Labour party

Crude politics has intruded on the Royal Wedding after all, and all courtesy of Peter Hain. The Shadow Welsh Secretary has complained — on Twitter, naturally — that the BBC's coverage of the event dwelt too long on David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and ignored Ed Miliband. "BBC airbrushing Labour like the Palace?" he asked leadingly. The Tory minister David Jones has since admonished him, "time, place, Peter." If Labour have much sense they'll play this down as efficiently as possible. Miliband, it is true, barely featured in the television coverage — but that's really beside the point. It is rarely smart politics to take on the Palace at any time. Yet on the day of the Royal Wedding it's just downright foolish.

Gordon Brown may have gone, but advocates of his calamitous policies remain. David Blanchflower, the chief exponent of borrowing more, has a piece in The Guardian today which is worth examining. Written with his trademark chutzpah, it’s a very clear exposition of the Labour argument — along with its flaws. Here are some extracts, and my comments: "In his budget speech last month, Chancellor George Osborne suggested that he was hoping for 'an economy where the growth happens across the country and across all sectors. That is our ambition". Sadly, to judge by Wednesday's GDP figures, growth under this coalition remains just an ambition, a mere illusion." And why would that be? The GDP figures showed growth of 0.

Aside from the "Calm down, dear" drama, there was something else worth noting from today's PMQs: David Cameron trying for a calmer debate on the deficit. He admitted that his government is not really being that much more aggressive than Gordon Brown would have been. They're cutting £8 for every £7 that Brown and Darling proposed for 2011-12, he said. It's a line that Nick Clegg road-tested in his speech to the IPPR last week, and it represents a new and welcome strategy. To date, the rhetorical differences have been stark. The Tories have said: we’re the big bold cutters, Labour are deficit deniers. Labour has replied: your cuts are too deep and too harsh, and the GDP figures prove it.

Can Ed Miliband and Ed Balls save Labour in Scotland? The two Labour heavyweights have decided to move in to rescue their party's disastrous campaign in Scotland — with Balls being sent up north to sharpen his party's teeth. A desperate measure for a desperate situation: Labour has not only blown a 10-15 point lead over the SNP in just a few weeks, but now languishes some 10-13 percentage points behind. A mammoth, humiliating defeat looms. Until now, Labour has liked to portray its campaign for the Holyrood elections as a totally Scottish affair: run in Scotland, organised in Scotland and led by Scottish politicians. Not any more.

I'm sorry to do this to you, CoffeeHousers, at the start of a bank holiday weekend — but I thought you might have a morbid sort of interest in Gordon Brown's latest role. Turns out that, as expected, our former PM is to join the World Economic Forum in an advisory capacity. He won't be paid for his work, although the Forum will cover his staffing costs. One of his spokespeople has told ITV's Alex Forrest that his task is to "stop the next financial crisis." Which is to say, he'll be saving the world. Again. If nothing else, it's yet another demonstration of Brown's peculiar resilience. Our former PM may be electoral anathema in these parts, but he clearly still holds some allure for the technocrats of Davos, Geneva and Bretton Woods.

This morning’s speech on AV by Nick Clegg has prompted another round of Lib-Lab backbiting over whom is to blame for the troubles of the Yes campaign. In its leader column today, The Times (£) joins in on the Lib-Dem side, criticising Miliband for not having done more for AV. It even suggests that he’d be prepared to vote down a Yes vote in the Commons, something he specifically rules out in his interview with the paper today (£).   Unlike Clegg, Miliband can be relaxed about the result of the AV referendum. If AV is defeated, few in the Labour party will mind and the blame won’t attach to him. If the polls are right, David Cameron will be the only leader strengthened by the result of the referendum.

It's just a single poll, sure — but Ipsos MORI's latest is still fairly eye-catching stuff. And this is why: it has the Tories level with Labour for the first time since October. Anthony Wells serves up a pinch of salt over at UK Polling Report, saying that this "unusual" result is most likely down to the weightings that are used. But, technicalities aside, any poll that puts the Tories close to Labour, at this stage in the political cycle, is going to be greeted cheerily by Cameron & Co. – and less so by Team Miliband. It's not all bad news for Ed Miliband, though. His personal ratings have improved since last month; a fact which deepens one of the conundrums of his reign.

It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons' film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s winking Glaswegian charm. It’s good fun, without being hugely constructive. Cameron and Reid joked that they agreed on nothing beyond FPTP, before embarking on a distended muse about party politics and that old canard 'Britishness'. Things were little better for Ed Miliband, who spent a large portion of his conference listening to Vince Cable explain why he wasn’t resigning from the government.