Labour party

Poland’s Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich, told the Today programme that Michael Kaminski is, as far as he knows, not an anti-semite today – though the Jewish leader made clear he “could not read his heart”, and thought Mr Kaminski’s teenage views extremist. The rabbi’s words will further fuel the spat between David Miliband and William Hague. Expect the Shadow Foreign Secretary to renew his calls today for an apology to be issued to Kaminski. Expect the Foreign Secretary to ignore this and find support, including from within the Jewish community, to his charges against Mr Kaminski and his accusation that the Tories mingle with madmen. Both parties think the fight

It is another black day for Gordon Brown. The financial news from America, contrasted with continuing decline here, indicts Brown’s recession strategy. Playing the long game, Osborne is being vindicated, and Guido is correct that the ongoing UK recession negates Labour’s attack line on Osborne: the novice has trumped the alleged master. More damaging though is the resurfacing of Damian McBride and the ‘omerta’ of Brown’s inner circle, with its sordid and cynical connotations. The news that Nadine Dorries will receive £1,000 from McBride reflects poorly on the Prime Minister. Worse still, there is possibly more to come – Dorries has two suits outstanding, against Number 10 and Derek Draper

George Osborne’s speech on Monday calling for huge cash bonuses not to be paid this year drew an angry response from those hoping to receive huge cash bonuses – and various City and business pressure groups. A few years ago I would have felt deeply uncomfortable with what Obsorne proposed, but because nearly every bank has drawn heavily on state support over the last year, I think politicians do have a right – even a responsibility – to offer firm guidance to the banks. The FT led the charge against Osborne with both a critical news story, gleefully dissected by Iain Martin, and a harsh leader. Today, the paper follows

There have been two polls today which are worth mentioning belatedly.  The first is YouGov’s voting intention poll for Wales, which Anthony Wells has analysed here and here.  It’s not often you see a Welsh voting poll – which is a shame – and the results of this one are striking.  Labour are on 34 percent; the Tories are on 31 percent; Plaid Cymru on 15 percent; Lib Dems on 12 percent.  Overall, that’s much better news for the Tories than it is for Labour: the last time the Tories scored 31 percent in Wales was in the 1983 election. The second is the ComRes poll which appeared in today’s

Plenty of CoffeeHousers are mentioning the Andrew Neather revelations in various comment sections.  If you haven’t seen them yourself, the story is that Neather, a former government adviser, wrote a comment piece claiming that New Labour’s immigration policy was “intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”  Many reports since have taken this as confirmation that Labour’s policy was exclusively politically-motivated.    In which case, it’s worth highlighting Neather’s latest column for the Evening Standard, in which he claims his comments have been exaggerated and misinterpreted.  Here’s the key point it makes: “As a

Most people expected this morning’s official GDP statistics to show that the economy has come out of recession.  But they didn’t.  In fact, they had the economy shrinking by 0.4 percent in the third quarter of this year.  So the downturn continues – and it’s the longest on record. We’ve always maintained on Coffee House that coming out of recession won’t do much good for Brown.  But, obviously, staying stuck in one has far more dangerous implications for him (not to mention the country).  Obviously, the government won’t be able to deploy the green shoots strategy now.  But with other major economies already out of recession, they’ll struggle to deploy

And so the strangeness continues: the latest Ipsos MORI poll has the Tories leaping a hefty 7 points to 43 percent, while Labour climb 2 to 26 percent, and the Lib Dems fall 6 points to 19 percent.  It’s most likely a correction from their last poll – which had the Lib Dems above Labour for the first time since the 1980s – but the Tories’ 17-point lead is still at odds with some of the other polls we’ve seen recently.  I’m sure CCHQ will be pleased, but, as I said yesterday, it’s worth waiting a few weeks until the polls settle before drawing judgement. UPDATE: Guardian/ICM also gives the

So what’s the deal with the opinion polls we’ve been seeing in the newspapers recently?  There was some hubbub in Tory circles yesterday over the fact that two weekend polls – YouGov for the Sunday Times and ComRes for the Indy on Sunday – had Labour either gaining ground on the Tories or a maintaining boosted level of support around the 30 percent mark.  What had happened to the 19 percent lead that the Tories enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of their conference?  Had the Labour conference really been more successful than the Tory one, despite all appearances?  I’ve heard these, and similar questions, doing the rounds over the past

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: “Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector.” Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can’t imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that “Roadblock to Reform” label, and Labour’s patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial