Labour party

The electoral reform bill has passed comfortably, by 328 votes to 269. Now comes the hard bit: this bill is going to be deservedly lacerated in committee. The bill drew opprobrium from all sides of the house throughout this afternoon’s long debate, notably from both wings of the Tory party. First, the government has coupled boundary reform to the alternative vote referendum. Peter Hain, Labour’s most articulate attack dog, unleashed his thesaurus and referred to the bill as a ‘smoke-screen for colossal gerrymandering’. He was speaking for his ardently hypocritical and opportunistic party. The government’s motives were not so cynical; it coupled the bill’s two aims to aid swift progress through

David Miliband’s performance in Sky News’ Labour leadership hustings will have calmed the nerved of his supporters. In the run-off between him and his brother, David came out on top. His answers were generally sharper and he managed to parry away Ed’s criticisms on tuition fees and foreign policy. (In a pointed remark, Ed said that the Labour government’s foreign policy had been based on ‘old ideas’.) Indeed, Ed Miliband only seemed to get going in his closing statement which was pitch-perfect David’s best moment came when the contenders were asked to pick between Blair and Brown. Ed Balls opted for Brown, Diane Abbott said that Brown ‘was the better

A Thick of It style interlude from Ann Treneman’s interview (£) with Ed Miliband today: “There is also a visit to something called a ‘communiversity’ where he is confronted with what, for a Miliband, is a scary sight: a bowl of fruit. ‘Us Milibands are funny about funny shaped fruit,’ he notes, plucking out an apple and avoiding the yellow peril that gave his brother the nickname Milibanana after he was pictured holding one and looking, well, a bit bananas. Later, on a trip to a community farm I feel on the brink of a major news scoop when someone tries to make Ed hold a broccoli. ‘Ed does not

As we drift into the weekend, Labour are stepping up their attacks on Andy Coulson. Already today, Tom Watson, Alan Johnson, John Prescott and Chris Bryant have all drawn noisy attention to the allegations made in that New York Times Magazine article about phone tapping and the News of the World – and their efforts have already pushed the story to the top of the BBC news agenda. Indeed, Bryant has even called for David Cameron to sack Coulson. Labour types will no doubt repeat that message constantly over the next few days. So far, the Tories are standing behind their comms chief. A statement from No.10 reiterated that Coulson

Say what you like about Blair, but he is something of a political entrepreneur. He detects a gap in the market and fills it: he did with New Labour in the mid-1990s. And he detects a trend in the globalised world: a system where governments don’t matter so much and power is held by a global elite. This, CoffeeHousers, is what he’s up to with his memoirs. He is presenting himself in new incarnation, a statesman without a state, able to move without being tied down to an electorate. There’s a very revealing passage in his book where he talks about Condi Rice: “She is a classic example of the