Labour party

Ah, there it is, in the final sentence of the fourth paragraph: a flattering reference to Ed Miliband. Phew. Good job David Miliband squeezed his brother's name into his article on Labour's future (£) for the Times today, otherwise it might have been July 2008 all over again. As it is, MiliD's third newspaper article in as many days is enough to suggest that he's keen to remain a prominent figure, if not yet an actual rival for his brother's crown. In some respects, though, the recommendations made by MiliD are a challenge to his brother's Way of Doing Things. His suggestion that the left be "an ally of wealth creation," for instance, reads something like: "enough with the banker bashing, already.

Eric Pickles is no longer a genial giant. His speech to the Conservative Spring Forum was the rallying cry that many Conservatives in local government, some of whom will be scrapping for survival in May’s elections, have waited to hear.   ‘Ed Miliband,’ Pickles said, ‘is weaker than Neil Kinnock.’ The Labour leader could not take on his unions and militant councils, the Communities Secretaries said before turning an example: ‘Take Labour-run Camden. Ed Miliband’s local council. His councillors are cutting the Surma Community Centre, coincidentally visited by Samantha Cameron. Yet the council has spent twice as much on its town hall newspaper.

    You may notice that the Liberal Democrats don't feature in the first two graphs of the by-election result in Barnsley Central last night. Or, rather, they do – they're just subsumed under the 'Others' category, having finished in sixth place. Second in the general election, sixth last night. The 1,012 votes for the Lib Dems put them behind Labour, UKIP, the Tories, the BNP and an independent candidate called Tony Devoy. Their share of the vote has fallen by 13.1 points on last May's result. This was an unequivocal, almost ritualistic, beating. Blood everywhere. And the other half of the coalition hasn't escaped unbruised either. The Tories finished third in the general election, third now – so what's changed?

Attack, attack, attack. That's the temper of George Osborne's article for the Guardian this morning, which sets about Labour's economic credibility with a ferocious sort of glee. Perhaps the best passage is where he asks how many times Labour can spend their ubiquitous "bank tax," but this is more pertinent to the recent debate: "Where does all this leave Ed Miliband's newfound enthusiasm for the "squeezed middle"? Let's pass over his failure in every interview to define it – his last effort included around 90% of taxpayers. Where we can all agree is that these are difficult times for family incomes. There are two root causes. One is global: rises in food and commodity prices.

Ed Balls has been warming up to this one for a while, and now it has finally come: an all-out attack over rising prices. In an interview with the Sunday Times (£), the shadow chancellor warns of Britain's "cost of living crisis," and demands that George Osborne reverse the VAT increase. Much of his pleading is made on behalf of motorists, who – as I pointed out a couple of days ago – face punishment at the petrol pumps. He doesn't even mention spending cuts once, especially not where his own party's are concerned. Rising costs, clearly, are the new weapon of choice. And it's not just Balls.

Some speculation (£) today that the Office for Budget Responsibility will shortly downgrade its 2011 growth forecast – and hence the growth forecast in next month's Budget. If so, then you can expect Ed Balls to crow on and on about it. He did, after all, prime the attack in his recent clash with George Osborne across the dispatch box: "With consumer confidence falling, with inflation rising, with no bank lending agreement, no plan for jobs, no plan for growth, no plan B - does he really expect us to believe he can meet this forecast for economic growth this year or will he have to stand here at the Budget in six weeks' time and downgrade his very first growth forecast?

The Kindly Pussycat has returned to the fray with a revised version of his memoirs. The FT's Jim Pickard has highlighted an arresting passage about Ed Miliband’s decision to execute New Labour. 'When Ed pronounced New Labour ‘dead’, he was not only being more categorical than was wise, but quite possibly more than he really intended. (xxi) …Even allowing for the tactical choices he had made in his bid to become leader, however, I was struck by the fact that he had given no strong clue during the campaign as to what alternative to New Labour he envisaged. He was quick to say what he was against: essentially, Tory policies and Tony’s policies.

"Now he and his leader know what it’s like to be people’s second choice," trilled George Osborne during his recent encounter with Ed Balls over the dispatch box. But might Balls actually have been Miliband's third choice for the shadow chancellorship? That's the implication of a delicious little story in today's Sun, which claims that Miliband first "tapped up" his brother, aka MiliD, when trying to replace Alan Johnson: "A Labour insider revealed: 'Ed's people were desperate not to give the job to Balls.' However, Ed stopped short of offering his brother the job when David made it clear he wanted to stay on the backbenches." If true, then it's revealing on two counts.

Aside from official – and provocative – proclamations from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the news from Libya is still arriving piecemeal. The latest reports are that the protestors have prevailed in Zawia, in the west of the country, to add to their "liberation" of Benghazi last night. And there is some speculation that Gaddafi Senior has fled the country, which would certainly reinforce the sense that his power is being whittled down, potentially to naught. As for Britain, the questions about our prior relationship with Libya still hover awkwardly over proceedings, and over the heads of the last government in particular. There was the al-Megrahi deal, of course, as well as all those meetings in Gaddafi's tent.

Given that David Cameron will have a tougher fight than perhaps any postwar Prime Minister other than Thatcher, it’s a bit unfortunate that his team doesn’t like political combat. Losing to Rachel Johnson over forests last week exposed major weaknesses, and sent a message to the government’s enemies: that these guys have pretty poor political combat skills. Now word is out, the cuts protests in Liverpool today will be the first in a series of challenges. Cameron, too, is stung by the avoidable mistakes of the last few weeks – and is reshaping No.10 to account for them. Some changes are great, some less so, others downright worrying. Here's my overview: 1. The Big Society. Cameron has started from first principles.