By Paul Goodman The Guardian reports this morning that the former Foreign Secretary is accused of "buying" the leadership election as wealthy Blairite donors push his campaign chest to £200,000 – causing what the paper describes as a 'disparity in financial backing" for the five candidates, which it believes to be "a big issue". Two […]
By Paul Goodman As you may know, I wrote an open letter to you last month. It assumed that you'll win Labour's leadership contest. I may be wrong about the outcome, but have seen nothing since then to make that outcome less likely. In my note, I offered you some advice and, as I reminded […]
By Jonathan Isaby Today's Times splashes on the attacks on Lord Mandelson by three of the contenders for the Labour leadership. Here are some the highlights from behind the paywall: "David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, who is well regarded by Lord Mandelson, said that the extracts, serialised this week in The Times, had been […]
By Jonathan Isaby I have been wondering for some weeks what are the discernible differences between the contenders for the Labour leadership (the four ex-Cabinet members at any rate). In covering past Tory leadership elections, I have always been able to assess the different approaches and political philosophies of each candidate, but have struggled to […]
By Jonathan Isaby Gordon Brown's reputation for sound economic management was blasted out of the water some time ago. But it is worth remembering that for many years his loyal henchman at the Treasury was one Ed Balls, as the picture here reminds us. It is a screengrab from a BBC film – available online […]
The Local Government Chronicle has the story: Labour leadership contender David Miliband has admitted that his party took councillors for granted and ignored local government while in power. Ahead of a leadership hustings debate at the Local Government Association conference this week, Mr Miliband even pledged to invite Labour’s local government leader, at present David […]
Labour leadership contenders are currently submitting themselves to interviews with the Left Foot Forward blog and today is the turn of Diane Abbott, who takes a sideswipa t one of her rivals in the contest: Asked whether she thinks the Labour government was partly to blame for the financial crash, she replies: "The recession was […]
When I was a reporter on the Sunday Telegraph during the early 1990s, Andrew Neil was viewed, in a certain sense, as the enemy. The Sunday Times was the broadsheet market leader in terms of sales. The Telegraph was trying to catch up (little has changed). Furthermore, Neil was a low Tory whereas Charles Moore, […]
Labour leadership contender David Miliband doesn't strike me as the most likely class warrior, but he has stated today that it is "just wrong" for the Government to scrap the Child Trust Fund "while continuing to subsidise private schools to the tune of £100 million a year". So he is calling for independent schools' charitable […]
Further to my CentreRight earlier today here, the reason why people laugh at Ed Balls has little do with either his name or his stammer. (See his Daily Mirror piece here.) If you want to know it is, please turn to his article in this morning's Daily Telegraph here. Balls' case is – 1) Raising VAT […]
In her News of the World column Carole Malone accuses Labour of patronising women by including the hard left Diane Abbott in the race to succeed Gordon Brown: "What's really annoying about Abbott's nomination is that she – and everyone else – keep banging on about how great it is to have a black candidate […]
BBC graphic. 12.47pm: Diane Abbot has been confirmed as a candidate for the Labour leadership. Very pleased for the sake of diversity that a parent who sends her children to private schools is in the race. 10.25am: The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow is tweeting that Andy Burnham has got enough nominations to enter the Labour leadership […]
Tuesday lunchtime update: The BBC reports that 24 hours later, McDonnell has apologised for his "joke" about Margaret Thatcher: "In that audience everyone took it as a joke and in that atmosphere and that audience it was just a normal joke .. but I can understand, if people have taken offence I can understand. I'm […]
Former Schools Secretary and now Labour leadership contender, Ed Balls, has written in today's Observer about the issue of immigration. While continuing to lazily smear Conservative allies in Europe, Balls now says that Labour were wrong not to impose transitional controls on immigration from Eastern Europe in the mid-Noughties: "There have been real economic gains […]
Honestly. Labour's Deputy Leader wants the rules for shadow cabinet elections to be changed so that 50% of members have to be female. The Press Association has the story. Tim Montgomerie 1pm: Crunching the maths, FT Westminster blog looks at the current number of Labour women MPs and concludes: "By proposing that half the cabinet […]