What a difference the whips make…

Incomes on the rise, but not yet back to levels when Labour left office

Incomes have returned to pre-recession levels, according to new research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), but have not yet reached the all-time highs that existed at the time of the last election. Much of Labour’s election campaign is based on the fall in living standards under the current Government, and the party says today’s report confirms that people are worse off now than in 2010. The IFS say that it was not the decline of wages following 2010 […]

The harsh, uncomfortable truths about child abuse in Oxfordshire and Rotherham

By Sunny Hundal

“Wait until the Oxford stuff comes out, it will shock you,” I was told over a year ago, by a journalist friend. She was right. Yesterday, a report into child sexual abuse (CSE) cases in Oxfordshire highlighted that approximately 370 girls and young women were victims of exploitation over the last 16 years. I wrote several times about similar cases in Rotherham and have covered this issue repeatedly over a decade; it’s always an unpleasant experience. The prosecution opened the […]

Whatever happened to the UKIP of tomorrow?

By Conor Pope

The polls have been remarkably stable over the first two months of this year. In the end, the heralded “Green Surge” was as muted as a Natalie Bennett explanation of her party’s housing policy funding. It existed for about a week in January, and they never quite managed to reach the heady heights of usurping the Liberal Democrats’ hard-earned fourth place. While Labour and the Conservatives have switched intermittently, the nearest we have come to any noticeable ‘shift’ has been […]

Margaret Hodge “a great supporter” of Lammy’s Mayor bid, but won’t officially back him

Update: We’ve just received word from Margaret Hodge’s office that although she is a “great supporter of David’s candidacy”, particularly as she would like the mayor to be from a black, asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, “she hasn’t decided who she personally will back yet.” It seems Lammy’s tweets may have been a little presumptuous, and Hodge’s fundraiser with Sadiq Khan tomorrow night now looks a little different. ——— Last month Margaret Hodge announced that she was no longer in […]

Labour’s immigration policies are excellent – we need to champion them on the doorstep

By Joe Jervis

The pistol has been fired and the race has begun. For many Labour activists door knocking and phone banking has become a regular part of evenings and weekends as the fight to return a Labour government on 7 May intensifies. Over the past few weeks two topics of doorstep conversation have leapt out at me. One is the passion felt by people of all ages, particularly the older generation, for the NHS. The second, predictably, is public concern over immigration. […]