Posts Tagged “labour party”
A reply to Dan Hodges: why it’s not surprising some Tories aren’t bothered about winning in 2015
by Stephen Tall on March 29, 2013
The Telegraph’s token Labour blogger Dan Hodges has a typically punchy post today – Do the Tories actually want to win in 2015? – highlighting the fatalism of some Tory MPs who think victory next time is possible but not worth it: Hardly worth it? What, just managing to scrape a win at the next [...]
Lords reform: did we really expect any better of either the Tories or Labour?
by Stephen Tall on June 26, 2012
All three main political parties fought the 2010 election promising the electorate that, if elected, they would reform the House of Lords. All three promised the same in 2005, too. And 2001. Yet in 2012 only one party is staying true to that promise: the Lib Dems. The Tories and Labour, in contrast, are happily [...]
The Tories’ and Labour’s collective tax omnishambles
by Stephen Tall on April 18, 2012
Labour is against reducing the 50p top-rate tax to 45p for those earning more than £150,000. What could be clearer? As it happens, quite a lot could be clearer. First, the omnishambles… Given how widely predicted George Osborne’s decision to reduce the top-rate was you would have thought Labour would have anticipated it and worked [...]
Labour’s not-so-very-local election broadcast shows how unimportant local decision-making is to Ed Miliband’s party
by Stephen Tall on April 11, 2012
Tonight’s Labour local election broadcast, starring telly’s very own Lord (Robert) Winston, climaxes with the rallying cry: On Thursday May 3rd, vote NHS, vote Labour Exactly how voting Labour then will help the NHS isn’t explored — not surprisingly, because it won’t. There’s a reason these elections are called local elections, after all. Before highlighting [...]
The Labour Party. Remember them?
by Stephen Tall on March 3, 2012
There’s an excellent must-read post on the New Statesman site by Rafael Behr highlighting how Coalition politics is not only eclipsing the Labour party from the media spotlight, but also paralysing its leadership from engaging with internal debate. First, he notes how both the Lib Dems and Tories are being given the freedom to differentiate [...]
10 things you might not have known about party political funding over the last decade
by Stephen Tall on February 25, 2012
The Electoral Commission website is a data-mine of information for those interested in all aspects of party political funding. For those who’d rather not get their hands dirty doing the mining themselves, below you’ll find 10 interesting (in my opinion) facts I discovered there. But for those of you interested in excavating further, I’ve uploaded [...]
Labour’s new approach to education: ‘Evidence, evidence, evidence’. What can the Lib Dems learn from this?
by Stephen Tall on February 23, 2012
I’m going to do something now I haven’t had cause to do in a good few months: praise a Labour policy. Here’s why. On Tuesday night, I went along to listen to Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, deliver a speech to a ProgressOnline debate on raising standards in education. (The event was in parliament’s [...]
Labour’s odd messaging: how the party was for reversing Coalition cuts before it was against them
by Stephen Tall on September 27, 2011
Mark Pack has already highlighted the pitfalls of political opponents commentating on other parties’ conferences. And he’s right of course. But it didn’t stop him, so I won’t let it stop me… I am genuinely puzzled by Labour’s key messages based on the first two days of their conference. Day 1 kicked off with the [...]
Ed Miliband on tuition fees: £6k not £9k. The reaction so far…
by Stephen Tall on September 25, 2011
Rejoice! Rejoice! Labour has a policy. Party leader Ed Miliband has vowed that, if Labour were in government now, they would double tuition fees to £6k from the current £3k level set by the last Labour government with immediate effect. In other words, they would undercut the Coalition’s £9k fees by £3k. Here are some [...]
In (partial) defence of Labour’s so-called ‘Lay Off Murdoch’ instruction to party’s MPs
by Stephen Tall on July 10, 2011
‘Lay off Murdoch’ — that was the ever-so-quotable paraphrase that the New Statesman used to accompany this article by Dan Hodges, revealing how the Labour Party press team had issued a circular ‘to all shadow cabinet teams warns Labour spokespeople to avoid linking hacking with the BSkyB bid, to accept ministerial assurances that meetings with [...]
