Labour party

In the spirit of goodwill, Ed Balls has called-off the class war. As ever with Balls that is but half the story. Class war has not so much ceased as been re-branded. A Brown aide, quoted in the Independent, says that Labour's strategy is concerned with "economic class, not social class". So there we are; the impoverished squirearchy can sleep sound tonight: the Labour party is only interested if you're nouveau riche - how gloriously snobby.  Whilst Balls' spite for those born nibbling a silver spoon has allegedly lessened, his leadership machinations continue apace.

The Ed Balls leadership cart is revving up a gear. He wants to position himself as the main mover behind the election campaign, now that Gordon Brown is dead in the water. It was his plan to stop Darling jacking up VAT to 20 percent, so he can accuse the Tories of wanting to do that (it’ll be more like 22.5 percent IMHO - but that’s another story). And now Balls has told tomorrow’s Sunday Times that Labour’s election focus will be on the family. “In the past I think our family policy was all about children,” says Father Balls. “I think our family policy now is actually about the strength of the adult relationships and that is important for the progress of the children.

The latest Comres poll for the Independent indicates, as if we needed telling, that the Tories are yet to seal the deal. It’s far from panic stations – the lead remains at 9 points – but there are two figures that prove where the Tories are going wrong. The majority of respondents feel that a Conservative government would exclusively represent the interests of the rich, and the contention that the Tories represent an appealing alternative to Labour was rejected. If Cameron is merely a PR man I hope he’s cheap. Aside from Alex Salmond I can’t envisage anything worse than five more years of Gordon, and this suggests to me that Cameron is struggling to communicate with voters. Nowhere is this more palpable than the preposterous class war.

So there we have it.  There will be televised election debates between the three main party leaders during the next election campaign, after all.  The first will be on ITV, then there'll be one each on Sky and the BBC.  Talk about good TV for political anoraks. Like Tim Montgomerie and Mike Smithson, I suspect that Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg will be happiest with the news.  Both of them, particularly Brown, need potential game-changing events like this to make some progress in the polls.   As for Cameron, he'd probably be better off not giving his opponents a chance to make inroads into the Tories' poll lead.  But he could hardly have resisted live debates in the current political climate.

The government has sued for peace. The Observer reports that in the face of lobbying from the drinks industry, the government has dropped its mandatory code on the sale of alcohol, which Gordon Brown first brewed-up during the local election campaign. Labour excuses the u-turn on the grounds that vulnerable pubs and drinks retail industry must remain viable during this fragile economic situation. On the face of it, that is sensible; delve deeper and that excuse does not hold. Of course, there’s no sense in endangering businesses by punishing all drinks deals and ‘happy hour’ promotions. However, aspects of the code would have outlawed promotions such as ‘all you can drink for a tenner’ or ‘have a quart of vodka poured directly down your throat’.

Ok, so identifying the heroes of the New Labour era may not sit well with CoffeeHousers - but I'd still recommend you read through the latest Bagehot column in the Economist, which does just that.  It identifies five figures from the past 12 years who have "done the state and country some serious and lasting service," and whose "virtues [are] not be clouded or cancelled by grave mistakes or misdemeanours".  They are: Lord Adonis, Donald Dewar, Lord Mandelson, Sir William Macpherson and Robin Cook.  James Purnell, Alistair Darling and, strikingly, Bill Clinton finish in the runners-up list. You can debate the merits and demerits of those names all day long, but I'd rather suggest another person for the list: John Hutton.