Andrew Gimson: The fighting speech Miliband should have made when Cameron denounced McCluskey

By Andrew Gimson
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Ed Miliband’s attitude to the trade unions is hopelessly confused. He has not defined himself, and proved to Middle England how sound he is, by picking a fight with them in the manner of a latter-day Tony Blair. The present Labour leader owes too much to the unions for such a pose to carry conviction.

But Mr Miliband also shrinks from showing pride in Labour’s links with the unions. He treats them as if they are embarrassing relations from an earlier generation. He knows he owes them a lot, but takes care not be seen very often with them in public, and hates it when unkind people point out that he still relies on them for financial support.

In his recent speech on union funding, Mr Miliband attempted to finesse these difficulties. His plan is to distance himself from the unions, while becoming closer to union members: “Men and women in trade unions should be able to make a more active, individual choice on whether they become part of our party.”

According to Mr Miliband, this “could grow our membership from 200,000 to a far higher number”. It is a pleasant dream, but unless it actually happens it will remain no more than a dream. As so often, by trying to find a subtle way through a problem, Mr Miliband has ended up sounding weak, indecisive and desperate to be all things to all men.

To Tory eyes, this is curious. The country is no longer wracked by strikes. The unions have lost their legal immunities, and are no longer strong enough to bring the country to a halt. In 1979 they had 13 million members and now they have 6.5 million.

35 and minus 23: two numbers that are on Labour’s collective mind today

By Peter Hoskin
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And the number of the day is 35. That, according to Dan Hodges and Rachel Sylvester (£), is that percentage of the vote that some members of Team Miliband are shooting for at the next election. Apparently, this “35 per cent strategy” involves securing the 29 per cent of voters who supported Labour at the last election, with a further 6 percentage points carved off the Lib Dems – and they think it should be enough for victory.

It all sounds pretty plausible, and not just because Hodges and Sylvester are a well-sourced pair. As the New Statesman’s George Eaton has pointed out, 35 per cent was enough to deliver victory to Labour in 2005 – and that was with the Lib Dems on 22 per cent, and without a split vote on the right. Looking at the current electoral landscape, it’s little wonder if some Labour advisers believe they can win it without dominating it.

Whatever his motivations, Tony Blair has highlighted some of the most important questions facing European leaders

By Peter Hoskin
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Liam Fox isn’t the only one-time member of the Cabinet talking about Europe today — Tony Blair’s at it too. Our former Prime Minister has delivered a speech in which he proposes a directly elected President for Europe. Apparently, it’s the “most direct way to involve the public” in European politics.

But before you guffaw at this modest little proposal of Mr Blair’s, it’s worth noting that his speech does actually say something more than that. His argument basically comes in three parts:

i) To deal with its current crisis, and to stave off any future crises, the eurozone needs to be more economically integrated:

Blair is finished in Britain. He should move to America.

By Paul Goodman
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I published the article below over a year ago. Here it is again - in the wake of Tony Blair's recent articles on Syria, and the report of his views about it in today's Sun.  Whatever one's view of intervention or indeed Blair himself, his support for it is a curse for the cause: see also Jesse Norman's piece on this site today.

There will still be a support base for Tony Blair among voters - displeasing though this is to most Conservatives (excluding the very senior Tory Cabinet Ministers to whom he is simply "The Master").  Whether we like it or not, Mr Blair will still be seen, by a stubborn section of the British people, to be a) moderate and b) strong.  This combination is the philosopher's stone which some other politicians, David Cameron among them, search for more often than they find it.  Perhaps this residual strength explains why Mr Blair began campaigning for a comeback in the spring and his critics are opposing it this summer.

But whether so or not, I am surprised that neither Mr Blair's friends nor enemies seem to see the obvious, namely that there will be no Blair comeback.  Or to put it even more starkly: Blair is finished in Britain.  (Speaking at the odd big Labour dinner and acting as a sporadic adviser to the party does not consitute a comeback, at least to my mind.)  Although I am not exactly a fan of the former Prime Minister, I write this less as a cry of Tory triumph than as a statement of the bleeding obvious.  For although Mr Blair has the perhaps wide, though not deep, respect of one group of voters he also has the very deep and fairly wide emnity of two more.

As Tory MPs move apart for the '22 elections, Labour's leaders draw closer over an EU referendum

By Paul Goodman
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Five straws in the wind:

• Ed Balls's joint Guardian article on Sunday with Peter Mandelson about Europe policy, stressing an active European Central Bank, banking recapitalisation, more infrastucture spending and greater fiscal union.  That these one-time old enemies teamed up in this way is significant.

• Lord Mandelson's earlier though recent support in principle for an EU-related referendum.

• Balls's own support this week for such a referendum, expressed in almost identical terms.

• Tony Blair's wish to re-engage with British politics.

• The opportunities that the forthcoming Shadow Cabinet reshuffle presents to heal relations between Labour's differents wings (if Ed Miliband doesn't mess it up).

For all the divisions of the Blair/Brown years and the Miliband/Miliband leadership election, Labour is the natural party of the British establishment: that's to say, of the public sector elites - the Universities, the arts, the top layer of the legal profession (or at least of its human rights wing) - and the state broadcaster, plus the bigger churches (or much of their leadership).

No wonder it is showing signs of a very establishment instinct for unity.  The paralysing effect of that leadership election - in which Labour members and MPs voted for the other Miliband - are beginning to fade.  As I pointed out recently, Mr Miliband has clearly clocked that David Cameron is badly exposed on Europe, and is being pushed hard to exploit this weakness.

We've had Blue Labour, Purple Labour and soon there'll be "In The Black" Labour

By Tim Montgomerie
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Fiscal conservatism is almost as unpopular in Labour circles as their three times election winner Tony Blair. Nonetheless a few brave souls are attempting to make the case for it. John Rentoul has the story at the bottom of his Independent on Sunday column:

"A Policy Network pamphlet by four authors, including Anthony Painter and Hopi Sen, is called In the Black Labour, playing on the fashion for symbolic colours (Red Tories, Blue Labour, The Purple Book). It advocates, clearly and admirably briefly, the case for Labour fiscal conservatism, saying that the party should try to outdo the Tories in promising to balance the books. It even quotes Ed Balls from 1998: "Left-of-centre governments need to favour tough fiscal policy because from time to time, if economic crises occur, you may have to relax that."

Good luck to all four. They'll need it.

Ken Livingstone's route to victory: hanging George Osborne and prosecuting Tony Blair

By Matthew Barrett
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Ken Livingstone seems to get his Mayoral campaign into a new controversy every other week with some new remark about evil Tories. The remarks are usually made at a "Tell Ken" event - public meetings he is holding around London as he campaigns to re-enter City Hall at next year's election. 

A fortnight ago, Harry Phibbs reported Livingstone's words to a Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Councillor:

"All of you [should be sent to prison], all of you. I think it’s what Shirley Porter did, and you’re destroying lives, and you should be ashamed of yourself. And if there’s any justice you will burn in hell and your flesh will be flayed for demons for all eternity."

These sentiments may well appeal to fringe left-wing activists, but the questionable language is unlikely to win over floating and moderate Labour voters - you would think. 

Labour Shadow Education Minister argues for the abolition of private schools

By Matthew Barrett
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Stephen Twigg, a Blairite reformer, was appointed to the Shadow Education brief in Ed Miliband's last reshuffle. As a former Education Minister who helped the drive for academy schools in the New Labour years, it was hoped his appointment might signal Ed Miliband's support for the Coalition's Free Schools programme. 

Indeed, Twigg said earlier this month:

"On free schools, I am saying that we need to apply a set of tests, that we are not going to take an absolute policy of opposing them. The tests should be: will the school raise standards for pupils and parents, will it contribute to a narrowing of the achievement gap between rich and poor and what is the wider impact of that school?"

Unfortunately, any credibility that Twigg may have in his brief will be undermined by the class war, anti-rich sentiments of his deputy, Kevin Brennan (pictured above), who last night spoke in favour of abolishing private schools - a proposal last seen in Labour's 1983 manifesto, aka the "longest suicide note in history".

Brennan was speaking at the Oxford Union, where he proposed the motion "This House Would Abolish Private Schools". Brennan had previously spoken in favour of the same motion in his debut speech to the Oxford Union - as a student.

In a new autobiography, Ken Livingstone claims Boris threatened to punch his lights out

By Joseph Willits 
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The Boris vs Ken battle has always added some colour to political life in London, and it seems that more is yet to be revealed in Livingstone's upcoming autobiography. Although Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian has described it as "an exhaustive account of internal local government machinations, city hall bureaucracy, transport policy memos" having "more psephological detail than even the nerdiest anorak could conceivably want", certain revelations are likely to reignite tension as 2012's election campaign gears up.

Through humour, Ken admits, Boris has the knack of "getting away with it", diverting attention away from tough decisions, but during 2008's election campaign "the mask slipped". The example he cites is as the camera faded after the two men appeared on Questiontime:

"After Question Time the cameras were still on us as a smiling Boris draped his arm around my shoulders and said, 'If you carry on talking about my great-grandfather I'm going to punch your lights out.'" 

The comments were made after Ken's insistence that Boris' Turkish grandfather was a British spy.

Simon Hughes holds his fire over Cameron's Coulson meeting at Chequers, and attacks Blair instead

By Matthew Barrett
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Simon Hughes, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and a distinguished fellow of the Yellow B**tards League, made an interesting appearance on Sky News this morning - interesting because Hughes refused to blame Cameron for meeting Andy Coulson at Chequers: 

"I have to say, I think if you have a loyalty and an obligation to somebody who worked for you and did a good job, then whatever the implication might be, you might want honourably to support them and say "thank you", so I'm not going to be critical of the fact that David Cameron invited Coulson back once Coulson had resigned."

Hughes, in fact, did not just decide not to bash Cameron, he took a shot at Tony Blair:

"I'm much more critical of the fact that under the Blair era we knew, and this will all come out in the pubic inquiry, we knew that Blair flew just before the 1997 election to the other side of the world to meet Murdoch, we know that Tony Blair, three times in the ten days before the Iraq war was declared, was in touch with Rupert Murdoch"