Tony blair

As you’d expect, Michael Gove’s White Paper is a feast of good sense. His speech in the Commons was powerful analysis, and his rebuttal of Labour MPs fun to watch. He’s all for making kids learn properly in primary school, retaining order in the classroom, making detention easier and better modern language teaching. Amen, amen, amen. But, I fear that the White Paper will not be transformative, for a simple reason: the schools system is broken. It doesn’t respond to instructions. The Education Secretary does not run education – power rests with local authorities and the teaching unions. They’re not too keen on Gove, and have allies in parliament ready

Ed Miliband has come roaring back from his paternity leave, keen to silence the growing chorus of criticism that he is not in control of his party and has let the Coalition determine the agenda.     To do so, he has come out in favour of a permanent top rate of income tax at 50 percent, but is otherwise taking a leaf out of the Cameron playbook – by establishing a number of policy reviews. But he might want to take another look at Cameron’s experience. Reviews are a great tactical ploy – they show a willingness to “think big”, allow a leader to reach out to a range party

Gordon Brown and Sarah Palin are not two politicians one thinks of as having much in common. But reading Robert Draper’s New York Times magazine essay on Sarah Palin’s political organisation and Rachel Sylvester and Tom Baldwin’s piece on Brown’s Downing Street I was struck by the similarity between the two at least in terms of being disorganised and the boss’s refusal to delegate. It was a reminder of how much of politics is about organisation, about having the right team in place. Of course, no operation is perfect. The Blair one, which was far better than Brown’s, had its own imperfection as Andrew Adonis sets out in his review

This from Matthew Taylor – the former No.10 head of policy, speaking to the Times for their series (£) on the fall of New Labour – deserves a post of its own: “For me, New Labour died when Tony bought Gordon an ice cream in 2005. I remember sitting in Downing St two days after the election win and chucking into the bin the proposal to break up the Treasury.” 

Oh look, the Old Crowd are moving in on the New Generation’s patch. Not only has David Miliband broken his post-defeat silence with an engaging little article in the Mail on Sunday, but we also have news that Gordon Brown is to make his first Commons speech since the general election. That’s right, after 174 paid days of, erm, indiscernible activity, Gordon will tomorrow insist that maintenance on Britain’s two new aircraft carriers should be carried out on a Scottish shipyard, rather than in France. Everyone else is surprised that he didn’t get that written into the contracts already. The return of the Gord throws up some questions for Ed

I’ve already mentioned George Osborne’s interview with the Telegraph, but it certainly merits another. As Ben Brogan says, Osborne is in a rich vein of ‘election that never was’ form. As befits the inveterate schemer, Osborne’s tactical grasp is impressive. He is quietly vociferous about Labour’s ‘historic mistake’ in electing Ed Miliband. Revealing senior Tories’ continued respect for the electoral tenets of Blairism, he says: “They have chosen to move off the historic centre ground of British politics. I’ve seen more pictures of Neil Kinnock on television in the past week than I’ve seen in 20 years. That’s old politics.” The old politics is the preserve of captive minds, wedded

Forget Ed Miliband’s promise of ‘optimism’ – a mantra that became so repetitive it had me reaching for the Scotch and revolver. Philip Collins has delivered a far more cutting verdict on David Cameron’s obsession with austerity. He writes (£): ‘Conservatives such David Cameron are not philosophers. The question to ask of Mr Cameron is not: what does he believe? It is: what problems does he inherit? Mr Cameron really does just want to fix the roof. The reason he wants to fix the roof is because it’s broken. The value he brings to this task is the insight that it is better to be dry than wet. He’s simple

With the merry dance of shadow cabinet elections upon us, it’s a good time to look back on the last time Labour went through all this. There’s a useful list of all the results from the 1992 Parliament here, but here’s my summary of some of the more eyecatching outcomes: 1) Gordon Brown, from hero to zero (to Chancellor). In 1992, Gordon Brown came top of the shadow Cabinet rankings. By 1996, he had dropped to 14th. And bear in mind that the number of MPs standing fell from 53 to 26 over the same time. As we all know, though, he still made it to the Chancellorship.   2)

David Miliband is a tease. The speech he just gave was one of his best: it was self-deprecating, had gravitas, humour, and he spoke down to the Tories, telling William Hague what statesmanship was about. A monstrous conceit, CoffeeHousers may argue, but a Labour leader needs a bit of that; to make out that he’s the real leader-in-waiting, up against lightweights. There was his trademark little bit of grit in the speech: he praised the troops, the Afghan mission and criticised Cameron for reducing British diplomacy to trade missions (Con Coughlin made the same point in a Spectator cover piece recently). My point: that this was a measurably better speech

A double hit from the Spectator archives, this week, in recognition of events in Labour land. The first is a recent piece, by Andrew Gilligan, on why the battle between Ken and Oona – now resolved, of course – is the real battle for Labour’s soul. And the second is Boris’s take on Blair’s election to the Labour leadership back in 1994. Enjoy, as they say. The real battle for Labour’s soul, Andrew Gilligan, The Spectator, 11 September 2010 This summer’s election to choose a new deputy regional sales manager of the Co-op, sorry, a new leader of the Labour party, has rather obviously failed to set the nation on

The images from inside Westminster Hall right now: Captions please…