Yvette Cooper should apologise for blocking access to foodbanks

By Harry Phibbs
^{Follow Harry on Twitter}

The Labour Party have been keen to make political capital over the increase in the number of people using Foodbanks.

Labour's response crass for various reasons. Foodbanks were already expanding under the Labour Government. Most of those that use  foodbanks are in a short term crisis.

The need for foodbanks isn't new - but more of them mean that more is being done to meet that need and to help people going through a bad time.

As I have written before this doesn't mean that general economic conditions are irrelevant. Increases in the price of food and energy have been above inflation - it is these price rises which hit the poor hardest. Politicians concerned about the poor should consider what can be done about this. While the Government can be proud of tax cuts for the low paid - that doesn't mean it is enough. The tax cuts may well be more than offset by higher costs for eating or heating.

I visited the foodbank in my borough recently. (It was the one which had earlier been visited by Ed Miliband.)

Peter Hain refuses to condemn strike action

By Matthew Barrett
 Follow Matthew on Twitter

Earlier on this week, the head of public-sector union UNISON, Dave Prentis, used belligerent and class-war rhetoric to call for "a campaign for strike action without precedent". 

You might think it would be politically sensible for Ed Miliband and his team to shut this story down and remove themselves from any possible strike action. As the Telegraph's James Kirkup reports, Mr Miliband certainly tried to, telling the Guardian:

"Personally I don’t think actually strike action is going to help win that argument and I think it inconveniences the public."

However, Peter Hain, who is leading a review into the structures and organisation of the Labour Party ("Refounding Labour"), refused to condemn strikes on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, saying:

"I don’t think political leaders, in opposition or in government, should either applaud strikes or condemn strikes."

Perhaps Mr Hain, in his review of Labour's foundations, is simply aware of just how dependent on the unions his Party is.

A Labour Party lacking strategy and leadership has retreated to its class war comfort-zone

By Matthew Barrett
Follow Matthew on Twitter

An extensive examination of Labour's strategy and leadership failure is conducted by Dan Hodges (one of the Left's thoughtful commentators) in the New Statesman this week. On the one hand, Labour's policy review is seemingly comprehensive:

Labour is currently consulting on as many as 25 separate policy initiatives. Titles include: "Family life. What helps?"; "Supporting the sustainable empowerment of women and girls in the developing world"; and "X Factor for the many, not the few". Liam Byrne is pulling together the party's "overarching" policy review, while also focusing on welfare. The shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, is orchestrating an economic policy assessment.

On the other hand, Labour's policy review is flawed because it lacks leadership from Ed Miliband:

Here is the great irony of the new inclusive world of Labour Party policymaking: rather than binding people together, it has created a plethora of micro-policy agendas, mini-policy champions and isolated policy cliques. One Labour insider showed me an email sent recently by the party's general secretary, Ray Collins, which invites senior staff members at Labour's Victoria Street headquarters to "facilitate one-hour-long meetings within each team to discuss the ideas and contributions of everyone who wants to have a say". This is part of Hain's "Refounding Labour" consultation, a process that, staffers point out, was launched seven months ago. Only now are they being invited to contribute to it. "We're totally in the dark over here," one told me.

Peter Hain complains about lack of coverage of Ed Miliband at Royal Wedding

Tim Montgomerie

No messages of congratulations to the happy couple or any celebration of a wonderful day, just this sour tweet:

1pm: Fifteen minutes after this post Peter Hain tweets a message of congratulations. Coincidence?

Peter Hain summarises how Labour headed towards an electoral nadir in 2011, thirteen years after its historic 1997 victory

By Jonathan Isaby

The Labour Party yesterday published a consultation document, Refounding Labour, raising many questions about the party's future structure, organisation, and policy-making processes, amongst many other things.

It was written by Peter Hain, shadow Welsh Secretary and chair of Labour's National Policy Forum, at the invitation of Ed Miliband, and he includes the following stark summary of how the party fared electorally during its period in office:

"Between 1997 and 2010 Labour lost nearly five million voters and that our problems began to surface in the first term. Although the 2001 landslide was another historic result we’d lost nearly three million Labour voters from 1997."

"The 2005 election saw our majority in the House of Commons greatly reduced as we lost 47 seats with the vast majority of them going to the Conservatives. Yet despite this  increase in seats for the Tories, the election was categorised by huge switching in actual votes from Labour to Liberal Democrat. On the back of a number of signature issues the Lib Dems took votes from Labour right across the country and in many cases allowed second place Tory candidates to win marginal constituencies. 

"As we headed into the 2010 General Election, many of our Labour/Conservative marginal seats had become vulnerable due to the effects of the Labour to Lib Dem swing in 2005 which had narrowed the gap for the second place Tories.  In the election last year, Labour lost votes across England and Wales to the Tories. In marginal constituencies we lost voters on middle incomes and we lost support in our working class or ‘core’ vote – many of whom just didn’t bother voting."

"Last year’s general election defeat followed years of poor results: In local government elections between 2006 and 2009, Labour lost over 1,400 local council seats in England and Wales and 161 in Scotland.  The Tories gained over 1,700 council seats and 69 councils. After the 2009 elections they held nearly half of all council seats with Labour holding less than a quarter."  

"Over the past 20 years, Labour's share of the vote in European elections has gone from 43 per cent in 1994 to 26 per cent in 1999, 22 per cent in 2004 and only 16 per cent in 2009.  This from a party that says it wants to be a leading partner in the European Union and which Bill Clinton once described as the most formidable political fighting force in Europe."

In respect of all of this, he concludes: 

"‘One more heave’ is not an option in response - serious change is required.  The Tories made that mistake between 1997 and 2005 - changing their leaders but not changing their ways."

Labour have indeed changed their leader, but the "son of Brown" has hardly demonstrated a changing of his ways thus far, unapologetic for the economic legacy they bequeathed the Coalition Government. Is Miliband really willing to embrace "serious change" or is he too attached to the past?

Click here to download the consultation document in full as a pdf.