Labour party

Why did Gordon Brown wait until the last few weeks of Labour's thirteen-year reign to implement a 50p tax rate? Easy. Because it wasn't so much a fiscal policy as a fiendish trap, designed to cut into a Tory government's flesh. But now, it seems, the trap has snared another victim: Labour itself. The Telegraph's Daniel Knowles has already neatly summarised the politics arising from Sam Coates' report (£) that Labour will neither back the scrapping of the 50p rate nor promise to reinstate it either. But the basic point is worth repeating: if that's the approach that Labour chooses, then they'll be left in a complete mess. They can attack the coalition all they like for cutting taxes for high earners, but the answer will come back, ‘well, would you keep it?

A dark, damp and freezing cellar beneath Waterloo station isn't an obvious choice for launching a political campaign — but that's where Team Ken officially kicked off their Mayoral bid last night. Various prominent lefties were brought into the Old Vic Tunnels to warm up for the man himself. Eddie Izzard was also present to fill in the gaps and keep everyone engaged until the bar opened. Most of the policies discussed have already been made public, but there were a few new, colourful additions. Ken pointed out that Transport for London purchases energy at half the normal price, so why don't they buy more and sell it back to ordinary Londoners? An inexperienced, local government-run energy firm is just what Londoners need, after all.

At the end of last year, Ed Balls suggested that Labour would be ‘taking a tougher approach to conditionality [for benefit claimants]. If people can work, they should work.’ Now the party are starting to outline what that means. As the Independent puts it today, summarising a speech that Liam Byrne has given in Birmingham, ‘The unemployed would be guaranteed the offer of a job but could lose their benefits for six months if they turned it down, under a tough new policy on welfare planned by Labour.’ The paper characterises this as an attempt to ‘outflank the Tories on welfare,’ which is surely true. But the whole thing also reminds me of the Brown era.

If you didn't know that it's the Lib Dem spring conference this weekend, then you will after a quick rustle around the political pages. The yellow bird of liberty is splattered everywhere today — and in some instances it's causing trouble for the coalition. Take Exhibit A, Tim Farron's article for the Guardian. Farron is, of course, not one of the most Tory-friendly Lib Dem MPs out there, and neither is he a member of the government — but he's still rarely been quite so provocative as this. ‘We are in power now, sharing government with a party that unashamedly favours their people, the millionaires,’ he writes, ‘It's a serious business, so it's time we focused on our people — the millions who are not millionaires.