Uk politics

On the hottest weekend of the year, few people would want to be stuck inside in Milton Keynes. But that is where the Labour hierarchy finds itself. For this weekend is the party’s national policy forum. Ed Miliband’s speech today is meant to try and show that while he has moved on from New Labour he is not old Labour. There will be much talk of how fiscal restraint will have to continue and how Miliband knows there can be no return to the free spending ways of the past. One aide sums the message up as, ‘We know there is no money to spend.’ But it’ll be fascinating to contrast Miliband’s speech today with the one that Tony Blair is giving on Monday to mark the 20th anniversary of his election as Labour leader.

Key eurosceptic MPs are planning to push David Cameron further on his plans for European reform next week, Coffee House has learned. Leading members of a powerful group of right-wing Conservative MPs, who meet regularly to discuss strategy, will call on the Prime Minister to set out more detail on giving power back to Parliament and his plans for reform. 'The ECHR isn't enough,' says one source. 'We need to hear more detail from the Prime Minister and we will ask for that as soon as next week.

One of the more dispiriting things about this reshuffle has been the way in which important policy areas appear to have been downgraded. This week's leading article in The Spectator lambasts the decision to move Michael Gove from Education, arguing that it means his reforms will slow and future politicians will still be able to criticise the number of Old Etonians in the Cabinet: The Prime Minister and his coterie embody the problem. Gove was out to fix it, fighting a battle on behalf of the state school pupils -a battle that even Thatcher shied away from. Cameron has now decided that he’d rather this battle was not fought. His decision to abandon this battle and move Gove to become Chief Whip puts party before pupils.

How will Ed Miliband deploy the reshuffle at Prime Minister's Questions today? The Labour leader may not use it as his main theme, but he has plenty of elements from yesterday's surprisingly big shake-up to work with. He could probe on just how good a reshuffle this has been for equality. Most of the focus is on gender equality, but some appointments yesterday were about more than just the ladies in waiting for a Cabinet post. Stephen Crabb, for instance, was raised by a single parent in a council house, although there seems to be more interest in his minority status as a bearded Cabinet minister.

Earlier today, Andrew Lansley was just very cross. He wasn't Leader of the House anymore, and he wasn't the UK's nomination for European Commissioner. But in a few hours, the former Health Secretary has gone from just being grumpy to being an international man of mystery. Read his exchange of letters with David Cameron on his departure from the government - and the end of his parliamentary career. I have emphasised a particular point of interest in each. FROM ANDREW LANSLEY: Dear Prime Minister, For nearly nine years, I have been a member of your Shadow Cabinet and Cabinet. This has been a great privilege and I am grateful to you for this.

But for Europe, eh? It is a mark of how thoroughly the European issue has poisoned Tory waters that many party activists - and MPs - will be celebrating the end of Ken Clarke's ministerial career tonight. Not before time, many of them will doubtless froth. Well, maybe. But it bears remembering that the Tories who hated Clarke the most tend, more often than not, to be the Tories the public hates most. The kind of Conservatives good at losing elections and rather less good at winning them. That does not mean Clarke was always right or that his judgement was necessarily routinely sound. Nevertheless it is something to be kept in mind. Would the Conservatives have been better or worse off these past 20 years with more or with fewer politicians like Ken Clarke?

David Cameron could introduce 'voluntary' all-women shortlists if the Conservatives continue to struggle to recruit female MPs, senior Tory sources have said. The Prime Minister has also set party chairman Grant Shapps 'on the case' to remedy the current situation, whereby women are less likely to be selected for safe seats. But he is also interested in local associations using all-women shortlists on a voluntary basis after the next election if his party fails to make sufficient advances. Cameron does not want to impose shortlists on constituency parties, although of course 'voluntary' can cover a multitude of sins: many people 'voluntarily' work longer hours than those stipulated on their contract, but have little choice about the matter.

Michael Gove’s speech to today’s education reform conference is a robust defence of his reforms. He calls closing the attainment gap between rich and poor a ‘personal crusade for me’. But I suspect that the headlines will be grabbed by his claim that the teaching unions aren’t standing up for education but for their ‘own pay and pensions’. He says that the status quo isn’t good enough and ‘we mustn’t keep going backwards – and failing the poorest above all.’ What I found most striking, though, was Gove’s praise for how academy chains are turning round failing schools such as Downhills. Indeed, Gove clearly envisages a far greater role for these chains.