Ed’s Inbox – January 10th 2011

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

Ed Miliband is a busy man. He has press conferences to attend, a newborn baby to care for and a party to lead. He doesn’t have much time to sit down and read blogs. If Ed could only read five blogposts each day that would give him an idea of the range and issues and viewpoints that Labour and the left are talking about, what would they be? The challenge that we’ve set ourselves at LabourList is to find them – so each weeknight we’ll be bringing you “Ed’s inbox” – a guide to the last twenty four hours of the left online in five articles. The opening five are below – we hope you enjoy them:

Why Labour was right to run a deficit before banking crisis – Liberal Conspiracy

by Chris Dillow

Ed Miliband’s claim that government borrowing owes more to the global financial crisis than to Labour’s over-spending has met with a – ahem – sceptical response. It is certainly true that Labour were running a large deficit even before the crisis. But there is, I think, a defence of this.

It starts from the premise that, in the mid-00s, business investment was low, as there was a dearth of investment opportunities.

As McKinseys put it: “The investment rate (investment as a share of GDP) of mature economies has declined significantly since the 1970s.” Read more

Jack Straw should apologise – LabourList

By Darrell Goodliffe

Jack Straw got things badly wrong this weekend with his comments on the conviction of two men for rape and sexual assault in Derby. Generally speaking, when somebody becomes intellectually and logically incoherent within the space of two sentences, as Straw does, that is a tell-tale sign something is wrong. Furthermore, even the judge in the case, whom my cynical side does not expect to be the impassioned voice of tolerance and enlightenment, said the racial background of the two convicted was ‘incidental’ to the case. Straw got it wrong and should apologise for what he said.

However, his comments do beg the unfortunate question of whether we – as a party – have a problem with racial issues. Read more

A quantum of spin – Labour Uncut

by Michael Dugher

You always know when a government is short of ideas. In the absence of serious policies to announce, any government will revert to “process”. I can almost picture the No 10 “grid meeting” from a few weeks ago: the strategic comms team will have been lambasting their hapless counterparts in the policy unit for having nothing positive to present to the public and the media. After a fraught meeting, the room came up with the idea of a “summit” with business figures to discuss “how we can promote growth”. Today’s Downing Street summit come hot on the heels of that other old chestnut of spin-over-substance: last week’s prime ministerial “regional tour” to talk about “how we can promote growth in the regions”. But behind the spin of today’s summit, the truth is that the Tory-led coalition has no plan for jobs and growth. Read more

Should interest rates go up? – Left Foot Forward

by Tony Dolphin

Oliver Kamm says in today’s issue of The Times (£) that the Bank of England should increase interest rates immediately and that it should plan to have lifted them to 1.25 or 1.5 per cent by the first quarter of 2012. He suggests there is a risk of a wage-price spiral and a currency crisis if the Bank fails to act.

His worries seem at odds with the latest evidence from the economy. Average earnings increased by around 2 per cent over the last year. With unemployment just above 2.5 million, and widely expected to increase in coming months, wage deals in the private sector are unlikely to be much higher in 2011 than in 2010. – Read more

Boris’ Indian flip-flops – Next Left

by Sunder Katwala

Boris Johnson is in India. And the London Mayor and top Telegraph columnist is on good, funny form when it comes to telling onion jokes in The Telegraph as a way of explaining the political and economic pressure on the Indian government over food prices.

He’s finding his trip a mind-blowing experience – but he’s simply mystified as to why British policymakers don’t do so much more to grab the opportunity to benefit from Indian growth.

He writes today:

“Surely we can lasso that rampaging Indian bullock and get some more traction for Britain … According to my MP brother Jo, an India buff and former FT Delhi man, we are continually underselling ourselves out here, mystifyingly failing to capitalise on the advantages of language, history and culture.”

If Boris thinks that, how well has he done as Mayor to put it right? It seems to have been quite a twisty rollercoaster ride. Read more

Our suggestions for Ed’s inbox are limited by what we read – so if you’ve seen a blogpost that should be in Ed’s inbox, let us know.

(Our regular “Party Lines” feature will be on a break this week)