Labour, the shadow Business Secretary could only name a Labour peer who the party ennobled in 1998. Here’s the exchange: AN: Tony Blair said that Labour can’t go into the next election without the support of a single chief executive from a big company. Can you name the boss of a big major company who’s backing Labour? CU: The Chairman of ASOS who is Waheed Alli. He has backed the Labour Party. AN: Is that a public company on the FTSE? CU: I’m not sure that ASOS is listed. It may be or it may be just outside the FTSE 100. AN: Any others? Any others?

It now looks almost certain that Labour will vote against the 1 per cent uprating for most working age benefits. Labour is pointing out that because this also includes tax credits, most of the people hit by this will actually be in work. The party hopes that this changes the political dynamic around this subject. But, as a Liberal Democrat minister pointed out to me last night, the coalition can portray any attempt to uprate by more than 1 per cent as special treatment for those on benefits. The minister stressed that public sector pay was only going up by 1 per cent and the threshold for the 40p rate was, again, only being increased by 1 per cent. The other thing the coalition will hit Labour with is how they would pay for uprating by more than 1 per cent.

Kelvin MacKenzie wants a British version of the Italy’s Northern League. His aim is to have a Southern Party that would push for home rule for London and the South East and oppose fiscal transfers from the South East to the rest of the country. The piece is classic MacKenzie polemic. But it does speak to the growing regionalisation of British politics, a subject that Neil O’Brien addressed for us in his final piece before becoming an adviser to George Osborne. Outside of London, Labour only have four MPs in the South East and in the European elections, Labour came fifth in the region — behind even the Greens. For their part, the Tories are on the verge of extinction in the urban north and hold just two seats in the North East.