Di Canio admires Mussolini. Mussolini admired Marx. Lenin admired Mussolini. Which makes Di Canio an...er...um...hang on a minute...

By Paul Goodman
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Karl Marx was "my father and teacher" - "the magnificent philosopher of working class violence". This helps to explain why the author of these words supported the formation of "vanguard minorities" which could "engage the sentiment, faith and will of irresolute masses": "instead of deluding the proletariat as to the possibility of eradicating all causes of bloodbaths, we wish to prepare it and accustom it to war for the day of 'the greatest bloodbath of all' when the two hostile classes will clash in the supreme trial".

That author was a young Italian socialist journalist called Benito Mussolini (see the photo on the right of this paragraph) who pre-1914, as Paul Johnson writes in his Modern Times, "took over the Italian Socialist Party at the congress of Reggio Emilia, by insisting that socialism must be Marxist, thoroughgoing, internationalist, uncompromising".  All of which means that Paolo di Canio, now manager of Sunderland and an admirer of Mussolini, is being reviled on Twitter today for being...a communist, yes?

Did you know that 44 Labour MPs rebelled against Ed Miliband last week?

By Tim Montgomerie
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The Labour leader is constantly promising to stand up to vested interests and - as Stephan Shakespeare has pointed out - it's a powerful message at a time when voters are seeing their costs rise and their incomes fall. People have a sense that big banks, big energy companies and big government is not accountable. ConHome has ran a whole series on how the Tory leadership might stand up for the little guy. We've applauded the way that Tory MP Charlotte Leslie has championed the patient against the bureaucrat inside the NHS.

But back to Mr Miliband. Rachel Sylvester uses her Times column (£) to describe the "Digital Bennism"* that last week encouraged 44 Labour MPs to rebel against the frontbench. The issue concerned the ability of the Government to impose certain sanctions on jobseekers. The Labour frontbench wanted to abstain on the Government's proposals because it is *sometimes* sensitive to the suggestion that it is too soft on welfare claimants. A Left-wing online campaign, however - ran by "Digital Bennites" - encouraged 44 of Ed Miliband's parliamentary comrades to defy the whip and vote against the Coalition's measures.

For Rachel Sylvester this Old Labour rebellion might be the shape of things to come. At some point the Labour leadership is going to have to decide whether it will go into the next election promising to oppose George Osborne's spending plans (in which case it'll be hit by a 1992-tax-bombshell-style campaign) or if it will match his spending plans and risk the fury of Labour's Left. Last week's rebellion of the 44 - encouraged by the increasingly important Left-wing voices on Twitter (eg @OwenJones84) and the paymaster trade unions (eg the militant Len McCluskey) - was a warning to Mr Miliband that the biggest vested interest of them all can be found in his party and movement. Go to a Labour Party Conference and you can hardly find an entrepreneur or a private sector job creator. Labour is a party dominated by the public sector workforce and the welfare state. It defends the perks and privileges of the public sector and it advances the interests of the bureaucracy that administers the welfare state as well as the welfare state's unfocused sprawl. There may be trouble ahead for Mr Miliband.

* The online American Left are called the "nutroots".

Mirror's Kevin Maguire admits top earners ARE paying more tax under the Coalition than under Labour

By Tim Montgomerie
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Labour keep saying that the Tories have cut taxes on the rich but *overall* they haven't. The independent IFS says that top 10% earners are making the biggest contribution as a percentage of their incomes to deficit reduction. Via Twitter I managed (eventually) to get The Mirror's Kevin Maguire to admit as much. Perhaps he should now tell his newspaper's readers. I republish the exchange below:

‘The website David Cameron doesn't want you to see’

By Tim Montgomerie
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‘The website David Cameron doesn't want you to see’ is how left-wing activists are describing SearchTheMoney.com. The website is the brainchild of Laurence Durnan who created the Political Scrapbook blog, a relentlessly anti-Tory but not unamusing blog.

The new SearchTheMoney website aims to make it simple for people to see who is giving to the Tory Party and to individual MPs. It aims to bring transparency to the financing of the Conservative Party and, it says, to highlight the extent to which the Conservative Party is dependent upon money from the City.

The site is clearly a political rather than a transparency exercise however. It does not bring the same searching scrutiny to the financing of Labour MPs. It is another reminder, however, that the Left is continuing to make strides with its use of the internet. The 38 Degrees website being the best example of the way in which the Right has fallen behind in the battle for cybervotes. The latest 38 Degrees campaign targets Michael Gove and playing fields policy.

The SearchTheMoney site will only add to the problems that Conservative HQ is having in separating donors from their money. In yesterday's Times (£) Sam Coates examined the extent to which big donors appeared to be cutting their donations.

"Pure nostalgia"..."According to Danny Boyle there were no black people in the UK!"..."Post-colonial" BBC rhetoric. Another attack on the Olympics ceremony. But this time, it's from the left

By Paul Goodman
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Tim Montgomiere loved the Olympics opening ceremony.

Aidan Burley MP...well, we know what he thought.

I was rather cool about it, although I think that anyone who actually hated the event is likely to hate a big slice of modern Britain.

And Philip Booth thinks it was a missed opportunity.

So, then: the right divided and the left united about the show?  In the interests of balance (as readers know, nothing is more important to this site), and possibly as a last word on the subject, I draw your attention to the blog on Mr Boyle's spectacular by the Refugee and Migrant Forum of East London:

• "We start off with a representation of this 'green and pleasant land' - at stark odds with the contemporary claim that as an island we're all sinking under the weight of a mass of migrants, a convenient place however for sticking one's flag...As a metaphor for how we are not drowning under the weight of immigration, a lot more could have been made of the flags being planted on the green mound."

• "Indeed Britain's pivotal role and world leader is to be applauded, but it is pure nostalgia, there is a disconnect with the present, yes there was a nod to the internet and the world wide web, but again fleetingly and in a manner that made no connection between the past and present."

• "In between we have a sandwich of music and the passing for a few seconds literally of SS Windrush, because before that according to Danny Boyle there were no black people in the UK! If ever there was a nod to tokenism there it was, or rather there it went."

• "Then we turn to that other great British institution -  the NHS. What an achievement to get volunteer clinical practioners from places like St Barts and Great Ormand Street to volunteer for the ceremony. Let us just hope that the same performers aren't the first to be cut in the next round of restructuring that the NHS has planned for the autumn."

The blog also accuses the BBC of welcoming the world to Britain with "paternal [sic], patronising, post colonial rhetoric".  The whole article can be found here.

Eric Pickles as Mr Bumble. George Osborne as Wackford Squeers. The Dickensian world of Labour MP Chris Williamson's tweets

By Matthew Barrett
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It's Charles Dickens' 200th birthday today. To mark the occasion, each Cabinet member received a Dickens novel hand-picked by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt this morning. 

But there is one MP who will be celebrating the great writer's birthday more than most. That MP is Chris Williamson, who represents Derby North, and acts as a Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government. Mr Williamson's Twitter feed is so over-the-top in attacking the Conservatives as pantomime baddies (and almost always calling the Government "Dickensian") that anybody would think it was a fake account.

In the world of Mr Williamson's Twitter account, Eric Pickles is Mr Bumble, George Osborne is Wackford Squeers, and Charles Dickens would be "horrified that the poverty he fought to eradicate is being brought back by warped Tory ideology".

The next Scottish Labour leader... Tom Harris MP?

By Matthew Barrett
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The BBC is reporting that Scottish Labour MP Tom Harris "has stated his interest in becoming the new Labour leader in Scotland.". Harris is firmly on the centre-left, and was one of Labour's star bloggers before leaving the blogosphere last year. He also stood, unsuccessfully, for the Shadow Cabinet elections after Ed Miliband became leader of the Labour Party late last year. 

The Scottish Labour leadership election has, so far, failed to look particularly professional, and this seems to be one of the reasons for Harris' entry into the race. The Scotsman has more details:

"Mr Harris, speaking on the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme today, said he had put his name forward because of the lack of candidates to emerge from Labour's ranks at the Scottish Parliament.

He said: "The reason I have allowed my name to be mentioned in the speculation about this is purely and simply because we lost in May, Iain Gray announced he was standing down in September, which is next week, and I don't even know if that's going ahead."

Mr Harris added: "I am raising the possibility - the very slim possibility of my candidacy - because there are ideas that I have that I think the party should at least be debating, because by the time the next Scottish Parliament elections come up in 2016, we need to know what type of party Scottish Labour will be.""

Labour MP rushes to exploit Tottenham riots for political advantage

By Tim Montgomerie
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The tweets of Chris Williamson, Labour MP for Derby North, speak for themselves*.

The unrest last night followed the fatal shooting by local police of a 29-year-old man on Thursday. A protest at the shooting got out of hand. The BBC has more here.

* Hat tip to Iain Dale who spotted Mr Williamson's late night Twittering.

9.15am: Prime Minister's statement:

The most sense ever written on LabourList: Miliband must admit that we've been fiscally irresponsible for years

By Tim Montgomerie
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Over at LabourList Luke Bozier is delivering a lot of home truths to his comrades:

"Labour says the reason it created this fiscal mess was to save the country from a collapse of the banking system. But let's get real – the reason there's a deficit is because tax income didn't cover the high public spending before the credit crunch/banking crash. Had the Labour government had a spending review mid 2000s, and reduced public spending, the deficit today would have been smaller. We must begin to admit that we were fiscally irresponsible for years, in order to gain the trust of the public again, at least on the economy."

He continues:

"It's a shame Ed didn't include a single book on boosting growth or economic responsibility in his summer holiday reading list. It's clear we can't leave this job to the shadow chancellor – he's made hardly any effort (nor has Ed Miliband for that matter) to take responsibility for the economic mess we're in, or to develop the policies required to re-gain fiscal credibility. We need a more vocal group of 'fiscal realists' within the Labour Party... In a way, we need our own kind of Tea Party."

Wow. Read the whole thing.

"Ed Miliband is a disaster. Not just for Labour but for democracy."

By Tim Montgomerie
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In yesterday's Daily Mail I wrote about the Leader of the Opposition. You can read the piece here.

Over at Liberal Conspiracy Sunny Hundal objected to my credentials and my arguments. Let me briefly respond to a few of his points...

SH: "Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome is unfailingly polite in person and clearly a very good editor..."

You are too kind Sunny.

SH: "...I’m not convinced by his political nous though..."

Oh. In other words; I'm nice but a bit dim :-)

SH: "...After all, he was convinced the Conservatives failed to win a majority in 2010 because they didn’t push hard enough on immigration – a claim rejected by Lord Ashcroft himself rather convincingly."