Labour party

Saturday

David Blackburn

Liberal moment or Liberal Democrat dilemma?

From our UK edition

It’s not often that a man who claims to have bedded and satisfied over 30 women declares that the nation is on the cusp of ‘its liberal moment’, and it’s drawn attention to the Liberal Democrats. With Labour seemingly returning home to the house that Jack Jones built, Nick Clegg should be sweeping the country, but his earnest predictions about a progressive liberal future have made no impression and his party still trails. Why are the Lib Dems doing so poorly? Lloyd Evans’ appraisal that they failed to use the expenses scandal to push their long-standing reform agenda has much to commend it. And today, Polly Toynbee writes a brilliant analysis in the Guardian, observing that the Liberals are caught between a split right/left voting base.

Peter Hoskin

Is Osborne worth it?

From our UK edition

Fresh from winning GQ's Politician of the Year award last week, George Osborne now has an accolade he may be even happier with: heavy praise from both Peter Oborne and Matthew Parris.  Both commentators write columns today which dish out the superlatives for Osborne's response to the fiscal crisis, and suggest he has been vindicated by events.  Here's the key passage from Oborne's article, by way of a taster: "Slowly Osborne began to win the argument. First (as I revealed in this column last March), Bank of England governor Mervyn King sent private warnings to the Treasury that he feared extra public spending would damage the official credit ratings that are awarded to the Government as an independent yardstick of the health of the nation's finances.

Peter Hoskin

The Tories will be thrilled if Brown starts playing the World Saver again

From our UK edition

Patrick Wintour has an insightful article in today's Guardian, setting out how and why Brown has dithered when it comes to deploying the c-word.  So far as the current landscape is concerned, this passage is particularly striking: "There is tension between Brown and Darling on how far the campaign can be based on Brown's achievements in saving the world economy, and how far it must be based on visions of the future. Brown's determination to dwell on the fact that he made the correct big decisions in the recession has been one cause of his past reluctance to address the future deficit mountain, and how to deal with it.

Friday

The Spectator

Web Exclusive article: Lloyd Evans’ party conference preview

From our UK edition

With the Lib Dem party conference kicking off this weekend, Lloyd Evans has written a Web Exclusive preview of what the main party leaders can expect over the next few weeks.  You can access it in the Essays section of the site, under the Spectator tab in the navigation bar, or by clicking here.

David Blackburn

Another calamitous set of polls for Brown and Labour

From our UK edition

A Populus poll for The Times shows that the Conservatives are more trusted to run vital services than Labour. Here are the details: ‘The Tories are now in a strong position on most public services, which have traditionally been vote-winners for Labour. On doing the best job of improving the NHS, the Tories are on 37 per cent (up 10 points since last March) against 34 per cent for Labour (down 1 point).

Peter Hoskin

How quickly things change

From our UK edition

Spot the difference: 5 September, 2009: Gordon Brown warns G20 countries against reining in spending, The Telegraph "Britain is resisting pressure from Germany and other Euro-currency countries who are planning to moves towards an 'exit strategy' that would see some of the planned anti-recessionary spending programmes being scaled back to cut rising national debts." 18 September, 2009: Gordon Brown to call for international agreement to cut public spending, The Telegraph "Mr Brown says 'exit strategies' from the emergency fiscal measures that were introduced to stave off the worst excesses of the recession need to be agreed by all the leading nations.

Peter Hoskin

An April election is on the cards

From our UK edition

A couple of weeks ago, Kevin Maguire told us that No.10 is thinking about a March or April general election.  And now Steve Richards follows up by suggesting April is most likely: "Speaking to influential ministers and aides I get the impression that their favoured month for an election is next April. In theory they could hold out until June, but that would mean going to the country in the immediate aftermath of the May local elections when Labour is expected to do badly. This option is already ruled out. There will be no June election. Obviously a general election could be held on the same day as the May local elections and it is still a likely option. But that date is the equivalent of going right up against the buffers when the media and perhaps voters will be getting impatient.

Thursday

David Blackburn

The Baroness Scotland’s housekeeper scandal exposes the mess our immigration system is in

From our UK edition

The news that the UK Border agency will launch an investigation into allegations that the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, employed an illegal immigrant is, obviously, highly embarrassing for the government. With his customary lack of style, the Tories’ attack-dog Chris Grayling commented: "This is a Government that says all small employers should be prosecuted if they don't know the immigration status of their employees and yet we have senior ministers who can't be bothered to make the checks themselves. There is a real 'one rule for them, one rule for us' attitude at the heart of this Government and it is a disgrace." That overstates the case.

David Blackburn

The Good Old Cause

From our UK edition

Paul Waugh’s beaten us to it, but Ed Ball’s New Statesman article is a rallying cry to the left. He writes: ‘As we approach the most important general election for a generation, this is no time for introspection or defeatism. There's never been a moment when Labour's values and experience have been more relevant or necessary.’ And what are those values? Well, they’re not Blairite: ‘In public-service reform, we sometimes sounded as though private-sector solutions were always more efficient; and who can now doubt that, despite the tougher measures we brought in, financial regulation was not tough enough?

Peter Hoskin

Which Miliband’s star is ascending?

From our UK edition

For the Kremlinologists among us, Andrew Grice has an insightful article in today's Independent on the growing support for Ed Miliband in the Labour Party.  He kicks it off by asking the pivotal question when it comes to the Brothers Miliband - "Will Ed Miliband eclipse brother David?" - and follows that up with some affirmative evidence: "...the word in Labour circles is that Ed is no longer trailing in his brother's wake. Indeed, some senior figures believe he has already overtaken him in the game that increasingly occupies Labour minds as the party appears to head for a general election defeat – its future leadership stakes... ...friends are quietly telling [Ed] that David will not be leader because he is seen as too Blairite.

David Blackburn

Clegg: Are you one of the millions who turned to new Labour in 1997?

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg joins the ‘progressive’ debate with a double of salvo in The Times and in a pamphlet, titled ‘The liberal moment’, published by Demos. The philosophically anachronistic Labour party is his target. He writes: ‘The contrast between Labour and liberals is starkest in their different approaches to power. While Labour hoards at the centre, liberals believe that power must be dispersed away from government - downwards to individuals and communities, and upwards to the international institutions needed to tackle our collective problems. State-centered, top-down solutions are wholly out of step with the demands of our age.

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

All political parties must face up to the debt crisis’ severity 

From our UK edition

The Independent's Hamish McRae writes a superb column today on just how far the next government will have to go to tackle Brown's debt crisis.  His main point is that unless severe action is taken over the coming years, we'll be stuck in a perilous position by the time the next global downturn hits.  But it's this passage which stands out: "To what extent will the deficit fix itself, and how much more needs to be done? We don't have to do the full 13 per cent of GDP and the present government proposed in the Budget that it should cut about half, 6.4 per cent of GDP, of that over an eight-year period. Vince Cable, who seems to have become the nation's favourite financial GP, suggests an eight per cent correction over five years.

James Forsyth

Losing perspective 

From our UK edition

At The Spectator, we’ve been so close to the spending debate that one worries about losing perspective. But this post from Faisal Islam gives one a sense of just how important today’s revelations are: “We have never seen this level of detail on a budget situation before. Much of what was implied or left out of the budget is stated in astonishing detail here. It is a total disaster for the treasury and the government, but some will argue the Tories have taken a big risk with financial confidence in publishing it.

David Blackburn

The Tories’ Treasury mole exposes Labour’s cuts deception

From our UK edition

On July 2nd, Gordon Brown told the House of Commons: “I have always told the truth and I've always told people as it is...we don't want to have the 10 per cent cuts the Conservatives are talking about.” The Tories’ extremely destructive Treasury mole has leaked documents proving that Labour has been planning substantial cuts in front line services since before the budget. The DEL figures, printed below, are key: suggesting that a cumulative 9.3% cut was planned for 2011-2014, and Paul Waugh is right to point out that these revelations may explain why the government delayed its comprehensive spending review.

Tuesday

James Forsyth

A sneak preview of the election campaign

From our UK edition

One of the features of the coming general election campaign is going to be the use of video attacks ads by outside groups. The idea is that a sufficiently well-produced or controversial one will be able to drive the news agenda and, rather like Dan Hannan’s European Parliament speech, become a story in and of itself. Conservative Home’s response to Gordon Brown’s use of the word ‘cuts’ today is a preview of the kind of thing we can expect come the spring.

Fraser Nelson

Purnell’s enjoying the freedom of the backbenches

From our UK edition

James Purnell has just spoken at The Spectator’s Paths to Prosperity conference, with sideburns bushier than ever after the summer. He was doing an on-stage interview with Andrew Neil and was quite firm on the release of al-Megrahi. "He should have died in jail” said Purnell. “I would have left him in jail." I suspect the freedom to say such things is one of the reasons that Purnell quit government. He later took questions (quite often rude ones) from the floor. Sir Richard Sykes had been on earlier, talking about the dismal state of British education, and Purnell was asked why he couldn’t just agree that schools had gone downhill too. He drew the line at trashing Labour’s record on education. But I think we can see Purnell set off into his own orbit.

David Blackburn

Brown missed a trick by not deploying the ‘c-word’ earlier

From our UK edition

Six months after a Politics Home/Spectator poll illustrated that ‘cuts’ was no longer a dirty word, Gordon Brown squared up and let slip the c-word. A new Politics Home ‘insider poll’ reveals that 86% of respondents believe Labour would be in a stronger position now if they had admitted the need for future cuts at the time of the Budget. That is almost certainly true: the obvious contrivance that was ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’, together with the invention of 0% rise economics, torpedoed the government’s credibility.

James Forsyth

Ouch | 15 September 2009

From our UK edition

From the write up in The Times of the latest Populus poll: “Almost half of voters think that anyone would do a better job than Gordon Brown as Labour leader. Nine months at most from a general election, a Populus poll for The Times suggests that 48 per cent of voters believe that “literally anyone” from Labour’s ranks could do better, without naming alternatives.

David Blackburn

The irrefutable fact about cuts is that they are needed now

From our UK edition

I did Lord Myners a disservice by suggesting he’d gone off message by saying that spending would continue until recovery was “firmly rooted”. Peter Mandelson’s cuts speech yesterday supported that line, renewing the cuts versus investment dividing line. Steve Richards argues that the government’s approach is correct and Tory policy is a recipe for disaster. He writes: ‘He (Cameron) is now pledged to a revolutionary shrinking of the state without being able to specify how he will go about making the big changes. His speech last week about cutting the subsidies on meals in parliament was beyond parody. Yesterday Mandelson made use of the space that has opened up in policy terms by highlighting the differences.

Monday

James Forsyth

This’ll be worth watching

From our UK edition

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Cherie Blair will campaign for Gordon Brown at the next election. She told Tim Walker that "I will personally get involved in the electoral campaign". The idea of Cherie campaigning for Gordon is rather comic. Relations between the two were famously tense. At Tony Blair’s last conference as Labour leader, Cherie was heard to say ‘that’s a lie’ when Brown said how much of a privilege he had found it to work with Tony. As Tony Blair quipped in his speech, he never had to worry about Cherie “running off with the bloke next door”. Personally, I’m intrigued by how much campaigning the other Blair will do.